Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/308

 292 ALEXANDER F. SHAND : before action in which the reflective judgment, I shall do this thing, finds its opportunity. If we are indignant at an insult and cannot at once avenge ourselves, if we pity some one's distress and cannot immediately relieve it, we are then so often aware in the persistence of our feeling that we are going to relieve this distress or going to avenge ourselves. And this judgment may occur in a mental state that amounts to only a simple volition. It may be preceded by no doubt and conflict of motives. The obstruction in the way of desire may be due to outward circumstances and not to an opposite desire. For my pity or my anger may possess me for the time being, so that other desires are excluded. In this case there is no choice, no selection of one end and rejection of an opposite end. Simple volition may then be defined as that mental state in which a single desire culmin- ates in the judgment of attentive thought that we are going to realise its end. And complex volition in distinction from it will be preceded by doubt and a conflict of motives, and the decisive judgment in which it culminates will select the end of one of the conflicting motives. In both the judg- ment appears as the distinguishing character of will, as that which distinguishes the prior state of desire from volition ; and the character of the judgment in both is positive and categorical. II. WILL AS NEGATION. We often experience that mental state in which the idea of some action arises, and the responsive attitude of the self is at once defined in the judgment : "No, I shall not do that". In healthy minds, where virtue is a habit, such a negative volition is the normal attitude when they feel tempted by some vicious propensity. In pathological cases of fixed ideas where we are struggling not to realise the action which an idea represents, or not to attend to the idea itself, we may also have no positive and complementary end in view ; our voli- tion may be confined to the idea of not doing or not attend- ing. How are we to interpret this negative character if volition always contains the positive idea of doing something developed into the positive judgment that w T e are going to do it ? Is negation a positive judgment in disguise ? That we are not going to realise an idea where we are conscious that it has a strong tendency to pass into action, means that we are going to restrain it, and that is surely something posi- tive. Seeing that the absorption of attention by the idea