The determinist, that is,--to take the second case first--professes that an act depends in a mechanical way upon certain antecedents. The indeterminist contends that the same antecedents could have resulted in either of several different acts, equally possible. Defenders and opponents of freedom agree in making a kind of mechanical oscillation between two points precede the action. I choose A. The indeterminists say, You have deliberated; then B was possible. The determinists reply, I have chosen; therefore I had some reason to do so, and when B is declared equally possible, this reason is forgotten; one of the conditions of the problem is ignored. Both represent the activity by a deliberative route which divides. Call the point of the division O; then the divisions of the forked line OA and OB symbolize the two divisions which abstraction distinguishes within the continuous activity, of which A is the termination. But while determinists take account of everything, and find that the route MOA has been traversed, their opponents ignore one of the data with which they have constructed the figure; and, after tracing the lines OA and OB, which ought to be united if they are to represent the progression of the ego’s activity, they make this progression go back to O and begin oscillating again! The trouble with both these solutions, Bergson says, is that they presuppose an achieved deliberation and resolution, representable in space by a geometrical figure. The question, Could the ego, having traversed the route MO and decided on A, have chosen B? is nonsense: to put such a question is to affirm the possibility of adequately representing time by space, succession by simultaneity. It is to attribute to the figure traced the value of an image and not merely of a symbol. Figures represent things, not progressions: how shall a figure furnish the least indication of the concrete motion, of the dynamic progression by which the deliberation results in the act? The defenders of freedom say, The route is not yet traced; therefore one can take any direction. To which we reply, You can speak of a route, in such a connection, only after the action is accomplished, and then it has been traced. The determinists say, The route has been traced _thus_; therefore its possible direction was only that particular direction. To which we reply, Before the route was traced there was no direction, possible or impossible; there could, as yet, be no question of a route. In its lowest terms this merely means: The act, once accomplished, is accomplished; and the argument of the determinists: The act, before being accomplished, was not as yet an act. The question of freedom is not touched, because freedom is a shade or quality of the act itself, not a relation of this act with what it is not nor with what it can be. Deliberation is not oscillation in space; it is dynamic progression, in which the ego and the motives are in a continual becoming, as living beings.