Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/552

5 JO HERB ART, the relations of representations, changing states of repres* entations arrested and working upward against hindrances. A representation which has been forced out of conscious- ness persists as a tendency or effort to represent, and as such exerts a pressure on the conscious representations. If a representation is suspended between counteracting forces a feeling results ; desire is the rise of a representation in the face of hindrances, aversion is hesitation in sinking. If the effort is accompanied by the idea that its goal is attainable, it is termed will. The character of a man depends on the fact that definite masses of representations have become dominant, and by their strength and persistence hold opposing representations in check or suppress them. The longer the dominant mass of representations exercises its power, the firmer becomes the habit of acting in a certain way, the more fixed the will. Herbart's intellectualistic denial of self-dependence to the practical capacities of the soul leads him logically to determinism. Volition depends on insight, is determined by representations ; freedom signi- fies nothing but the fact that the will can be determined by motives. If the individual decisions of man were undeter- mined he would have no character; if the character were free in the choice between two actions, then, along with the noblest resolve, there would remain the possibility of an op- posite decision ; freedom of choice would make pure chance the doer of our deeds. Pedagogics, above all, must reject the idea of an undetermined freedom; education, along with imputation, correction, and punishment, would be a meaning- less word, if no determining influence on the will of the pupil were possible. — This last objection overlooks the fact that the pedagogical influence is always mediate, and can do no more than, by disciplining the impulses of the pupil and by supplyinghim with aids against immoral inclinations, to lighten his moral task. We can work on the motives only, never directly on the will itself. Otherwise it would be inexplicable that even the best pedagogical skill proves powerless in the case of many individuals. Herbart's psychology was preceded by a philosophy of nature, which construes matter from attraction and repul- sion, and declares an actio in distans impossible. The inter-