Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/177

THE DEFINITION OF WILL. 163 even normally. Nothing is normal and necessary except that the idea of the change should be felt as in one with myself, and then that its actual process should be perceived as my making the change. My self in short, as making the change, is not in fact always preconceived in the idea, and, whether this takes place or not, it is in every case external to the essence of will. A confusion on this point may threaten danger to our whole doctrine of volition. " Your view," I may be told, " is entirely circular and so illusory. All that you have done is to take the fact of will as an unexplained mass. You then transfer that mass in idea to the beginning of the process, and the process therefore naturally appears as the realisation of this idea. But the idea simply anticipates the actual process in an unexplained form, and you have therefore offered in fact no explanation at all. For it is will, you say in effect, when with will we have the idea of it beforehand." But such an objection need, I think, not cause any serious embarrassment. We do not in the first place admit that my self as acting must in fact be contained in the idea. And, even if we admitted this, the conclusion which would follow really matters very little. For the con- clusion which would follow amounts merely to this, that my perception of agency must come before volition in the proper sense of that term. This priority would however make little or no difference to our main result. The idea of a changed existence is suggested, is felt as one with me, and so carries itself out. And this process gives me, as we laid down, the experience of my agency ; but the process so far, on the pre- sent hypothesis, would not amount in the strict sense to volition. On another occasion however this perception of my agency, which now is acquired, will or may be transferred to the idea as an element in its content. And the result will now follow from an idea which has been qualified as required, and the act will therefore now have become a volition proper. Hence, even if we accept a view which I submit is mistaken in fact, the alleged circle in our account is really non-existent or harmless. In volition I must have, and must be conscious of, an object not-self, and I must be conscious again of an object idea. With that idea I must feel myself in a special sense to be one, and the idea must be qualified in its content by its relation to the not-self. Then, when the idea realises itself, I perceive myself also as moving in the same sense, and up to a certain point in this movement I am an object to myself. And my self again in many cases, before the