Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/324

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302
OCCULT JAPAN.

of cloud? Because I decided yesterday that I would—an idea—or because it will be pleasurable later to have done so—an idea—or simply to prove to myself that I have a will—an idea again sarcastically bobbing up. Every time that I think to have closed upon that elusive force, the will, I find myself left grasping a palpable idea.

Yet we call ourselves conscious of the autonomy of our will. Nor will I yet say that we are not. What I will say is that we should be just as conscious of the fact were the fact not so. For that only is not free which is determined from without. Now whether the will were a noumenistic primum mobile or a mere dynamic outcome of the idea, it would in either case be determined from within and would necessarily, therefore, seem free.

But we may go further. Whatever will be, it is dependent for its existence in consciousness upon the existence of ideas. This is palpably instanced every day of our lives. For we are constantly conscious of ideas without will; we are never conscious of will without ideas. Further yet, in these willless yet conscious times, we are quite aware of ourselves as being ourselves. Will, there-