The Feeling of Effort. By William James. 



La locomotion animale n'a nul rapport direct 



avec ce qu'on appelle volont*5 L'effort, 



le nisus, ue doit pas etre fix6 dans le rapport de 

 la volition avec I'acte propre du mobile materiel. 

 .... L'effiTt, dans I'acception rationelle de 

 ce mot, est le rapport de la representation avec 

 elle meme. Kexouvier. 



I propose in the following pages to offer a scheme of the physiology and psychology of 

 volition, more completely worked out and satisfactory than any I have yet met with. 

 The matter is a little intricate, and I shall have to ask the reader to bear patiently a 

 good deal of detail for the sake of the importance of the result. 



That we have a feeling of effort there can be no doubt. Popular language has suffi- 

 ciently consecrated the fact by the institution of the word effort, and its synonyms exer- 

 tion, striving, straining. The difference between a simply passive sensation, and 

 one in which the elements of volition and attention are found, has also been 

 recorded by popular speech in the difference between such verbs as to see and 

 to look ; to hear and to listen ; to smell and to scent ; to feel and to touch. 

 Effort, attention, and volition are, in fact, similar elements of Feeling differing all 

 in the . same generic manner from its receptive, or simply sensational elements ; 

 and forming the active as distinguished from the passive parts of our mental 

 nature. This distinction is styled by Bain the most vital one within the sphere of 

 mind ; and at all times psychologists of the a 2^fiori school have emphasized the utter 

 opposition between our consciousness of spontaneity or ou1>going energy, and the con- 

 sciousness of any mere impression whatever. 



Fully admitting the feelings of active energy as mental facts, our que.stion simply is of 

 what nervous processes are they the concomitants ? As the feeling of effort is nowhere 

 more coarsely and obviously present than in the phenomenon of muscular exertion, let 

 us limit our inquiry first to that. 



I. MUSCULAR exertion AN AFFERENT FEELING. 



Johannes Miiller was, so far as I know, the first to say^ that the nerve-process accom- 

 panying the feeling of muscular exertion, is the discharge from the motor centre into the 

 motor nerve. The supposition is a most natural and plausible one ; for if afferent nerve 

 processes are felt, each in its characteristic way, why should not efferent processes be 

 felt by equal right, and with equally characteristic qualities ? Accordingly we find in 

 writers of all nations since Miiller's time, repetitions implicit or explicit, of his suggestion. 



1 Physiologic, 1840, Bd. ii, p. 500. 



