310 ALEXANDER F. SHAND : escape. Were this judgment to occur, it would still succeed and not precede our effort. It would not determine our abortive effort : our abortive effort would determine it. It would, in fact, be a mere recognition of what was actually taking place, namely, our effort to escape. If, then, our effort be not a volition, the triumph of the contrary idea and judgment cannot produce an action involuntary or against will. Here, again, we feel tempted to broaden our definition of will. The effort which comes to our succour when some morbid idea or sudden emotion threatens us with destruction, however obscure it be, seems to us a genuine propulsion of the will, and, as we should say, an effort of self-control. Though it proceed not from the self as conscious thought, it proceeds from the primitive self as a system of tendencies instinctively organised for our preservation. And any impulse that proceeds from this self and is subordinated to its end seems will to us, so far at least as it gathers some idea of its end, although the idea be subsequent to the impulse, not the impulse to the idea. Where, on the other hand, an impulse is provoked which is not subordinated to the instinctive end of the organism or the conscious ends of the mind, though it proceed from this primitive self, yet it is not will, because it has escaped from the control of this self. The present case is an example. An emotion of fear, through a too great in- tensity, has defeated its instinctive end, and driven us to the very object we should avoid. It has broken apart from that instinctive organisation of the self, and therefore can be no longer the will of that self. The fullest consciousness will no longer make it will. And this we see clearly in the present example. We have an idea of the accident before it takes place, and, through the fear that possesses us, a consciousness that we are about to fulfil this idea ; and yet this express judgment that we regarded as distinctive of will does not bring the impulse one degree nearer to volition than it would have been had it remained a blind tendency. On the other hand, successfully as this conception of will interprets the present type, we should meet with many diffi- culties if we put it forward as the essential character of volition. Its definition is this : What the self does con- sciously is will. And " does " means not merely what it out- wardly accomplishes, but what it is striving to do, as in the present thwarted impulse. Will then in this sense is the conation of the self. From which it follows that the striving of desire is will, whether or not we decide that we shall satisfy our desire. But at least, in any right sense of the term, there can only be one volition present at a given moment. Where
