Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/317

TYPES OF WILL. 301 present before action a second and alternative idea, even if it be only the negative idea of not doing that to which the first idea impels us. Volition or " selective action," says Prof. Titchener, " arises where we have in consciousness the materials of two different impulses, where two compound ideas of object and result are both alike supplemented by the idea of one's own movement, and the attention oscillates from the one to the other," accompanied by doubt and the " mood of indecision ", l In this narrower use of the term, volition is synonymous with choice ; and what we have taken to be simple volitions, where only one end is represented before action, can be no more than conations. As we have already the term ' choice,' which clearly designates this complex type, it would seem better and more in consonance with the common usage to allow the wider term ' will ' to include our simple varieties. Complex volition or choice is preceded by doubt and con- flict. It is "the mental state which emerges when the pro- cess of conflict ceases because it has worked itself out to a definite conclusion ". 2 The conflicting desires which in the state of indecision appeared as motives, now " disappear or appear only as obstacles" 3 on the same plane with any other difficulty in the way of achievement. But the presence of conflicting desires is not the choice between them. One or both may disappear before any decision is arrived at. Where there is choice they must culminate in the definite judgment that, conditionally or uncondi- tionally, we are going to realise the end of one of them. The process of attention which persists throughout must undergo this modification. Choice, like simple volition, will appear to consist "in a certain kind of judgment or belief". 4 If you ask a child which of two playthings he would like to have, he hesitates before he chooses. His doubt may last an appreciable time or pass in a moment, but in either case it is abolished by a process of thought. By a comparison of the two objects, he decides between them. He has to find an answer to the question suggested to him, "Which do I like more?" and his judgment that he prefers this and not the other object is completed in the volition, " I will have this ". Note that the mind is probably determined at the outset by 1 Outline of Psychology, pp. 254-255. 2 Analytic Psychology, by G. F. Stout, vol. i., p. 131. 3 G. F. Stout, MIND, N.S., vol. v., p. 337. 4 Ibid., p. 356.