Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/169

 THE DEFINITION OF WILL. 155 again may be a principle which is general and abstract, and it may, for instance, consist in a rule of not at once deciding on offered suggestions. But, whether more or less abstract, the idea always works in the same way. My self is identified with it, and is hence related to the detail which falls under it. And my self is related to this detail positively, and also, as we have just seen, negatively. Hence my self can confront the detail as a spectator and can hold itself aloof. Then, as soon as one particular (however this happens *) becomes superior to the rest, and appears as the means by which the principle can pass into reality, the situation is changed. The self in one with the principle comes together with this single particular, and it feels itself reunited with its object by an act of adoption. And here is the origin of that felt estrangement and aloofness and of the following awareness of reunion. These experiences certainly are specific, and it would be strange if they were not so ; and you may call them irreducible, if you mean that from their conditions they could not wholly be constructed. But, unless the doc- trine just advocated is seriously wrong, these experiences are neither unique nor exceptional. 2 If we take our stand on the principle which has just been- laid down, we may without difficulty apprehend the essence of choice and consent. Choice, to begin with that, 3 is (a) in the first place not merely intellectual or perceptive. A pro- cess which ends with a judgment, even if that judgment is about the means to an end, is so far, we must insist, not a, genuine choice. The process is so far not choice, even if it leads to the conclusion ' I like this best ' or ' this is nicer '. Distinction by a type and the selection by a type of one thing to the exclusion of another, if you take this process as issuing in a judgment, is, taken so far, not choosing. Choice in a word essentially is will. It may be incomplete 1 This question is to some extent dealt with in a preceding article. Mind, N.S., No. 43. 2 It would be well I think if those who maintain that they are so, would explain how much in psychology is not exceptional and unique. We have again, with a difference, the same experience of alienation and reunion when after suspense and doubt an idea is accepted as true. The conditions here, as we have seen, are partly diverse. It is here the not- self which first rejects and then reunites itself with the idea, whereas in will this is done by the self which is opposed to the not-self. The con- ditions and feelings in both cases may be called the same generically but not- altogether. We shall once more notice this difference when we deal with the subject of Consent. 3 The subject of disjunctive volition will be briefly discussed in the article following this.