Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/205

No. 2.] look solely to the facts of consciousness, that what is given is not an individual substantive will, but only a great number of particular volitions. As every mental state, according to physiological psychology, consists ultimately of a complex of sensations, we have to inquire what is the special quality, intensity, and emotional tinge of the sensations that compose a volition, and in what manner they are combined. The most distinctive trait of volition is the feeling of activity. We have this feeling not only in external action, but also when we guide the course of our thoughts or turn our attention this way or that. What is the basis of the feeling of activity? There are two elements common to all states in which we have it.

(1) When I have a perception or a mental image, or when one idea calls up another by a customary association, I have no such feeling. But when I cannot think of something, search for it, and try to remember the connection in which I heard it, till finally it occurs to me, I feel that I have brought it to light by my own activity. I have the same feeling of activity when I pass from premises to conclusion, or when I attend to an interesting perception or idea and strive to hold it fast. Now in all these cases there is this common element, that the content of the subsequent state was implicitly contained in the antecedent state.

(2) A second element common to all mental processes in which we feel ourselves to be active is the presence of muscular tensions in different parts of the body: in the first place, tensions in the muscles of accommodation of the eye, ear, and tongue, when we attend to images derived from those senses; and in the second place, tensions in the muscles of the forehead, jaws, neck, and some other parts of the body. The net product of all these tensions is what we call the "feeling of effort"; similar tensions accompany all intense bodily activity; and because they also accompany certain processes of thought, we feel ourselves in these processes to be mentally active. Voluntary thought is thus characterized by the two facts, first, that the subsequent mental state is ideally anticipated in the antecedent state, and secondly, that the transition from one state to the other is accompanied by muscular tensions.

Let us now consider the external voluntary act. If I move my arm slowly and attend to my feelings, I am conscious of a peculiar impulse immediately preceding each muscular contraction, which I feel to be the cause of the latter. If I temporarily paralyze my arm by compression of the nerve and repeat the experiment, no muscle contracts, but I distinctly feel the impulse referred to. If, finally, I crook the first two joints of my forefinger as far as I can, at the same time bending the other three fingers as far as possible backward, and now will to crook my forefinger still further, I am unable to do so, further flexion