faculties has not a little contributed to separate that which ought not to be disunited, and thus to produce a false interpretation of the facts. To follow them in their development, is not only to be more complete, but also to be more exact; it is to rectify an error; because to give only a portion of the truth is error.

The table of the genesis of our volitions, as drawn up by Mr. Bain, may be reduced to the following points :—

1. Examination of the instinctive germ of the will..

2. First essays of voluntary power.

3. Motives, their conflict, resolution, and effort.

4. Finally, the so often discussed question of liberty.

II.

The instinctive germs, the primitive elements, of will are two in number: the existence of a spontaneous activity and the link which exists between our feelings and the actions which interpret them.

We have already seen (ch. i.) that there exists in us a spontaneous activity which displays itself without an exterior exciting cause, and which can only be explained by a superabundance, an excess, and an effusion of power; that it especially exhibits itself in the restless activity of childhood and youth; that it acts upon our locomotive members, and that often faint cries and emissions of the voice are due to a surplus of central energy.

There is one condition indispensable to the commencement of voluntary power: it is that the organs which afterwards we shall command separately or individually, should be, in the first instance, susceptible of being isolated. For example, we can make the forefinger produce an independent movement, while with the third finger this is impossible; the external ear is motionless in man, but moveable in other animals; with the foot the toes go together, although they may sometimes be isolated, as we see in persons who write or work with their feet. It is necessary for this that the nervous current should be capable of isolation and rendered independent. In short, every movement produced voluntarily must be preceded by a spontaneous movement.

What are the conditions of this spontaneous discharge? The most general are: the natural vigour of the constitution, and the

unaccustomed afflux of central nervous energy, due to physical exciting causes, such as food or drink, and intellectual excitements, such as pleasure and pain.

The second germ of the will is found in the natural tie uniting sentiments and action (ch. i. sec. 3). The law of self-preservation, we have seen, unites pleasure to an increase of activity, and pain to a diminution of vitality. But the movements caused by the emotions are very different from those caused by the will: the former act upon the often exerted muscles, like those of the face and of the voice, the latter act especially upon those which can increase pleasure or diminish pain. Our spontaneous movements naturally give birth to pleasure or to pain. Is pleasure produced? Then there is an increase of vital energy, which produces a new increase of movement, and consequently of plea

sure.

Is pain produced? Pain diminishes the vital energy, the movements which have caused the pain diminish also, and this diminution will be the remedy. Now let the fortuitous concurrence of a pleasure and of a certain movement be produced several times, and soon, under the influence of the law of retentiveness, these things will be so intimately united that pleasure, or even the simple idea of pleasure, will evoke an appropriate

movement.

In short, spontaneity or chance always produces, in the first place, actions united to our sensations and feelings; conscious and intelligent activity produces them afterwards.

III.

The bases of voluntary power are then spontaneity, selfpreservation, and retentiveness. Let us now enter into the history of its development; let us see by what processes determinate actions unite themselves to determinate feelings, so that afterwards the one may command the other.

The will is a machinery of detail: the learning of a foreign tongue is not more a matter of multiplied and separate acquisitions. The fancied unity of the voluntary power suggested by the appearance assumed by it in mature life, when we seem able to set agoing any action on the slightest wish, is the culmination of

a vast range of detailed associations, whose history has been lost sight of or forgotten.'1

Let us examine how the edifice of our will is constructed, piece by piece, by passing in review the different sorts of sensations and feelings.2 The exercise of our muscular sense, of the organism of taste, smell, hearing, touch, and sight, cannot become voluntary, except after numerous efforts, and sometimes unfruitful attempts. We cannot follow Mr. Bain in his details ; a few examples will suffice.

In organic life, there is not at the commencement any connexion between physical suffering, and the actions calculated to relieve it. There is a general tendency to diminish vitality; that is all. It is impossible to say how many fortuitous conjunctions are required to produce an adhesion sufficiently strong to raise us above the indecisions of a spontaneous commencement.' Few of our necessities are so pressing as thirst; nevertheless, an animal does not distinguish at first that the water in the pond can appease it: maternal milk, the moisture of the food, suffice in the beginning; it is only later in his wanderings that he comes to apply his tongue to the surface of the water, and to feel the relief which it affords, and thus to learn what he ought to will. An act so simple in appearance as that of spitting, demands so many efforts that a child can only accomplish it at the end of his second year. We only arrive at smelling an object when we know how to shut our mouth and respire. It is by tactile sensations that animals are trained; pain is inflicted upon them to lead them to the desired end. The animal produces movements, and sees that one of these is not followed by blows; these two facts, a movement produced, and the absence of the blow, unite themselves in his mind, thus the first step of his education is made. One established connexion serves to establish others: the beginning only is difficult.

We may also regulate and control our sentiments. This is too common a fact to be doubted. If a feeling, such as anger, de

1 Bain, The Emotions and the Will, p. 343.
2 Chap. ii. and iii.

termines violent movements of the muscles, a counter current may act upon the same muscles.

IV.

It may be said that the proper function of our active faculties is to divert pain, to preserve and reproduce pleasure.1 Thither tend the different motives which cause us to act, and which may be classed under the following heads :—

All the phenomena of pleasure and of pain derived from the muscular system, from the organic sensations, from the five senses properly speaking, from the various emotions; these motives can determine us, either by their actual, real, present existence, or else by an ideal action, by an influence of pure provision. Precautions against the causes of illness, against attacks on our property, on our reputation, etc., are of the second kind. Retentiveness and repetition tend to strengthen those motives which have not for their aim an actual object.

Aggregate or grouped ends, such as money, health, education, social position, professional success, all those things which suppose the addition of several special ends.

Derived or intermediate ends, which consist in seeking and loving for itself that which was at first only a means. Such is the love of forms, and of money as money.

Passionate and exaggerated ends; discordant with reason, such as fascination, intoxication, a fixed idea, these are to be seen in the eccentric facts of the magnetic sleep and of table-turning.

Such are the motives between which conflict takes place; now the strife is waged between two actual motives, again between an actual motive and an idea, and the latter will carry the day, if remembrance be sufficiently keen to enable the ideal to vanquish the real, as in the case of persons much preoccupied about their health. Impetuous and passionate motives do not admit rival considerations, they can be neutralized only by a motive of their

own nature.

Deliberation is voluntary action producing itself under a con

1 Chaps. v. and vi.

currence or complication of motives.1

A well-disciplined will is one which acts neither too soon nor too late ; but various causes, such as youth and a vigorous temperament, do not admit of delay. In order to remedy the dangers of hasty decision, Franklin invented his Moral Algebra. You are hesitating, he says, on a course to be taken. Reflect three or four days, rule a sheet of paper in two columns, one to note the pros, the other the cons ; enter each of your provisional conclusions; then, when that time shall have elapsed, compare the two columns, strike the balance, wait for three days longer, and then act. He frequently resorted to this method, upon which he congratulated himself.

The term of deliberation is resolution. The nature of the will is to pass on immediately to the act. When there is a suspension, that results from a new influence, which arrests the ordinary and regular course of the will. You are in a shop, several objects solicit your preference; one of them obtains it; you have taken your resolution.

It is followed by a feeling of a special kind which we call effort. "This word signifies in reality the muscular consciousness which accompanies voluntary activity, and the more specially when it is painful.' Great importance is attached to the feeling of effort; it has been supposed that there is in it a mechanical power whose source is a purely mental activity.

'The doctrine, so long predominant, which represents volition as the source of all motive power, is regarded as receiving its strongest confirmation from the effort which accompanies the production of muscular energy.' Let us see what we are to believe. According to Mr. Bain, the source of effort ought to be looked for in organism; consciousness asserts effort and does not constitute it; it is only the accidental portion of it. On this important point we shall let him explain himself.

A labourer prepares himself, in the morning, to work in a field that is his will. And in that volition there is a certain consciousness, but it is not that consciousness which, in itself, put him into the condition to labour.

'A large expenditure of muscular and nervous energy, derived

1 Chap. vii.