Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/180

166 F. H. BEADLEY I that which was ideal. This moving idea is felt in one with myself, and my self thus is felt and is perceived as becoming actually itself. The process is experienced as beginning from within and as going continuously outwards. And surely with this we must in fact have attained to the essence of agency. There are fundamental difficulties, I admit, which I must here leave untouched. The perception of succession in gen- eral, and the qualification in any process of the beginning by the end, offer well-known problems which here it is im- possible to discuss. And the same remark holds, we may add, of every kind of predication. But these difficulties do not attach themselves specially to the perception of agency in the self. They apply equally to the experience of any change in outward existence. And these difficulties, if so understood, furnish no ground for objection against our doctrine of will. Such an objection is not grounded unless these ultimate questions are answered in one special manner. It is possible to hold that in the self there is an agency which the self knows in that character, and that this self-conscious agency, while inexplicable itself and the essence of will, serves to explain our perception of process in things, and meets the difficulties which attach themselves to predication in general. I consider any such view to be untenable and to be in conflict with fact, but I cannot undertake the discus- sion of it here. Whatever plausibility it may possess comes T think from its vagueness and from its inability to realise the conclusions to which its principle would lead. 1 We must not confuse with such a view a doctrine which differs from it vitally. This doctrine is alike in holding agency and will to be itself inexplicable and ultimate, and to be on the other hand the main principle which explains experience. It would however deny that this principle in its working is aware of itself. Or, if aware of itself in any sense, the principle is at least not aware of itself in its own proper character. If the agency in short is a ' fact of experience,' it is nevertheless not experienced in fact as an agency. Such a principle however, it may be urged, is the real essence of volition. Once again it is impossible here to discuss such a doctrine, but such a doctrine may at once be dismissed as here irrelevant. For in these papers, I may remind the reader, I am merely concerned with what we experience as will. If indeed from such a principle you could account for this our actual experience, the case, I 1 The appearance of Prof. Miinsterberg's interesting volume since these words were written has not inclined me to modify them.