this view lies, however, in the fact, that it misrepresents the self
by making it merely a collection of psychical states. John Stuart Mill
says, in his Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy: "I could
have abstained from murder if my aversion to the crime and my dread of
its consequences had been weaker than the temptation which impelled me
to commit it." [Footnote: Quoted by Bergson, Time and Free Will, p. 159
(Fr. p. 122).] Here desire, aversion, fear, and temptation are regarded
as clear cut phenomena, external to the self which experiences them,
and this leads to a curious balancing of pain and pleasure on purely
utilitarian lines, turning the mind into a calculating machine such as
one might find in a shop or counting-house, and taking no account of the
character of the self that "wills." There is, really, in such a system
of psychology, no room for self-expression, indeed, no meaning left
for the term "self." It is only an inaccurate psychology, misled by
language, which tries to show us the soul determined by sympathy,
aversion, or hate, as though by so many forces pressing upon it from
without. These feelings, provided that they go deep enough, make up the
whole soul; in them the character of the individual expresses itself,
since the whole content of the personality or soul is reflected in each
of them. Then my character is "me." "To say that the soul is determined
under the influence of any one of these feelings, is thus to recognize
that it is self-determined. The associationist reduces the self to an
aggregate of conscious states, sensations, feelings, and ideas. But if
he sees in these various states no more than is expressed in their name,
if he retains only their impersonal aspect, he may set them side by side
for ever without getting anything but a phantom self, the shadow of the
Ego, projecting itself into space. If, on the contrary, he takes these
psychical states with the particular colouring which they assume in the
case of a definite person, and which comes to each of them by reflection
from all the others, then there is no need to associate a number
of conscious states in order to rebuild the person, for the whole
personality is in a single one of them, provided that we know how to
choose it. And the outward manifestation of this inner state will be
just what is called a free act, since the self alone will have been
the author of it and since it will express the whole of the self."
[Footnote: Time and Free Will, pp. 165-166 (Fr. pp. 126-127).] There is
then room in the universe for a Freedom of the human Will, a definite
creative activity, delivering us from the bonds of grim necessity and
fate in which the physical sciences and the associationist psychology
alike would bind us. Freedom, then, is a fact, and among the facts which
we observe, asserts Bergson, there is none clearer. [Footnote: Time and
Free Will, p. 221 (Fr. p. 169).] There are, however, one or two things
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