tumult of passion unchained, a steep climb towards a difficult truth or a
gentle descent from a luminous principle to consequences which easily
follow, a moral crisis or a shooting pain, call up intuitions admitting no
comparison with one another. We have here no series of moments, but
prolonged and interpenetrating phases; their sequence is not a substitution
of one point for another, but rather resembles a musical resolution of
harmony into harmony. And of this ever-new melody which constitutes our
inner life every moment contains a resonance or an echo of past moments.
"What are we really, what is our character, except the condensation of the
history which we have lived since our birth, even before our birth, since
we bring with us our prenatal dispositions? Without doubt we think only
with a small part of our past; but it is with our complete past, including
our original bias of soul, that we desire, wish, and act." ("Creative
Evolution", pages 5-6.) This is what makes our duration irreversible, and
its novelty perpetual, for each of the states through which it passes
envelops the recollection of all past states. And thus we see, in the end,
how, for a being endowed with memory, "existence consists in change, change
in ripening, ripening in endless self-creation." ("Creative Evolution",
page 8.)

With this formula we face the capital problem in which psychology and
metaphysics meet, that of liberty. The solution given by Mr Bergson marks
one of the culminating points of his philosophy. It is from this summit
that he finds light thrown on the riddle of inner being. And it is the
centre where all the lines of his research converge.

What is liberty? What must we understand by this word? Beware of the
answer you are going to give. Every definition, in the strict sense of the
term, will imply the determinist thesis in advance, since, under pain of
going round in a circle, it will be bound to express liberty as a function