Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/400

384 of the initiative. Hence in all schools of thought where reflex action and action under the immediate impulse of present sensations or emotions were considered incompatible with the freedom of the will, if all volition had to be reduced to those types, that doctrine was, of course, denied in spite of the fact that consciousness was an accompaniment of the action. There was the presumption from the uniformity of sequence and the immediate connection between the result and the known agency of the external cause or impression to favor this view. The difficulty of disputing the conclusion in such cases, representing presumably the whole conduct of animal life and a large part of human life, was not that free action was impossible when so directly connected with sensation or emotion, but that there was no proof of that freedom so long as the sequence conformed exactly to the law of mechanical causation. In reflex action there is neither the concomitant of consciousness nor the proof of free action; in the next stage of development, action under the impulse of present sensations or emotions, and without comparison or conflict with other alternatives, there is the accompaniment of consciousness, but not the proof of freedom. That proof can be found against the assertion, that present sensations and emotions are the sole determinants of action, only in the fact that some sensations are not immediately followed by volition; that is, that volition does not always follow the lines of BEAC. The third and highest stage of development furnishes the condition desired. We have a stimulus beginning at B, passing through E and D and terminating in AF. The transition and the result may conform in directness to either of the other forms of conduct. But it is not always or necessarily so. It may be the very opposite of what the sensation or emotion is of itself disposed to effect. Herein lies the significance of the phenomenon. It contradicts the assumed uniform causality of present sensations and sets up another motive. The sensation instead of passing immediately into action has its motor impulse inhibited by the activity of ideational centres which assume an impulsive efficiency of their own. These centres are the intellectual sources of reflection and deliberation. They may not act in the