Turn now and contemplate a calmer scene. Consider the commonplace life of a commonplace man as it develops in the untroubled prosperity of a steady business and a quiet home. Such a career seems as orderly and uniform as the flood I have been describing is terrible and strange. Surely no supernatural calculator is required to cast the horoscope of its hero: for he does, and leaves undone, the same actions, he thinks and leaves unthought the same ideas, as thousands of his contemporaries; and, so far as outward appearance goes, he is an indistinguishable member of an undistinguished crowd.
Yet, in spite of this, we know him to be unique. There never has been before, nor will there ever be again, another individual exactly like him. A similar statement, it may be urged, can be made about our catastrophic flood. Though this has plenty of parallels, none of them, strictly speaking, are exact. Where, then, lies the distinction on which I am trying to insist? Let me endeavour to mark the contrast.
If the material world be conceived as a mechanical system, the flood in my illustration may be regarded as a piece arbitrarily cut out of it at the whim of the spectator. It possesses no natural unity; and, like the whole of which it is a fraction, the moving particles which compose it do each obey laws which are (we assume) perfectly well known, and have been endlessly exemplified. Its behaviour is the sum of the behaviour of these several parts: and it is by estimating their movements that our imaginary calculator can prophesy its course with absolute exactness. He is never perplexed by the problem of negligibility; for negligibility in such a case can be accurately measured, and our calculator possesses all the data required for its measurement. In short, the principle of regularity may here be applied in its most uncompromising form; it requires no qualification, nor can it be pressed too boldly or too far.
But the case is otherwise when we have to abandon the strictly mechanical point of view, and investigate regions where negligibility has a small and uncertain application. Such a region is individual consciousness. This possesses a natural or intrinsic unity. Its phases are never precisely repeated; nor can it be regarded as a collection of independent elements, the sequences of which may be separately examined, verified, and repeated. Not only is the whole unique, but the parts are unique also. Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that there are no parts possessing a fixed character of their own apart from the whole. Not only is everything qualified by everything else, but few of these qualifications are negligible. Perfect repetition is therefore impossible, and our calculator, whatever his powers, could never feel at home with his premises, or secure in his conclusions. The present would always be new, and the future would always be doubtful.
If this seems paradoxical it is, I think, mainly for two reasons. In the first place, such a doctrine seems inconsistent with the fact that, whatever Laplace’s calculator could do, humbler beings like ourselves manage somehow or other to forecast the behaviour of our neighbours with some small measure of success. This, no doubt, is true. But it is in part because the alternatives of behaviour are very few and very definite compared with the infinitely graduated variations of thought, will, and feeling. Action is “canalised.” It can flow only along channels engineered for it by circumstances, and among these the choice is commonly small. But the character which lies behind action is complex beyond all power of analysis, and variable beyond all powers of anticipation. The routine which is unwaveringly pursued from month to month and year to year is pursued each day in a different spirit: and often a critical hour strikes when some well-drilled creature of custom, to his own surprise and the scandal of his friends, deserts the ancient ways and wanders suddenly forth into the unknown.
Of course, these violent aberrations are the exception. The more familiar experience is that, in an orderly society, the alternatives of action which need be taken into account are few, and the “limits of deviation” narrow. Often, therefore, we can anticipate conduct without any real insight into the depths of character or the complexities of motive from which the conduct springs. And truly this is fortunate; for, if mutual comprehension were necessary to social intercourse, how could society exist?
But there is another reason why we take little note of the distinction I am endeavouring to draw between the calculable uniformities of a material world and the incalculable regularities of psychic life. The distinction is rather speculative than practical. It does not affect the routine of daily existence. For, although the course of the material world is calculable, we mortals have neither the time nor the knowledge nor the mental powers required to calculate it. We behave, therefore, towards nature as we behave towards man. We content ourselves with approximations, with analogies, with resemblances. Even if we had the power, we should not have the time to resolve the movement of all the bits of matter with which we have to deal from minute to minute into the exact sequences of which they are composed. We would not if we could. We apply rough methods; we are satisfied with imperfect results. Nor are these results always more imperfect in the psychic than in the material sphere of observation. The ways (for example) of British weather are even more mysterious than the ways of British men. Why, then, should we interest ourselves in a speculation which tells us, however truly, that perfect foreknowledge is theoretically possible in the first case, but theoretically impossible in the second? In practice it is impossible in both. And with this we must be content.
And yet the speculation is interesting. For the distinction between the two cases lies deep. It has nothing (let me say again) to do with free will. It has nothing to do with our ignorance of facts. It has nothing to do with our intellectual insufficiency. It is due to a fundamental difference between the uniformities of matter and the regularities of mind. Perfect foresight requires perfect repetition, and in the psychic sphere perfect repetition can never happen. Every self is unique; all its experiences are unique; and these unique wholes are not compounded of interchangeable elements obeying identical laws. They do not alter by mere addition, subtraction, or rearrangement of parts. They grow. And the sequence of one phase upon another faintly resembles that which would prevail in the imaginary universe of which I spoke just now, the universe where all contemporaneous events were treated as the single effect of the immediate past and the single cause of the immediate future. Of such a universe I observed that it would have a history, but could have no science. And though we cannot go so far when speaking of psychic unities, though we cannot rule out psychology or sociology, it must be admitted that no regularities which observation discloses can ever possess the precision which we theoretically attribute to material mechanism. Instructive likenesses we shall find in abundance, complete determination we may assume if we please; but “laws,” in the full and strict sense of the term, we shall not find, for they are not there.
NOTE
The shortcomings of mechanism have been discussed by M. Bergson in a manner which no other thinker is likely to rival. He has, however, usually dealt with the subject in connection with freedom; whereas in this section I have only dealt with it in connection with foreknowledge, repetition, and what I have termed the doctrine of “negligibility.” He approaches it from the side of reality. I approach it from the side of inductive inference and the law of universal causation.