In short, defenders and opponents of free will agree in holding that the action is preceded by a kind of mechanical oscillation between two points X and Y. If I decide in favour of X, the former will tell me: you hesitated and deliberated, therefore Y was possible. The others will answer: you chose X, therefore you had some reason for doing so, and those who declare that Y was equally possible forget this reason: they leave aside one of the conditions of the problem. Now, if I dig deeper underneath these two opposite solutions, I discover a common postulate: both take up their position after the action X has been performed, and represent the process of my voluntary activity by a path M O which branches off at the point O, the lines O X and O Y symbolizing the two directions which abstraction distinguishes within the continuous activity of which X is the goal. But while the determinists take account of all that they know, and note that the path M O X has been traversed, their opponents mean to ignore one of the data with which they have constructed the figure, and after having traced out the lines O X and O Y, which should together represent the progress of the activity of the self, they bring back the self to the point O to oscillate there until further orders. [Sidenote: But the figure merely gives the stereotyped memory of the process, and not the dynamic progress which issued in the set.] It should not be forgotten, indeed, that the figure, which is really a splitting of our psychic activity in space, is purely symbolical, and as such, cannot be constructed unless we adopt the hypothesis that our deliberation is finished and our mind made up. If you trace it beforehand, act you assume that you have reached the end and are present in imagination at the final act. In short this figure does not show me the deed in the doing but the deed already done. Do not ask me then whether the self, having traversed the path M O and decided in favour of X, could or could not choose Y: I should answer that the question is meaningless, because there is no line M O, no point O, no path O X, no direction O Y. To ask such a question is to admit the possibility of adequately representing time by space and a succession by a simultaneity. It is to ascribe to the figure we have traced the value of a description, and not merely of a symbol; it is to believe that it is possible to follow the process of psychic activity on this figure like the march of an army on a map. We have been present at the deliberation of the self in all its phases until the act was performed: then, recapitulating the terms of the series, we perceive succession under the form of simultaneity, we project time into space, and we base our reasoning, consciously or unconsciously, on this geometrical figure. But this figure represents a _thing_ and not a _progress_; it corresponds, in its inertness, to a kind of stereotyped memory of the