Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/307

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

TYPES OF WILL. 291 ness will be followed by a certain train of occurrences in the organism and in the environment." * And it will be difficult for any one who has reflected on the type of abortive volition in involuntary actions to any longer maintain that the real- isation of the idea is essential to volition. 2 As, then, mere desire with attention is not will, nor becomes will in the realisation of its end, it follows that impulses realised with- out attention certainly are not. Cases of this kind occur in all habitual actions. Their conation is not altogether blind, but the vague idea of an action arises outside the area of attention, and is apparently realised without coming within that area. As Prof. Sully remarks : " It is only when I have to do something new and unfamiliar that I need to realise with the maximum distinctness, by a special concentration of attention, the idea of the object or end and the idea of the required action". 3 There are, then, three types that progressively approxi- mate to will without quite revealing its specific char- acter : (1) Conations that are blind ; (2) Conations that vaguely foresee and accomplish their ends ; (3) Conations that clearly foresee, or, through attention, accomplish their ends. We come next to the more deliberate and developed types where, between desire and its satisfaction, the judgment intervenes that we are going to satisfy it. This judgment must be carefully distinguished from the idea of the action on which it is based. The judgment is a further develop- ment of it. We have the idea of an action before we decide ; we may doubt, we may question, we may judge that we perhaps will realise it before the definite judgment occurs that we are going to realise it. Here for the first time we seem to come within the radius of will ; for, if the action or end be not realised, we still should not hesitate to call that desire a volition which we had admitted to our- selves we were going to satisfy. Accordingly we find this definition given by Mr. Stout : " Volition is a desire quali- fied and defined by the judgment that, so far as in us lies, we shall bring about the attainment of the desired end ". 4 Now this judgment has not time to develop in ordinary impulsive action. It is where desire cannot at once find an outlet for its impulse that the pause occurs 1 " Voluntary Action," MIND, N.S., vol. v., p. 355. 2 See " Attention and Will," ibid., vol. iv., pp. 461, 463. 3 The Human Mind, vol. ii., p. 225. 4 Op. cit., p. 356.