Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/303

 290 CEITICAL NOTICES I It differs from " the ordinary theory " (1) by recognising that an external activity of will must be preceded by an internal activity, " and that generally every activity (Thatigkeit) of con- sciousness bound up with the immediate feeling cf activity (Activitat) bears in itself the essential marks of an activity of the will (Willensthatigkeit)"; (2) by recognising as the simplest form of will those actions which are preceded by no conflict of motives, but follow immediately on a single motive the motive itself being an act of will in an earlier stage. " We characterise with Leibniz as apperception every inner activity that has bound up with it the feeling of spontaneity. Those external voluntary activities which follow under the immediate operation of a single and sole motive we name impulsive actions" (p. 380). The human will or consciousness, so far as it is peculiar to a single personality, is an " individual will " ; so far as it is common to all the individuals of a society it belongs to a "general will ". The inability of the "Aufklarung" to recognise "the general will " was a consequence of " psychical atomism " or " the sub- stance-theory of Descartes ". When the notion that consciousness must inhere in an individual soul or substance is got rid of, and its reality is seen to consist simply in " actual psychical life itself," and in nothing else, there is no longer any theoretical obstacle to the admission that the general will has equal reality with the individual will, and it becomes possible to escape from the egoism of the individualistic doctrine, the " ethical atomism '' bound up with its " psychical atomism ". For the explanation of psychical development a " principle of increasing psychical energy " is required " in complete opposition to the equivalence-principle " of physics. A consequence of this principle is that past psychical events can be explained by their causes, while future psychical events cannot be predicted. For the effects of volitions, according to the principle, are "determined by" causes, but not already "contained in" those causes. The author puts forth his theory as at once a "free-will" doctrine and a doctrine of "psychological determinism". The older determinism and indeterminism, both alike, erred in that they attempted to apply the law of physical causality to mind; one doctrine affirming and the other denying that acts of will are "caused". The truth is that they are always caused, but not according to the physical law of " the equivalence of cause and effect ". Although the effects of a voluntary act can never be predetermined from its conditions, past results of volition can be explained from their causes. Indeterminism, in any case, must be rejected "on moral and religious grounds " (p. 409). Teleology in the organic world is to be explained by the direct action of the will on organic forms (p. 408). The author, nevertheless, does not believe in the Cartesian influxus physicus (p. 402, note). The whole material world is the creation of the mind ; it forms a realm within the realm of spirit ; and so physical causation is subordinate to psychical causation (p. 403).