e to do away with the danger of illusion? The proof will in this
case result from a criticism of adverse theories, along with direct
observation of psychological reality freed from the deceptive forms
which warp the common perception of it. And it will here be an easy task
to resume Mr Bergson's reasoning in a few words.

The first obstacle which confronts affirmation of our liberty comes
from physical determinism. Positive science, we are told, presents the
universe to us as an immense homogeneous transformation, maintaining
an exact equivalence between departure and arrival. How can we possibly
have after that the genuine creation which we require in the act we call
free?

The answer is that the universality of the mechanism is at bottom only
a hypothesis which is still awaiting demonstration. On the one hand it
includes the parallelist conception which we have recognised as effete.
And on the other it is plain that it is not self-sufficient. At least it
requires that somewhere or other there should be a principle of position
giving once for all what will afterwards be maintained. In actual
fact, the course of phenomena displays three tendencies: a tendency to
conservation, beyond question; but also a tendency to collapse, as in
the diminution of energy; and a tendency to progress, as in biological
evolution. To make conservation the sole law of matter implies an
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 whic