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activity, burst out incontinently at those moments, unless withheld by very powerful motives. This is one of the impulses that require a severe discipline, in the shape of strong counter-motives. The force of the spontaneity and the force of the counter-motives are then measured against each other, and we call the one that succeeds stronger, having no other criterion of comparative strength.

When the activity is unduly stimulated, as by drugs, by pungent sensations, or by quick movements, it is so much the greater a power, and needs a greater motive to curb it. We see this in the restlessness of children in their violent sports; the natural activity is heightened by stimulation, and made harder to resist; quiescence is doubly repugnant.

A periodical tendency to action, the result of habit, would operate in the same way; as this is sometimes in opposition to the other motives, there is conflict, and the successful side is called the stronger.

3. Exhaustion, and natural inaction of the powers, are a bar to the influence of Motives.

This is the same fact in obverse. When the system is exhausted or physically indisposed,-its spontaneity and available energy past,-a more than ordinary motive is required to bring on exertion. The jaded horse needs more spurring. The exhausted mountain guide can be got to proceed only by the promise of an extra fee. Napoleon took his men across the Alps by plying them with the rattle of the drums when everything else failed.

4. In the conflicts of Opposing Volitions, properly so called, we may consider first the case of two Motives in the Actual.

Two actual pains or pleasures sometimes incite in opposite ways. An animal may be fatigued and also hungry; the one state prompting to rest, the other to exertion. We judge of the stronger motive by the result. A person may feel the pain of indoor confinement, but may decline the disagreeable alternative of cold and wet. In company, we may be solicited by spectacle, by music, by conversation; one gains the day, and is pronounced the greater pleasure, or at least the stronger motive.

One might continue, without end, to cite these conflicts of actual sensation or emotion, appending the uniform conclusion that the upshot is the test of the stronger motive. The instruc

tion derivable from each observation of this kind is a fact in the character of the person, or the animal, observed; we find out the preferences, or comparative susceptibility of different persons, or of the same person at different times.

We are to presume, in the absence of any indications to the contrary, that the stronger motive in the shape of actual and present sensation or emotion, is the greater pleasure, or the smaller pain. Pleasure and pain, in the actual or real experience, are to be held as identical with motive power. If a man is laid hold of and detained by music, we must suppose that he is pleased to that extent. The disturbances and anomalies of the will scarcely begin to tell in the actual feeling. Any one crossing the street direct, through dirty pools, is inferred to have less pain from being splashed than from being delayed.

This remark is of importance in furnishing us with a clue to the pleasures and pains of other beings. The voluntary preferences of individuals, when two actual pleasures or pains are weighed together, show which is the greater in their case. An object that weighs as nothing in stimulating the will for attainment, is to be held as giving no pleasure; if, on the other hand, it never moves to aversion or avoidance, it is not a source of pain. The pleasures and pains of men and of animals are indicated with considerable fidelity by their voluntary conduct, and especially when the comparison is made upon the present or the actual experience. We have few means of judging of the feelings of the lower animals; they have but a narrow range of emotional expression; and we are driven mainly to the study of their actions in pursuit or avoidance. We can see that a dog relishes a meal, and runs from a whipping. The lower we descend, the more do we lose the criterion of emotional expression, and depend upon the preference of action. There may be a certain ambiguity even in this test; the influence of light, for example, works to the extent of fascination, and so may other feelings. Probably this is an exceptional case; at all events, if the test of the will is invalid, we have nothing beyond it to appeal to.

There are certain allowances that we can easily make in the application of the will as a test of strength of feeling. We should observe the influence of a motive under all variety of states, as to vigour, rest, nourishment, so as to eliminate difference in the active organs. We should weigh each motive against every other, and thus check our estimate by

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cross comparisons; in this way, we can establish for each individual a scale of preferences, and obtain a diagnosis of emotional character.

The comparison of one person with another requires an estimate to be made of the active disposition as a whole, or the proneness to active exertion generally. This may be gathered from the spontaneity, from the disposition to act for the sake of acting, and from all cases where we have an independent clue to the strength of a motive, as pleasure or pain. Two persons may be equally pained by an acute ailment; while the one bestirs himself for relief and the other remains idle. If we except a greater proneness in some organs than in others, as vocal exuberance combined with general sluggishness, the active disposition is a single fact, a unity or totality; the feelings are many and unequal. One statement will give the volitional character as a whole; the estimates of the motives are as numerous as our distinct sensibilities.

5. When the conflict is between the Actual and the Ideal, the result depends on the more or less vivid recollection of pleasure and pain.

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This opens up a much wider sphere of conflict. voluntary determinations are most frequently the preference of an actual feeling to an ideal one, or the converse. refuse a pleasurable relish, because of subsequent organic pains abiding in the recollection. An ideal motive owes its power not to the strength of the original feeling alone, but to that coupled with all the circumstances tending to make it persist in the memory. A young man and an old may be equally pained by an overdose of alcohol, but the elder has the best recollection of the pain, while the younger has the farther disadvantage of a keener present delight. Yet, when the natural endowment favours the retentiveness of pain and pleasure, we shall find youth temperate, and age a victim to present allurement. In this class of examples, the conditions are various and often perplexing. Suppose the case of a thief by profession, whose prospects in life are infamy and penal servitude. There are the following alternative explanations of his choice. His mental peculiarities may be assumed to be, the usual liking for the common enjoyments of life; an aversion to industry; a small ideal estimate of the yet unexperienced pains of punishment; and perhaps, also, a sanguine temperament that under-estimates the probabilities of capture. Suppose him to pass through a first imprisonment. A new

and powerful motive is now introduced, an ideal repugnance, which ought to have great strength, if the punishment has told upon him. Should he not be reformed by the experience, we must assume the motives already stated at a still higher figure. We must also suppose, what is probably true of the criminal class generally, a low retentiveness for good and evil-the analytic expression of Imprudence; perhaps the most radically incurable of all natural defects.

The theory of Prison Discipline is based on such considerations as the following. In short imprisonments, the pains should be acute, so as to abide in the memory, and engender an intense repugnance. Loss of liberty, solitude and seclusion, regular work, and unstimulating food can be borne, for a short period, if there is little sense of the indignity and shame of going to jail. A brief confinement is the mild corrective suited to a first offence; which failing, there is needed an advance in severity. Recourse should next be had to the acute inflictions; which are principally whipping and muscular pains. The muscular pains are administered in various forms; as the tread wheel, the crank, extra drill, shot drill, and a newly devised punishment, introduced into the Scotch prisons, and said to be very deterring-the guard bed.

a view to increase the impressiveness of these severe applications, they should not be continued daily, but remitted for a few days; the mind having leisure in the interval to contemplate alike the past and the future, while the body is refreshed for the new infliction.

Long imprisonment and penal servitude are made deterring chiefly through the deprivation of liberty; to which are added, the withdrawing of the subject from the means of crime, and the inuring to a life of labour. Perhaps the defect of the system is the too even tenor of life, which does not impress the imagination of the depraved class with sufficient force. Occasional acute inflictions, would very much deepen the salutary dread of the condition; and are not uncalled for in the case of hardened criminals. The convict's yearly or halfyearly anti-holiday, would impart additional horror and gloom to his solitary reflections, and might have a greater influence on the minds of the beginners in crime.

6. The Intermediate Ends-Money, Health, Knowledge, Power, Society, Justice, &c.-enter, as motives, into conflict with the ultimate ends, Actual or Ideal, and with one another.

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It has been seen what circumstances govern the motive force of the intermediate ends; the value of the ultimate pleasures and pains involved being only one, although the properly rational, estimate of their worth. These ends have all a certain motive power in every intelligent mind, sometimes too little and sometimes too great. When present ease and gratification is confronted with prospective wealth, or knowledge, or position, we see which is the stronger. Great relish for actual ease and pleasure; great repugnance to money-getting exertion; a feeble memory for the pleasures that money can purchase, or the pains it can relieve; the absence of occasions of fear and solicitude in connexion with penury; no affectionate interest contracted with wealth, through the pursuit of it would constitute a character too little moved to the acquisition of money fortune, as a reversed state of the motives might lead to an excessive pursuit.

It is a rule, easily explicable on the principles laid down, that intermediate ends,-Wealth, Health, Knowledge, &c.are too weak in early life, while in advancing years, they become too strong, in fact superseding the final ends. One reason of this last effect is that the ultimate pleasures of sense count for less in later life, while ideal gratifications, original or acquired, count for more; money and knowledge, having contracted a factitious interest of the ideal kind, are still sought for that, when the primary interests have ceased; and the more so, that the active pursuit in their service, has become a habit, and a necessity.

7. The Persistence of Ideas, through emotional excitement, counts in the conflict of Motives, and constitutes a class of Impassioned or Exaggerated Ends.

Undue persistence of ideas is most strongly exemplified in Fear. Any evil consequence that has been able to rouse our alarms, acquires an excessive fixity of tenure, and overweighs in the conflict of motives. This has been seen to be one of the exaggerating conditions of avarice. So, from having been a witness of revolutions, a susceptible mind takes on a morbid dread of anarchy and a revulsion to change. The care of health may assume the character of a morbid fixed idea, curtailing liberty and enjoyment to an absurd degree. The apprehensions of maternal feeling are apt to be exaggerated.

Vanity, Dignity, love of Power, are often found in the impassioned form, in weak minds. The extreme case of the fixed