Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/181

THE DEFINITION OF WILL. 167 admit, would become very different. But for any satisfac- tory explanation on this head we should seek assuredly in vain. And we are really not concerned here even with ' a fact of experience ' except so far as it either itself is an experienced fact or serves as a principle by which experi- enced facts are explained. 1 It is better to leave an objection which, however funda- mental, is far too vague to be discussed briefly, and I therefore will state in a concrete instance the former more definite argument. " I may have a pain," it may be ob- jected, " and the idea of its relief, and I may experience the tension of that idea against existence and may feel myself one with it. Then when the idea is realised I may ex- perience, in and with this change of the not-self, a great expansion of my self. And yet with all this I may gain no perception of agency. " ; But this is so, I reply, because the conditions are not fulfilled. The process is perceived as beginning from the not-self and as merely happening to me. Either from a general habit or from the presence of some particular cause, the change does not come to me as starting from the idea in me. The realisation of the idea on the contrary appears to begin with an independent movement of the not-self, and the process therefore naturally is viewed as the process of the not-self. I have the idea of relief and yet actually the pain remains. The idea changes in strength and fulness, and generally in the way in which it occupies my self, but on the other hand the pain remains unaltered. There is therefore no acquired tendency to connect actual cessation of the pain with its idea. On the other side not only may the pain have ceased when the idea has been ab- sent, but it may have ceased also when some prominent change of the not-self has been present, and this experience may have happened to me more or less frequently. We have therefore not only the absence of any acquired tendency 1 1 may refer here to MIND, N.S., Nos. 33 and 4u. I have noticed for some years an increasing tendency in England to do what I must call to coquet with the doctrine of the " primacy of will ". I do not, I trust, undervalue the lesson which is to be learnt perhaps most readily from Schopenhauer. But that lesson, I am sure, is much less than half learnt if we do not realise the difficulties which arise from anything like a whole-hearted acceptance of the doctrine. Prof. Miinsterberg's important work should here prove instructive. I hope also that Mr. Schiller's essay, contained in Personal Idealism (which I have seen since wilting the above), may in its way be useful, though one would seek in it in vain "for any serious attempt to realise the meaning and result of that gospel which it preaches. 2 Compare the remarks 011 "Expectation, MIND, N.S., No. 44, p. 442.