Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/340

 324 ALEXANDEK F. SHAND : cost us much. It is the first and antecedent, not the subsequent effort, that is often witness to the fact that our resolution is contrary to our desire. And yet not always ; for where two contrary desires persist, and prolong indecision, we feel often a considerable effort in making any choice between them. There are, then, three types due to the relation of will to desire : the common type in which desire is the motive se- lected ; the type in which desire is effaced from the motive ; the type in which desire is replaced by aversion. The second type is exemplified more frequently than we think. The little words "ought " and " must," with their impalpable meanings, have come to acquire considerable force with civilised men. When the desire opposed to them is not too strong, they are often sufficient of themselves to overcome it. We do little disagreeable things because, as we say, we must. We go to see people that we dislike, we write letters that we hate, because we have to. It is an artificial explan- ation, sought after in the interests of a theory, to suppose that we always think of the consequences of these disagreeable actions, and that these awaken an actual desire to do them. The idea that we have to do them moves us. We are going to delay no longer, and this idea culminating in the prospective judgment of our action suffices. When we hesitate we are apt to feel aversion, and the third type is exemplified. When we act quickly, through a settled habit, there is no interval sufficient for desire or aversion ; we have simply the idea that we must, followed sometimes by the judgment that we will. There are two arguments that may still be advanced in support of the usual theory. We may urge that desire is not altogether absent from these cases, only that it is so faint as to pass undetected. But if we cannot sometimes detect it, we cannot verify the theory that it is essential. The theory or hypothesis, while it interprets the common types, finds others which are, to say the least, ambiguous, and rather lend support to an opposite hypothesis. But what shall we say where it is not merely a question of desire being extinguished, concerning which we can always allege that it still flickers, but where it is a question of desire being replaced by the contrary fact of aversion instead of desire to do the action, desire to escape doing it? And this is sometimes sufficiently intense to be unmistakable. Shall we urge that in the very core of this aversion there is a hidden and contrary desire that the man who has chosen the death for which he feels the least aversion, also secretly