Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/306

 290 ALEXANDER F. SHAND : their volitions, we say that it thwarts us, and we call its action involuntary. And, irrespective of its degree of organisation, we will not be held responsible for it, except and so far as it rises into consciousness and comes within the control of our voluntary self. As far as consciousness is concerned the lowest level of the conative development is the blind conation that carries no idea of the end to which it is directed ; and we are gener- ally agreed not to call this type volition. All other conations carry an idea of their end or object. Desire and aversion are such conations, but mere desire or aversion is not called will. Yet we are not consistent in this point of view. An unopposed desire is often impulsively realised, and we call that impulsive will. If we are angry with some one, ideas of hurting or paining him occur, and we sometimes find the pain or injury has been inflicted without any prior conscious- ness on our part that we were going to inflict it. If we are reproached for the action, we say we did not " mean " to do it. For the idea absorbing attention, and strengthened by the emotional impulse; has straightway realised itself without, as far as we can detect, requiring any other subjec- tive condition for its accomplishment. Are we to call this type volition ? According to the general opinion of psycho- logists, we should have to include it. An action that results from desire we call voluntary ; for it is preceded and partly determined by a conscious idea, by desire and attention. We can hardly call it non-voluntary, because of the presence of these constituents ; and involuntary or against will it cer- tainly is not. Yet if the action be voluntary, the state which precedes it is volition. But this state is mere desire with attention, and, did it not determine action, we certainly should not call it will. Does, then, desire only become volition so far as the idea of its end becomes realised in whole or part, and is that sequence what we mean by volition ? Prof. Bibot maintains that we reduce volition to an abstraction if we exclude its motor effects and accom- paniments, that as an internal state it cannot be distinguished from a logical operation of the intellect. 1 And, in Mr. Bradley's opinion, the idea producing its existence is volition. 2 Yet this view, according to Mr. Stout, is a mistake. "The question," he remarks, "as to the nature of a certain mode of consciousness is quite independent of the question whether or not this mode of conscious- 1 Les maladies de la volonte, p. 29. 2 MIND, vol. xiii., p. 25.