Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/170

 156 F. H. BRADLEY : volition in the same sense in which Resolve was incomplete will (MiND, N.S., No. 44), but a choice always and without exception is an actual willing. (b) In the second place a choice must be made between at least two things which move me. It involves a preliminary suspension, however brief, and that suspension comes, at least usually, from conflicting desires. But choice always and without exception is between two or more moving ideas. I may indeed be ordered to choose before I begin to desire, and in this case the suspension may be said to start from the suggested idea. But the choice, when it takes place, takes place always in essentially the same way. The suggested idea moves me as I am moved by my own idea of an ulterior end, and in each case I have before me two opposite means which prevent instant action. The means in every case must be identified with the moving end, and, if you use ' desire ' here in a widened sense, the means in every case must both be desired. The fact that apart from this identification they may be indifferent or even repulsive, does not raise really the least difficulty. (c) We have to choose 'between ' things, and the 'between ' implies that one thing is rejected. To say ' take one ' and to say ' choose one ' are different requests. Unless the idea of rejection is implied, and unless for the chooser this idea qualifies the act, we cannot predicate choice proper. If in short the ' between ' does not come or does not remain before my mind, I may take one out of a number but I most cer- tainly do not choose it. But the ' between ' may be present to my mind in various senses and degrees, and let us consider first an instance where it is highly developed and explicit. Here I desire an end to be realised in one of two alterna- tives which I recognise in that character. Each of these therefore is qualified to my mind by the exclusion of the other. I consider these first in relation to my end as contrary means to its attainment, and I then pass a judg- ment on both, and in consequence will one of them. But it would be absurd to contend that the whole of this is essential to choice. For there need be no judgment, there need be no idea of means in relation to end, and there need be no foregoing idea of an end. The essence of choice implies no alternatives in the sense of disjunctives, and I will now go on to seek the minimum which is really essential. In this minimum there must be two ideas which move me incompatibly so that neither is realised. In the second place I must not merely oscillate from one idea to the other, but notwithstanding their discrepancy I must desire