We must, however, be careful to observe that such Freedom as we have is not absolute at all and that it admits of degrees.  All our acts are by no means free.  Indeed, Free Will is exceptional, and many live and die without having known true Freedom.  Our everyday life consists in the performance of actions which are largely habitual or, indeed, automatic, being determined not by Free Will, but by custom and convention.  Our Freedom is the exception and not the rule.  Through sluggishness or indolence, we jog on in the even tenor of a way towards which habit has directed us.  Even at times when our whole personality ought to vibrate, finding itself at the cross-roads, it fails to rise to the occasion.  But, says Bergson, “it is at the great and solemn crises, decisive of our reputation with others, and yet more with ourselves, that we choose in defiance of what is conventionally called a motive, and this absence of any tangible reason, is the more striking the deeper our Freedom goes.” [Footnote:  Time and Free Will, p. 170 (Fr. p. 130).] At such times the self feels itself free and says so, for it feels itself to be creative.  “All determinism will thus be refuted by experience, but every attempt to define Freedom will open the way to determinism.” [Footnote:  Time and Free Will, p. 330 (Fr. p. 177).]

It has been urged that, although Bergson is a stanch upholder of Freedom, it is Freedom of such a kind that it must be distinguished from Free Will, that is, from the liberty of choice which indeterminists have asserted and which determinists have denied; and that the Freedom for which he holds the brief is not the feeling of liberty that we have when confronted with alternative courses of action, or the feeling we have when we look back upon a choice made and an action accomplished, that we need not have acted as we did, and that we could have acted differently.  Such Freedom it has been further maintained, is of little importance to us, for it is merely a free, creative activity which is the essence of life, which we share with all that lives and so cannot be styled “human” Freedom.  Now, although many of Bergson’s expressions, in regard to free, creative activity in general, lead to a connexion of this with the problem of “human” Freedom, such an identification would seem to be unfair.  This seems specially so when we read over carefully his remarks about the coup d’etat of the fundamental self in times of grave crisis.  We cannot equate this with a purely biological freedom or vitality, or spontaneity.  But in the light of the criticism which has been made, it will be well to consider, in concluding this chapter, the statements made by Bergson in his article on Liberty in the work in connexion with the Vocabulaire philosophique for the Societe francaise de philosophie:  [Footnote:  Quoted by Le Roy in his Une nouvelle philosophie:  Henri Bergson, English Translation (Benson), Williams and Norgate, p. 192.] “The word Liberty has for