ledge. And so my choice is never identical with any primary desire as such. Choice is a mental process that involves the presence of plans for the satisfaction of desires, a foreknowledge of relatively objective ends that constitute the conscious aims of these desires, a more or less reasonable estimate of the value of these aims, and then some process which involves the survival of some, the subordination, or perhaps the suppression, of other desires.
So much for the second element of the human will. For some writers, choice has seemed the essential element of the will. The Effectiveness of one’s choice such writers have regarded as a fact relatively external to the will. Kant’s “man of the good will” would be a being of rational choices, but he would remain just as reasonable, and so just as much a man of good will, if Nature were henceforth always to thwart his intents. But many others have regarded the will’s actual Effectiveness, our third element, as belonging, in a measure, to the essence, rather than to the accidents, of the voluntary process. Those countless writers who have regarded our voluntary bodily acts as the primal instances, in our experience, of the true relation of cause and effect, seem to regard the will as primarily a phenomenon of Efficacious Effort. And as a fact, in normal cases, to will and to observe that our efforts are to a certain degree efficacious, at least in controlling bodily movements, or in directing the course of our inner life, are actually very closely related processes. Thus, for instance, I cannot now will to celebrate next Christmas, since I cannot by present deeds
