THE FEELING OF EFFORT. 23 



" suppression " ? Either complete oblivescence, or such presence as to evoke the steady 

 sentiment of aversion or negation. 



Volition with effort is then incidental to the conflict of ideas of what our experience 

 may be. Conflict involves those strange states or general attitudes of feeling, which 

 when we speak logically or intellectually, we call affirmation and negation, but when 

 Ave speak emotionally, we call assent and refusal. Psychologically of course, like every 

 other mental modification, these attitudes are feelings sui generis, not to be described, 

 but only labelled and pointed out. What they are in se, what their conflict is, and what 

 its decision and resolution are, we know in every given case introspectivcly with an abso- 

 lute clearness that nothing can make clearer. But what forms of cerebral nerve-process 

 correspond to these mind-processes is an infinitely darker matter, and one as to which I 

 will here make no suggestion excej^t the simple and obvious one that they and volition 

 with them are subserved by the ideational centres exclusively and involve no downward 

 irradiation into lower parts. The irradiation only comes when they are completed. 



In the dentist's chair, one idea is that of the manliness of enduring the pain, the 

 other is that of its intolerable character. We assent to the manliness, saying, " let it be 

 the reality," and l^ehold, it becomes so, though with a mental effort exactly proportionate 

 to the sensitiveness of our nerves. To the sailor on the wreck, one idea is that of his 

 sore hands, and the nameless aching exhaustion of his whole frame which further 

 pumping involves. The other, is that of a hungry sea ingulfing him. He says : " rather 

 the former ! " and it becomes reality, in spite of the inhibiting influence of the 

 comparatively luxurious sen.sations of the spot in which he for the moment lies. 



To the sinner in the agony of his mind, one idea is of the social shame and all 

 the outwai'd losses and degradations to which confession will expose him, the other is that 

 of the rescue from the damned unending inward foulness to which concealment seems 

 to doom him. He says to the confession, '^Jiai ! with all its consequences," and sure 

 enough, when the time comes, fit, but not without mental blood and sweat. 



Everywhere the difficulty is the same : to keep affirming and adopting a state of mind 

 of which disagreeableness is an integral factor. The disagreeableness need not be of the 

 nature of pain ; it may be the merely relative disagreeableness of insipidity. When the 

 spontaneous course of thought is to exciting images, whether sanguine or lugubrious, lov- 

 ing or revengeful, all reasonable representations come with a deadly flatness and coldness 

 that strikes a chill to the soul. To cling to them however, as soon as they show their 

 faces, to consent to their presence, to affirm them, to negate all the rest, is the character- 

 istic energy of the man whose will is strong. If on this purely mental plane his effort 

 succeeds, the outward consequences will take care of themselves, for the representation 

 will work unaided its motor effects. The simplest cases are the best for illustrating the 

 point, and in the case of a man afflicted with insomnia, and to whose body sleep comes 

 through the persistent successful diversion of the mind from the train of whirling 

 thoughts, to the monotonous contemplation of one letter after another of a verse of 

 poetry, spelled out synchronously with the acts of respiration, we have all the elements 

 that can anywhere be found : a struggle of ideas, a victory of one set and certain 

 bodily effects automatically consequent thereon. To sustain a representation, to think, is 

 what requires the effort, and is the true moral act. Maniacs know their thoughts to be 



