[Sidenote: If this symbolism represents the facts, the activity of the self has always tended in one direction, and determinism results.]
The living activity of the self, in which we distinguish by abstraction two opposite tendencies, will finally issue either at X or Y. Now, since it is agreed to localize the double activity of the self at the point O, there is no reason to separate this activity from the act in which it will issue and which forms part and parcel of it. And if experience shows that the decision has been in favour of X, it is not a neutral activity which should be placed at the point O, but an activity tending in advance in the direction O X, in spite of apparent hesitations. If, on the contrary, observation proves that the decision has been in favour of Y, we must infer that the activity localized by us at the point O was bent in this second direction in spite of some oscillations towards the first. To assert that the self, when it reaches the point O, chooses indifferently between X and Y, is to stop half way in the course of our geometrical symbolism; it is to separate off at the point O only a part of this continuous activity in which we undoubtedly distinguished two different directions, but which in addition has gone on to X or Y: why not take this last fact into account as well as the other two? Why not assign it the place that belongs to it in the symbolical figure which we have just constructed? But if the self, when it reaches the point O, is already determined in one direction, there is no use in the other way remaining open, the self cannot take it. And the same rough symbolism which was meant to show the contingency of the action performed, ends, by a natural extension, in proving its absolute necessity.
[Sidenote: Libertarians ignore the fact that one path has been chosen, and not the other.]
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.