Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/457

438 Yet here the distinction, as we have already seen, is wholly relative to the point of view.

But now it next becomes us to take special note of this latter aspect of the will, — an aspect upon which the popular consciousness lays great stress. For the will is usually regarded as primarily the Cause of something which but for the will would not come into existence. We have already spoken of acts of will; and the popular view declares that we are conscious of an activity which causes states of consciousness to exist within ourselves, and acts to come into existence outside of ourselves, and which is therefore responsible for the actual production of new Being in the universe. But if, with reference to the scientific value of this popular view, we turn to psychology for advice, we find at the present time, in that science, decidedly opposed interpretations of the sense in which the human will can be regarded as a cause. According to one of these interpretations the word “act” is properly to be applied merely to the physical process by which our organism gets adjusted to its environment. The causes of precisely such physical acts are, from this psychological point of view, themselves physical causes. Our consciousness, according to this same view, is not itself a cause, either of the physical act whereby we express our will, or of the states of mind themselves which constitute our inner intent. Our will merely accompanies our adjustment to the environment, and constitutes our own consciousness of the meaning of a certain portion of this adjustment. Our will is not itself one of the forces or powers of nature.

On the other hand, a traditional doctrine, which has