Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/213

 VOLUNTARY ACTION IQ5

that one is actually moving forward under the guidance of an idea which is a part of present experience and fashioned out of past experience. This is all true ; and yet the specific quality of this imaged end or goal of action is that it is felt as somehow projected forward; it is a sort of blazed path way into the chaotic and formless future. It may be fash ioned out of the elements of past experience, but somehow there has been wrought into its texture a certain quality of futureness, so to speak, so that in following it one cannot divest himself of the consciousness that he is being at tracted rather than pushed forward. The head-light may be generated by electric currents coursing the wires which lie back of the engine, but its beams illuminate the track ahead and not behind.

An important distinction between voluntary actions should here be noticed. Every act which involves choice between alternatives and is motived by an end is voluntary ; but acts which have reference to more distant and more general ends have the voluntary character in a higher de gree than those which have reference to specific ends nearer at hand. A youth deliberates as to whether he will go swimming or attend a ball game, and decides in favour of the latter. His act has the voluntary character. At an other time he wrestles with the question, which of two col leges offering different advantages he will attend, and this is only a particular phase of the larger problem of his life- work whether he will be a lawyer or a minister ; and he decides with reference to that. This act has the volitional quality in a higher degree. Again, he faces the still larger question of the general meaning of life what character his life as a whole shall bear, whether it shall be devoted to some small private end such as the gaining of money, or to some large and generous purpose such as the advance ment of the well-being of his fellow-men. When he has made up his mind as to this fundamental question he deter mines the specific issues as they arise according to their relation to this general scheme of life. Such conduct has

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