Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/328

 312 ALEXANDER F. SHAND : He cannot persuade himself that he knows he is going to succeed, or ne probably would succeed. He knows only that he is trying his best, depressed by the influence of an idea that he cannot exclude. Here in this type we have an un- doubted volition rendered abortive by a contrary idea and judgment, and the result is an involuntary ideo-motor action. But how do we know that this action is involuntary? Like the last type, it has aped the character of categorical volition in the judgment that we are going to realise the action. But if desire be essential to volition, the action cannot be voluntary because we had no desire to accom- plish it, but, on the contrary, a strong aversion. Again in this type, as in the preceding, there is no choice, if choice means the decision between rival motives. There is only one motive present, the desire to succeed ; and the fear of failure constitutes a mere obstacle to the volition in which this desire results. Yet there is doubt and conflict present ; but this concerns, not what we are going to decide, but whether our resolution will be effective. It is a doubt which is not a condition precedent of will, but complicates its progress. Now the only distinction between this and the preceding type of non-voluntary ideo-motor action is that here the instinctive tendency to escape from the object we fear has a sufficient interval to develop into a conscious voli- tion in the judgment that I shall try to do that which fear suggests to me I shall fail in doing. In other cases of involuntary action, there may be a con- flict of desires present. Thus in struggling to restrain a reflex tendency, as Mr. Stout has well recognised, the impulse of that tendency becomes defined as a desire. . To restrain a yawn or cough is so disagreeable that we long to let it escape and have done with it. On the other hand there is often an opposite desire present, and to permit a reflex tendency to escape may be ill-bred or even disgraceful ; while in other cases, as where an army is on a march and complete silence has to be maintained, a fit of coughing may endanger its safety. And here the difficulty of distinguishing by the presence of a judgment between will and the involuntary tendency is at its climax. 1 But we are now prepared for this result. The judgment that we were going to accomplish some end which, in our first type, we assumed to be not merely an essential con- stituent of will, but its distinctive constituent, that assump- 1 See Mr. Stout's article already referred to, p. 360.