Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/175

THE DEFINITION OF WILL. 161 within, I cannot fail to experience it and to know in some sense that the process is my act. But up to what point this knowledge and experience will accompany the process, can- not be laid down in general. If, that is to say, you take volition as the complete process in which rny idea reaches its end, my awareness is certainly not throughout a neces- sary accompaniment of my will. My will, we have seen, may even extend beyond my existence. This being dismissed, we may enter on a more limited inquiry, and may ask first whether and how far my self must enter into the content of the idea. The idea, we have seen, is always the idea of a change in existence, and certainly in some cases it is the idea of myself making this change. I as realising the end am in these cases an object to myself, and it is this idea of myself which here makes the beginning of the process. Now no one can doubt that such an idea is often present in will, and I am not concerned to deny that it is present usually. But I cannot agree that in will the idea does contain my self always, and I do not think that I as making the change must always be an object to myself in the idea. This question taken by itself has but little importance. On the one hand volition is the identification of my felt self with the idea, and this felt self, we have seen, is so far never an object. And, so far as it becomes an object, the felt self so far is not the self which actually wills. Hence the presence or absence of my self as an element contained in the idea can hardly be vital. On the other hand, in every case after the process has started, my self must perceive itself to some extent as entering into this process, and to some extent therefore my self must in every case become an object to itself. 1 And for this reason again the question whether before the start I am an object to myself, does not seem in itself to be very material. But, since a confusion may give rise to dangerous consequences, the question, I think, must be briefly discussed. I cannot admit that in all cases my self as changing the existence forms part of the idea's content. At an unre- flective level of mind, whether in ourselves or in the lower animals, a suggestion, if it acts at once, need not be so qualified. The perception of another engaged, say, in eating or fighting may produce by suggestion these processes in me. And the result in such a case has on the one hand been certainly willed, but on the other hand the element 1 This is a point to which I shall return very shortly. 11