course is that of an irregular spiral, always aiming at a point a good deal to one side of perfection, but on the whole higher than before. And the aberrations from the true course seem roughly to balance one another, so that what was lost by a tendency too much to the left in one age is balanced by an error to the right in another.

Exercises

1. Name the ten greatest Americans. How many of them gained their fame in war?

2. Name ten characters from history (not American). How many of them are military men?

3. If Richard the Lion-hearted had lived in our day, what of his fame and career?

4. How many of the present multimillionaires would have been heard from, if they had lived a thousand years ago?

5. If commercialism is favored by our age, why not adopt commercialism as our ideal?

6. Why keep any subject in the curriculum of the schools which does not pay in dollars and cents?

7. Draw a diagram illustrating our system of selves.

8. Even as late as the sixteenth century, on many coasts of Europe, the inhabitants lured foreign ships on the rocks by false lights, in order to get goods from the wreck. These same people who did such dastardly deeds were fond fathers and fierce patriots. What was the matter with them psychologically?

9. John cries if his brother is punished in school, but laughs and jeers if any other boy "catches it." Explain his selves. 10. Show how we may make our choice too narrow as well as too wide, in the matter of selves.

11. Give examples from history of persons who have chosen and realized remarkable selves, and state in the language of this book what these selves were.

12. What is the difference between an impulse (an emotional interest) and a rational interest (an ideal)?

13. When you studied this lesson, were you actuated by emotional or rational interests?

CHAPTER XIX

THE WILL

TWO CLASSES OF VOLUNTARY ACTION

Two very different classes of action are spoken of as voluntary. (a) Ordinarily we have the power and time to inhibit our impulses. Hence when we allow an impulse to pass into an action, such an action is said to be voluntary. The following examples will give an idea of this class of voluntary actions. A finger itches; I scratch it. At the table I am offered some food; I eat it. People weep when sad and laugh when amused. The function of the will is wholly negative in these We simply will nothing when we do such actions. But when we refrain from doing them, we do exercise the will in inhibiting the impulse.

cases.

(b) Actions done from rational interest, that is, actions controlled by an ideal, are voluntary actions in a higher sense. They are positively willed. Anything a person has " made up his mind " to do is truly a voluntary action. For here will power is pretty sure to be needed.

Our ordinary use of the words wish and desire both as verbs and nouns cover both the meanings of desire proper and of ideals. This creates no end of confusion in psychological and philosophical reasoning. Thus, "I wish to study Greek" may mean that at the moment of speaking I have a longing for this linguistic

study; or it may mean simply that I have concluded that it is best for me to study Greek, though at this particular moment I may not have any feeling one way or the other. "His greatest desire was constantly during his whole life for military honor," cannot mean that he was constantly conscious of a tension accompanied by feeling towards deeds of "glory," and that this longing and feeling was always during his whole life strongest. He must have been hungry sometimes. He must have thought of something else sometimes. No person rightly out of an insane asylum is such a monomaniac as to have one emotion constantly during a whole lifetime. So what the sentence must mean is: His ideal was ever military glory; that is, he had chosen military glory as that which was most desirable to him. In this work, we always mean by the term strongest desire the strongest pressure or tension in consciousness towards activity at any moment, irrespective of whether this happens to be that which we decide on the whole to be the best thing to do.

The ideal when chosen as the desirable goal of action is usually and regularly accompanied by a strong desire (and then also, of course, feeling). But when the feeling and the desire went out like a burnt-out match, the ideal remained as strong a motive as before. Usually when the mind is rested and turns anew its attention to its ideal, the old fire of desire flames up again with all its former heat. But when the desire and its feeling die down again, the ideal may be by the use of will power as effective as before.

The Struggle between the Ideal and the Desire. The fact that the ideal can be a constant motive inde

pendent of the shifting and fitful winds of desire and feeling makes it possible to work on steadily, peacefully, and evenly towards a chosen goal in spite of the fact that impulses (desires) with their feeling are in a constant flux and sometimes entirely absent.

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The moral arena is here. This is the battle ground of will. The battle is ever between the ideal and the desire. The temptation is ever to follow the momentary desire, and all desires are ever momentary and nothing else, for a desire that does not exist this moment does not exist at all. The moral victory always consists in following the ideal chosen by contemplation.

THE MOTOR PROCESS AND THE VOLUNTARY PROCESS

The Motor Process. The stream of thought is constantly passing out of subconsciousness in the fringe towards the center of attention and then out again into the fringe of subconsciousness. What particular images and thoughts are to pass into this vortex depends, the will being absent, upon the impulses, habits, and desires. Using desire as a common name for the three, when the will is inactive, the strongest desire will always conquer; that is, whatever image is in the center of attention will be expressed in action.

Thus the motor process is this: Will being absent, the strongest desire determines the image in consciousness; as soon as an image appears in consciousness, it is immediately acted out. Hence this is the psychic series: strongest desire - image action.

The Voluntary Process. The will may change the psychic series fundamentally. (a) By an act of will we

may refuse to think on the subject of our strongest desires. We are not forced to allow the center of attention to rest upon the object of our strongest desire. The power of voluntary attention, then, is the essence of the "freedom of the will." Voluntary attention is the most expensive in nerve efforts of all the functions of the mind.

(b) The will may inhibit the action that naturally follows the presence of an image in consciousness. This makes thought and imagination without action possible.

The voluntary process, then, is very simple. We simply imagine the act we will to do, and that's all. The complex affair is not to act. A great deal of our training in character consists in learning to inhibit the action that naturally follows an image. What requires explanation is not our willing-to-do but our willing-notto-do. There is where the fiat of the will occurs. willing to do anything, we simply imagine the act and "let go."

In

GENERAL CONSPECTUS OF THE ACTIVE SIDE OF HUMAN NATURE

The body as a physiological organism functions by motor impulses in subconsciousness. Some of its processes, like breathing, may be at will brought into the voluntary sphere. The body is also protected by means of reflex actions of subconsciousness.

Instinct (or blind impulse) is almost wholly responsible for the conduct of the young child. Instinct, or blind impulse, together with habit and desire, always continue to manage the greater portions of our lives