human a structure as is our will, — this labyrinth of desires, lighted by choice, and illustrated by a constantly accompanying language of bodily deeds, which in their turn are coloured by a normal, but in us certainly largely illusory, sense of power and of free control. Surely, if any being above our grade is to be conceived as having Will, we must not expect to find his will as confused an affair as is our own, and we must know why we attribute to him any such attribute at all.
As a fact, however, no one of these three aspects, as such, makes clear to us the deeper essence of the will. Another aspect, the frequent topic of a now pretty familiar psychological analysis, will be still more useful to us when we proceed to an effort to re-examine the conception of the Absolute with an ultimate reference to its possession of Will. Despite the complexity of the product that we call “the will,” there is still one element of it which is constantly present in all grades of volition, and which has a central significance in our voluntary experience. And this is the element which we call Attention.
Our voluntary processes, as we may here take interest in observing, are, in all their grades, selective rather than inventive. You can will nothing original, — no novel act, — nothing except what you have already and involuntarily learned to do; and that, however much you may desire or wish to be original. You can will to do, I say, what you have already somehow learned to do, before your will acts. I am indeed popularly said to be able to will to commit an absolutely new act; as when a lover first wills to win his
