THE HUMAN WILL 



unable to prevent the lower centre from discharg- 

 ing the reflex action which it is there to perform, 

 the higher authorities permitting. 



But now that we understand what is meant by 

 inhibition, let us contemplate this remarkable fact, 

 the significance of which, if I am correct in my 

 interpretation of it, has escaped previous students 

 of this subject. The path of volition is identical 

 with that of inhibition. The same nerve cells 

 and fibres discharge the function both of restraining 

 the knee-jerk and, when you please, of making 

 the knee-jerk. Yet we have always believed that 

 all nerve impulses are identical, varying only in in- 

 tensity ; and to the student of the nervous system 

 it is almost incredible that the same nerve-fibres 

 can convey messages so different that one issues in 

 action and the other in repression. I incline strong- 

 ly to the belief that the original and primary func- 

 tion of the brain-centre is to control or inhibit the 

 lower centre in the spinal cord; and that, at any 

 rate at first, when the brain-centre came to com- 

 mand the spinal centre to act, all it really did was to 

 refrain from the customary restraint it did not 

 command so much as permit. 



In other words, I believe that the human will, 

 volition as we are conscious of it, is essentially 

 not a positive but a negative thing, in the sense 

 that a command is positive, but permission nega- 

 tive. Action, on this view, is the result of per- 

 mission given for a certain complex of what are 

 really reflexes ; in other words, action is the result of 

 197 



