TYPES OF WILL. 319 imperative volition, but its essential meaning of a condi- tion and its consequence, and an ardent hope that the condition might become tact. In this case we can hardly suppose there were any real imperative in the schoolmaster's thought. And so a despot may say, addressing a rebellious subject, " If you do not submit, I shall forfeit your estates ". And being confident of success, he may neither will nor desire his submission, because he covets his property. Now the interesting point in these examples is that while they are not mere judgments, but genuine hypothetical volitions, they are not imperative volitions ; they therefore demonstrate the distinctiveness of these two types of will. In the schoolmaster's mind there is a resolution to punish the boy in the event of his misconduct, and in the despot's, in a similar event, to seize his subject's estates. Both hope the event may occur in order to enforce its consequence. Both simulate an imperative attitude ; but, through their hope of the event, in neither is there an imperative volition forbidding it. We may next attempt to resolve the imperative into the disjunctive judgment, "You will do this or take the con- sequences ". Here, as in the previous case, we must make the answer that this disjunctive judgment, though it sometimes supplement an imperative, is not its essential meaning ; and is often neither spoken nor thought of. And again, the intention may be to inflict the punishment, and the alter- native to it which is put forward may be chosen because we are sure it will be rejected, and will therefore of a certainty promote the end of our real volition. We may make a more successful attempt than either of the foregoing to resolve the imperative into the categorical judgment, " You will do this ". And here, as in the case of the imperative itself, the proposition is full of ambiguity. Like the imperative mood it may mean no more than a desire or entreaty, as where we emphasise the word " will " ; or again, it may express a question. But where it means Will, it seems to be the same volition as the imperative. Thus, I may say to a man, " You will go to this place, and on arriving there you will leave this letter, and you will bring back the answer to it " ; and the same volition, with no substantial alteration of its meaning, may be expressed in the impera- tive, " Go to this place, leave this letter, and bring back the answer to it". There is more emphasis in the imperative, and the emphasis is laid on the volition, while in the pro- position there is rather a clear and certain anticipation of the future event, and the volition sinks into the background.
