Page:Philosophical Review Volume 25.djvu/516

502 attention, which is will in the stricter sense, may be traced to the interaction between momentarily presented interests (wishes, instinctive-impulses) and a more permanent policy, a "system of ruling motives" itself the result of previous choosing and integrating. But the problem of accounting for the earlier choices which established this system is still to be met. If we refer preference to imitation, and say that the desire to imitate is itself an instinct, or a complex of instincts, we must admit that neither the tendency to imitate, nor the tendency to oppose, if such general tendencies exist, prescribe what things are chosen for imitation and what for opposition. For psychology as well as for metaphysics the will must be identified with a persistent principle of preference. And while (as the critics of Wundt's theory of apperception have insisted) there is some difficulty in reconciling the notion of a conscious function engaged in influencing its own states, with the notion of a consciousness composed wholly of states, it is possibly this latter notion that has made the difficulty. We need only say that the conception of an instinct or disposition capable of regulating the action of other instincts (as in the disposition to play) will furnish a sufficient psychological scheme for such a persistent principle. Its psychological expression would be that of a most general 'instinct.'

(d) Royce recognizes the place for such an instinct, and partially describes it. In considering the will as a source of originality Royce describes an instinct of highly general character, which partly fulfils the conditions for choice above described. The special problem being to account for "the apparently spontaneous variations of our habits which appear in the course of life and which cannot be altogether explained as due to external stimulations," they are referred to a restlessness, which is quantitative and to some degree characteristic of species, and which is "something very much more general in its character than is any one of the specific instincts upon which our particular habits are formed"