arbitrary decree, denoting only those aspects of reality which will count
for anything. By what right do we thus exclude, with vital effort, even
the feeling of liberty which in us is so vigorous?

We might say, it is true, that our spiritual life, if it is not a simple
extension of external mechanism, yet proceeds according to an internal
mechanism equally severe, but of a different order. This would bring us to
the hypothesis of a kind of psychological mechanism; and in many respects
this seems to be the common-sense hypothesis. I need not dwell upon it,
after the numerous criticisms already made. Inner reality--which does not
admit number--is not a sequence of distinct terms, allowing a disconnected
waste of absolute causality.

And the mechanism of which we dream has no true sense--for, after all, it
has a sense--except in relation to the superficial phenomena which take
place in our dead rind, in relation to the automaton which we are in daily
life. I am ready to admit that it explains our common actions, but here it
is our profound consciousness which is in question, not the play of our
materialised habits.

Without insisting, then, too strongly on this mongrel conception, let us
pass to the direct examination of inner psychological reality. Everything
is ready for the conclusion. Our duration, which is continually
accumulating itself, and always introducing some irreducible new factor,
prevents any kind of state, even if superficially identical, from repeating
itself in depth. "We shall never again have the soul we had this evening."
Each of our moments remains essentially unique. It is something new added
to the surviving past; not only new, but unable to be foreseen.

For how can we speak of foresight which is not simple conjecture, how can