Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/311

 TYPES OF WILL. 295 some negative and inhibitory conation. But this conation has often no foresight of its end, still less does it develop into volition. In pure negative volition, the positive conation is blind. In pure positive volition, the negative conation is blind. In the mixed type, both the positive and negative conations supplementing one another have developed the volitional character. The logical doctrine that all negative involves positive thought cannot then be interpreted in psychology to mean that all negative thought is actually accompanied by a positive, nor consequently that all negative volition is actually accompanied by positive. And were this not the fact, all simple volition would be resolved into complex volition or choice. Before every voluntary action we should have the idea of some alternative action, and volition would be the choice which, accepting the one alternative, consciously rejected the other. That our deliberate and purposive actions correspond to this type is perhaps obvious ; and we might define choice as the mixed type of positive and negative volition. That our more sudden and habitual actions not so sudden nor so habitual but that we, in some measure, anticipate them in idea and foresee their accomplishment that these also correspond to this type is a supposition which an impartial study of the facts does not favour. From blind conation to deliberate purpose there is an unbroken chain of development and complication. At the first stage we have actions vaguely foreseen, at the next, attended to, then developed into the assurance or judgment that we are going to accomplish them, at which stage, in agreement with the common usage of the word, we have named them simple volitions, lastly still further complicated by the representation of alternative actions. Shall we say that as soon as the third stage is reached and the knowledge of what we are going to do arises, the knowledge of what our intended action also excludes must arise with it ? We had better surely take in the first place, as a more reasonable hypothesis, the theory which represents the conative development as steady and uniform, and not heap upon any one stage of it the growth and complications which are more likely to have been arrived at in the course of several. We must then modify our preliminary definition of will if we are to interpret the present type. It is not the positive judgment, "I am going to do this," which is the distinguishing character of volitional conations. In pure or unmixed negative volition, we have no idea of any end that we are going to accomplish, we have only an idea of a result