Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/305

NEW SERIES. No. 23.] []ULY, 1897. MIND A QUARTERLY REVIEW OF PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY. I. TYPES OF WILL. 1 BY ALEXANDEE F. SHAND. I. SIMPLE VOLITION. THERE are tendencies in us /of which we do not foresee the consequences, there are others of which we do. There are conations that are blind, and also foreseeing conations. Our instinctive impulses, at first unconscious of their end, as we grow up attach to themselves ideas and foresight. Yet they at times surprise us by their suddenness and unfamiliar character. They impel us to actions that we on reflexion disown because we do not recognise ourselves in them. 2 For we did not foresee their tendencies, therefore we could not subordinate them to any conscious end. "We had neither the opportunity of accepting or of rejecting them. Hence we disown them as not part of our conscious self, as inde- pendent of the ends which it sets before itself. But do we disown them because they are relatively unorganised ? Our primitive impulses are at least organised in this sense : they are subordinated to the end of preserving the life of the species and the individual. None the less we disown any impulse that is not also organised in one of the systems of thought which are our conscious interests and sentiments. If it has sprung up independently of them, and thwarts 1 Bead before the Aristotelian Society. 2 See Fouillee's Temperament et Caradtre, p. xiv. 19