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Page 42
(1) I may forget for a moment the thermometric conditions, and then the
idea of getting up will immediately discharge into act: I shall suddenly
find that I have got up--or
(2) Still mindful of the freezing temperature, the thought of the duty
of rising may become so pungent that it determines action in spite of
inhibition. In the latter case, I have a sense of energetic moral
effort, and consider that I have done a virtuous act.
All cases of wilful action properly so called, of choice after
hesitation and deliberation, may be conceived after one of these latter
patterns. So you see that volition, in the narrower sense, takes place
only when there are a number of conflicting systems of ideas, and
depends on our having a complex field of consciousness. The interesting
thing to note is the extreme delicacy of the inhibitive machinery. A
strong and urgent motor idea in the focus may be neutralized and made
inoperative by the presence of the very faintest contradictory idea in
the margin. For instance, I hold out my forefinger, and with closed eyes
try to realize as vividly as possible that I hold a revolver in my hand
and am pulling the trigger. I can even now fairly feel my finger
quivering with the tendency to contract; and, if it were hitched to a
recording apparatus, it would certainly betray its state of tension by
registering incipient movements. Yet it does not actually crook, and the
movement of pulling the trigger is not performed. Why not?
Simply because, all concentrated though I am upon the idea of the
movement, I nevertheless also realize the total conditions of the
experiment, and in the back of my mind, so to speak, or in its fringe
and margin, have the simultaneous idea that the movement is not to take
place. The mere presence of that marginal intention, without effort,
urgency, or emphasis, or any special reinforcement from my attention,
suffices to the inhibitive effect.
And this is why so few of the ideas that flit through our minds do, in
point of fact, produce their motor consequences. Life would be a curse
and a care for us if every fleeting fancy were to do so. Abstractly, the
law of ideo-motor action is true; but in the concrete our fields of
consciousness are always so complex that the inhibiting margin keeps the
centre inoperative most of the time. In all this, you see, I speak as if
ideas by their mere presence or absence determined behavior, and as if
between the ideas themselves on the one hand and the conduct on the
other there were no room for any third intermediate principle of
activity, like that called 'the will.'
If you are struck by the materialistic or fatalistic doctrines which
seem to follow this conception, I beg you to suspend your judgment for a
moment, as I shall soon have something more to say about the matter.
But, meanwhile yielding one's self to the mechanical conception of the
psychophysical organism, nothing is easier than to indulge in a picture
of the fatalistic character of human life. Man's conduct appears as the
mere resultant of all his various impulsions and inhibitions. One
object, by its presence, makes us act: another object checks our action.
Feelings aroused and ideas suggested by objects sway us one way and
another: emotions complicate the game by their mutual inhibitive
effects, the higher abolishing the lower or perhaps being itself swept
away. The life in all this becomes prudential and moral; but the
psychologic agents in the drama may be described, you see, as nothing
but the 'ideas' themselves,--ideas for the whole system of which what we
call the 'soul' or character' or 'will' of the person is nothing but a
collective name. As Hume said, the ideas are themselves the actors, the
stage, the theatre, the spectators, and the play. This is the so-called
'associationist' psychology, brought down to its radical expression: it
is useless to ignore its power as a conception. Like all conceptions,
when they become clear and lively enough, this conception has a strong
tendency to impose itself upon belief; and psychologists trained on
biological lines usually adopt it as the last word of science on the
subject. No one can have an adequate notion of modern psychological
theory unless he has at some time apprehended this view in the full
force of its simplicity.
Let us humor it for a while, for it has advantages in the way of
exposition.
_Voluntary action, then, is at all times a resultant of the compounding
of our impulsions with our inhibitions._
From this it immediately follows that there will be two types of will,
in one of which impulsions will predominate, in the other inhibitions.
We may speak of them, if you like, as the precipitate and the obstructed
will, respectively. When fully pronounced, they are familiar to
everybody. The extreme example of the precipitate will is the maniac:
his ideas discharge into action so rapidly, his associative processes
are so extravagantly lively, that inhibitions have no time to arrive,
and he says and does whatever pops into his head without a moment of
hesitation.
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