SEC. 7. ON VOLUNTARY MOVEMENTS. 



653. When we examine ourselves we recognize certain of our 

 movements as 'voluntary'; we say that we carry them out by an 

 effort of the ' will.' And when we witness the movements of other 

 people or of animals we regard as also voluntary such of those 

 movements as by their characters and by the circumstances of 

 their occurrence seem to be carried out in the same way as our 

 own voluntary movements. Even in the case of some of our own 

 movements we are not always clear whether they are really volun- 

 tary or no ; and in the case of other people and of animals it is 

 still more difficult to decide the question. It would be out of 

 place to attempt to discuss here how voluntary movements really 

 differ from involuntary movements, or in other words, what is the 

 nature of the will ; we must be content to take a somewhat rough 

 use of the words ' voluntary,' ' volitional,' and ' will ' as a basis for 

 physiological discussion. We may however remark that as far as 

 the muscular side of the act, if we may use such an expression, is 

 concerned, a voluntary movement does not differ in kind from an 

 involuntary movement. It is perfectly true that a skilled man 

 may by practice learn to execute muscular manoeuvres which 

 he would not have learnt to execute had not an intelligent volition 

 been operative within him ; but our own experience teaches us that 

 many more or less intricate movements which have undoubtedly 

 been learnt by help of the will may be carried out under circum- 

 stances of such a kind that we feel compelled to regard them as, at 

 the time, involuntary; and it may at least be debated whether 

 every movement which we can carry out, by an effort of the will, 

 may not appear under appropriate circumstances as part of an in- 

 voluntary act. In the case of the lower animals, in the frog deprived 

 of its cerebral hemispheres for instance, we have seen that volun- 

 tary differ from involuntary movements, not by their essential 

 nature but by the relation which their occurrence bears to 

 circumstances. We have therefore to seek for the distinction 

 between voluntary and involuntary, not in the coordination of the 

 muscular and nervous components of a movement, but in the 

 nature of the process which starts the whole act. 



