that a strictly determined psychical state corresponds to a definite cerebral state.  This, as we have seen, has not been proved.  It is admitted that to some psychical states of a limited kind certain cerebral states do correspond, but we have no warrant whatever for concluding that, because the physiological and the psychological series exhibit some corresponding terms, the two series are absolutely parallel.  “To extend this parallelism to the series themselves, in their totality, is to settle a priori the problem of freedom.” [Footnote:  Time and Free Will, p. 147 (Fr. pp. 112-113).] How far the two series do run parallel is a question—­as we saw in the chapter on the relation of Soul and Body—­for experience, observation, and experiment to decide.  The cases which are parallel are limited, and involve facts which are independent of the power of the Will.

Bergson then proceeds to an examination of the more subtle and plausible case for psychological determinism.  A very large number of our actions are due to some motive.  There you have it, says the psychological determinist.  Your so-called Freedom of the Will is a fiction; in reality it is merely the strongest motive which prevails and you imagine that you “freely willed it.”  But then we must ask him to define “strongest,” and here is the fallacy of his argument, for there is no other test of which is the strongest motive, than that it has prevailed.  Such statements do not help to solve the difficulty at all, for they avoid it and attempt to conceal it; they are due to a conception of mind which is both false and mischievous, viz., Associationism.  This view regards the self as a collection of psychical states.  The existing state of consciousness is regarded as necessitated by the preceding states.  As, however, even the associationist is aware that these states differ from one another in quality, he cannot attempt to deduce any one of them a priori from its predecessors.  He therefore endeavours to find a link connecting the two states.  That there is such a link as the simple “association of ideas” Bergson would not think of denying.  What he does deny however, very emphatically, is the associationist statement that this relation which explains the transition is the cause of it.  Even when admitting a certain truth in the associationist view, it is difficult to maintain that an act is absolutely determined by its motive, and our conscious states by one another.  The real mischief of 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