Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/168

 154 F. H. BEADLEY: point out the proper meanings of Choice and Consent, mat- ters on which some dangerous confusion appears to prevail. In the higher form of volition (so much cannot be dis- puted) we come upon a most important difference. Our will at this stage has become reflective. I do not here identify myself immediately with this or that practical sug- gestion, but on the contrary I regard these as things offered to me for my acceptance or rejection. This does not mean merely that I am inconclusively moved by conflicting ideas,. and that I fluctuate and waver in their ebb and flow. And it does not mean that I am held motionless by balanced forces or paralysed by shock. The ideas are not mere forces which in me produce states of motion or rest. They are objects which I separate from myself and keep before me at will. The suggestions so far are mine, and again in another sense they are not mine, and their adoption in short lies entirely with myself. Of all the suggestions offered I may accept none, and, when I accept one, I do not merely become what is offered. I actively adopt the idea, I take it into myself, or, if you prefer the phrase, I put myself into the idea. This is a specific act, and with it comes a mode of feeling which is specific. And this by an exaggeration has been emphasised as a fact irreducible and unique. The exaggeration being omitted I think the above state- ment is correct, but I claim that the facts are embraced by our definition of will. Indisputably the self is able to rise above suggestions. The self can in a manner alienate these from itself, and then, if it does not reject all, can adopt one of them formally. And it is desirable, I am sure, to lay stress on these facts. On the other hand I cannot take the facts as a kind of supervening miracle which, I know not how, is to prove something it seems not easy to say what. The self can suspend itself, but, as soon as we inquire into the means, there is an end of the miracle. The means we can discover in every case to be a higher idea, and this higher idea, at least in one of its aspects, is the negation of the particular suggestions. It is with such an idea that in reflective will our self is identified. And the consequence, that has been described above, is the natural result. Given a further and a remoter principle, not in union with the suggestions offered, or not in union at once and immediately with these suggestions as they are offered, and the principle of suspension and of adoption is present. The idea may be of a special end which must be reached by some par- ticular method, and cannot unite itself at once with two methods however much both belong to it. Or the idea