Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/179

THE DEFINITION OF WILL. 165 mate, irreducible and unique, and in this inexplicable fact is contained the real essence of will. To make will consist in the perception or in the idea of this fact is really circular. And once more the perception like the fact is irreducible and ultimate." 1 Now, to confine my reply first to the objection based on the perception of agency, I am not concerned here to deny that such an experience is ' original ' and ' ultimate '. Whether anything in our development precedes the practical relation, and, if so, what precedes it, is a matter with which I am not here undertaking to deal. But I maintain that apart from the practical relation there is no will nor any perception of agency, and I insist that in this relation cer- tain elements are essentially involved. And where these are wanting I utterly deny the presence of an experience of agency. On the one hand I do not assert that the elements can exist apart or that they precede the relation, and on the other hand I do not even maintain that with these the whole experience is exhausted. My perceived agency will contain usually, or perhaps even always, some pyschical matter which I am not here attempting to detail. But this matter in my opinion most certainly is not essential, though it may give what may be called a specific character to the experience. What is essential is the presence of those several aspects which I have repeatedly described, and, where you have not these, you have not in fact, I contend, the experience of agency. But, in calling these aspects the essential conditions of the experience, I imply no conclusion with regard to their priority in time. I will pass from this point to consider another mode of objection. " The experience of agency," it may be said, " falls outside your account of it. We might on your account of the matter perhaps perceive a change happening to the not-self, and we might also perceive a change happen- ing to ourselves, but with this we should never get to perceive ourselves as making the change." But for my part I cannot understand how this perception could fail. T feel myself one with the idea of a changed not-self, an idea opposed to the not-self which actually exists. And, as this idea invades the not-self, I feel and I perceive that my self is expanded. The change of the not-self is perceived as my process of expansion, in which both that existence and myself become in fact what ideally I was. We have a change of existence beginning with its idea in myself and itself really ending in 1 1 do not mean to imply that this objection as it stands would be offered all at once by the same person.