Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/458

Rh won for itself no small hearing in psychology, regards the volitional, or active, side of our consciousness, not merely as a fact in itself, but as a cause of other facts, both physical and mental. From this point of view, the distinction between intellect and will acquires a fresh importance, and declines to be reduced to that mere distinction of aspects which we have emphasized in the foregoing account. For, as is often said, man, in so far as he is a mere knower, accomplishes nothing; he merely observes. But as doer, as voluntary agent, he is the source of new being; he is an originator. Will, for this view, is nothing if not efficacious. A process that merely accompanies and reflects, without affecting, the adjustments of my organism to its environment, would be no true will. A sort of consciousness which merely observes that from moment to moment my inner life, for me, seems to have meaning, would, as this view asserts, in the end deprive my life of its most important meaning. For above all, as they say, what I mean to be is an originator of facts, and of facts that but for me would not exist. The true problem regarding the place of the will in the universe arises, according to this view, precisely at the point where one asks, Is the will the cause of any existence other than itself?

The two views about the will as cause thus brought into opposition have justly played a great part, both in the psychological and the metaphysical controversies of all periods, ever since the meaning of life began seriously to be considered. And the relation of this whole controversy to the deepest interest of metaphysics is as unquestionable as it is easy to misinterpret. For the word