Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/183

THE DEFINITION OF WILL. 169 as to the elements which are essential to our experience of agency. 1 We have so far supposed as one of our conditions a special acquired tendency, a disposition, that is, to join the relief with the idea as following after it in time. But such a particular connexion I think is hardly required. In any particular case a present emphasis may have the same effect as repetition and past conjunction. If, that is, the idea of relief is first opposed to the actual pain and is then realised, and if this experience throughout is prominent and is felt emphatically, we might, even in the absence of an acquired connexion between the relief and the pain, experience the process as our agency and will. I assume of course that there is nothing in the case to suggest the activity of the not-self. But it is not worth while to insist on a point which perhaps bears but little on our general doctrine. The reader will have understood generally that I am not offering an account of our psychical development, or on the other side am attempting an exhaustive analysis of the facts. There are psychical features, I would repeat, in our experi- ence of agency, which, because I think them unessential, have been omitted altogether. And in the development of this experience the changes of my body, felt and later per- ceived in their felt unity with myself, are obviously a factor of primary importance. But our inquiry here must be limited to points which seem essential to the definition of will. Before I pass from the subject of our experienced agency 1 An unbiassed inquiry into the conditions under which we get an experience of activity and passivity is a thing which, so far as iny know- ledge goes, is sorely wanted. I cannot think it satisfactory that two competent psychologists should in the case of some psychical pro- cess be clear, one that the experience of activity is there, and the other that it is not there. I cannot myself approve when I see such a difference end apparently with two assertions. But for myself, even if I were otherwise fitted to undertake this inquiry, it is plain that I could not be regarded as unbiassed. In the main however, and subject to some necessary explanation which is given below in this article, I find that the presence of the experience depends on an idea. If, for instance, my imagination is excited and I perhaps desire to sleep, I can view myself at pleasure as freely active in my imagination, or again as passive and constrained by the activity of a foreign power. And, as I view myself, so also I perceive and I feel myself. Similarly in a carriage or in a train I can regard and can perceive the movement as my act, or again as an alien force that actively sweeps me away either as merely passive or as unwilling. And I can even mix both experiences and can feel that it is at once my act and is also my fate which is taking me in each case to its end. The whole matter, I submit, is one for an unprejudiced inquiry, and I will venture once again not without hope to recommend this conclusion. Cf. Appearance, p. 605.