Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/341

 TYPES OF WILL. 325 and unknown to himself in some degree desires this death ? Who with an open mind would be convinced by that argu- ment ? And we may ask further : Is a desire that is unfelt and unrecognised any longer a desire? For when we desire, we know that we desire ; as when we will, we know that we will. Sometimes, indeed, we try to blind ourselves to the fact of desire ; but the effort shows that we have first recog- nised it. An unfelt desire is a blind conation a tendency only interpretable by its result. But the cases we have considered are not blind conations ; we foresee their results, only we feel no desire for them. In our first example, choice lay between two actions which were neither desired nor for most men desirable, their common end, death, being likewise neither desired nor in most men's opinion desirable. In our second example, choice lay between two actions one of which was desired and the other recognised as desirable, but for which there was no actual desire. In the one case we cannot choose anything that we desire : in the other what is desirable but not desired. The study of the types of will is the indispensable basis of a scientific theory of its essential character. Because such a preliminary study has never been made, or because we have contented ourselves with the portrayal of a few subordinate types, our theories of volition have one after another appeared one-sided and inadequate. A theory formed in unconscious- ness of any distinctive type of will, or without a clear insight into its peculiarities, is liable to be overthrown by any one to whom this type is familiar in his own experience. And the more closely the typical forms of will are studied, the more we shall appreciate the difficulty of embracing them in any one supreme type. We have already felt something of this difficulty, as well in pursuing the character of simple as of complex volitions. The general theory of will we can only put forward as a scientific hypothesis for interpreting its distinctive types : and when a new type is brought for- ward that we have not anticipated we may have to modify our hypothesis. Better evidence than this we cannot pretend to, and the profoundest introspection will not show us the universal character of will.