Page:An introduction to ethics.djvu/119

 between will and conscience and the self, will and conscience are identified with the true self. By "will" and "conscience," then, we understand the self as conative and as regulative. Having premised this, we may now proceed to examine in some detail the nature of will and conscience respectively.

§ 2. The Nature of Volition. Volition must be distinguished from desire and from wish. (1) In a former chapter we saw that desires frequently conflict, and that only one of the conflicting desires can issue in action. The desire that issues in action, if organised in the self as a whole and acknowledged as its desire, is willed. The other desire is rejected as being alien to the true self. The self acknowledges one desire as its own, it throws itself upon its side, it "backs" it, it undertakes as far as in it lies to secure the attainment of the end that is desired; and thus the desire becomes definitely willed. It is a volition, and the actions in which it results are voluntary. The self always accepts responsibility for its volitions. When an action is willed by me, it is my action, and I am willing to stand by it. But I may look upon some of my mere desires as foreign to my real self, and may even regard them with horror and loathing.

(2) Volition also differs from mere wish. The distinction cannot be stated better than it was by Aristotle in his Ethics. "Nor yet can will be the same as wish, though it is evidently near akin to it. There can be no willing of impossibilities, and, if a man were to say that he willed something impossible, he would be thought a fool. But we wish for impossibilities as well as possibilities. Again, we