Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/161

THE DEFINITION OF WILL. 147 confine ourselves to the theoretical attitude, they certainly are not objects. In the 'felt-mine' of the moment the object appears as something other than the rest, but its relation to the rest, if we are to speak of its relation, is a matter of feeling. 1 That relation with both its terms must fall within what is experienced, but only one term of the relation is experienced as an object. The not-self so far appears as an other but not as an opposite. (ii.) In the practical relation the aspects we have described above are still to be found, but another feature is added which transforms the character of the whole. This feature is the opposition between self and not-self. In my practical attitude I experience myself as something contrary to the object. I. do not rnerely receive the object and feel it as mine, although other than me, but I also feel myself as something which is opposite and struggles to change it. And in this total feeling both the not-self and the self are present now as contrary realities. The relation with both its terms now appears before myself as two objects, but in what sense I am an object to myself we must go on to inquire. In my practical consciousness there is a relation, we saw, between the not-self and an idea. This idea is the idea of a change in that object not-self, and the idea in its conflict, with the not-self is itself an object for me. Hence a rela- tion with both its terms is now before me as an object perceived. But this relation on the other hand is not merely a new perceived object. For I feel myself one with the idea in a sense in which I am not one with that object which opposes it, and therefore in and through this idea I feel myself in collision with that object, which has thus become in a further sense something alien and not-self. And my felt oneness with the idea and felt contrariness to the conflicting existence are not two separate facts but are inseparable aspects of one fact. Whether in any sense opposition can otherwise be experienced and known I do not here inquire, but. except through an idea there is no opposition if that is really practical and means will. And this is a point which has perhaps been sufficiently discussed in previous articles. The practical relation depends on an idea, an idea with which in a special sense I feel myself to be one, and this idea is an object and it conflicts with an object. But, as for myself, I am not properly an object 1 1 should perhaps remind the reader that I do not accept the restric- tion of ' feeling ' to denote merely pleasure and its opposite.