GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

THE PROBLEM OF FREE WILL 257
least some of the acts in which his personality expresses
itself; for example, of his acts of will. Acts of will undoubtedly
occur, and because they do occur, they can be
treated as events in exactly the same way as any other
events which the sciences stu^y, the particular science
which undertakes their investigation being psychology.
But they may be, and if the foregoing argument is correct,
they always are, more than events, and, in so faf as they
are more, the scientific analysis will foil to apply to them;
at least it will fail to apply completely. Prima facie every
act of free choice certainly appears to embody a new
creation, and it is certainly not a foregone conclusion
that the appearance is a delusion. It may, on the contrary,
be due to precisely that characteristic of acts of will which
I am seeking to emphasize, the characteristic, namely,
in virtue of which every such act, though it is an event
and to this extent is scientifically determined like other
events, is also more than an event. It may also be the
case that it is in virtue of this "more" that the act wears
the appearance of being free and provides us with the
experience of freely willing.
Bergson's Treatment of Freedom. Although I have
put the foregoing argument into my own words, it follows
fairly closely the lines along which many philosophers
have sought to rebut the arguments against determinism.
The philosopher Bergson, for example, sponsor of the theory
of creative evolution, has more forcibly than any other
writer emphasized the creative character of acts of will.
It is this character which, he insists, will slip through
our fingers, if we consider acts of will in isolation from theic
context, or try, as science tries, to analyse them into their
component parts. It is impossible to do justice to Bergson's
treatment of freedom without giving some account of his
metaphysical views, and for this I would refer the reader
to my Guide to Pkilosoply, Chapter XIX, Briefly, Bergson
regards determinism as the sort of view which the intellect
must inevitably take with regard to the nature of reality,
In