THE CEREBRUM, AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 793 



are the results of the action of the latter, do not merely engage the attention 

 of the Artist, who aims to develop them in material forms, but are the great 

 sources of the improvement of the knowledge and happiness possessed by our 

 race operating alike in the common affairs of life, by suggesting those pic- 

 tures of the future which are ever before our eyes, and are our animating springs 

 of action ; with their visions of enjoyment never perhaps to be fully realized, 

 and their prospects of anticipated evil that often prove to be an exaggeration 

 of the reality prompting the investigations of Science, that are gradually un- 

 folding the sublime plan on which the Universe is governed and leading to a 

 continual aspiration after those highest forms of Moral and Intellectual beauty 

 which are inseparably connected with purity and love. 



821. We have now, in the last place, to inquire into the mode in which 

 Volition operates in determining the course of thought and the regulation of 

 the conduct ; a problem of extreme difficulty, the entire solution of which may 

 not lie within the limited sphere of Man's present capacity. The chief subject 

 of embarrassment is rather the nature and source of the Will itself, than the 

 conditions of its operation ; for whilst a careful analysis of our own conscious- 

 ness throws much light on the latter, the scientific investigation of the former 

 tends to results which are inconsistent with our intuitive conviction of freedom, 

 as well as with our scarcely less intuitive notion of moral responsibility. Dis- 

 missing the former question, therefore, as one which requires a much more 

 labored discussion than could here be appropriately bestowed upon it, we 

 may apply ourselves to the consideration of the mode in which Volition acts 

 (1) upon the Corporeal organism, and (2) upon our Psychical nature. 



822. It is a fact of universal experience, that, although certain states of Mind 

 have a remarkable influence on the Organic functions, no change in their usual 

 course can be determined by the direct influence of the Will. 1 The only sensible 

 effect which the strongest effort of Volition can produce on the bodily frame, is 

 the excitation of muscular contraction. Now if we examine into the cause of a 

 Volitional movement, we find it to lie, as in other instances, in a certain combi- 

 nation of material conditions with dynamical agency (p. 3). The aggregate of 

 the material conditions is a state of integrity of the muscular and nervous ap- 

 paratus through which the Will operates; the dynamical agency is the effort 

 which we are conscious of putting forth, and which we feel to be the power by 

 which the work is done, the degree of volitional exertion required being strictly 

 proportional to the amount of resistance to be overcome, and being followed by 

 a corresponding sense of fatigue, which is the indication of the expenditure of 

 force. As already pointed out ( 799), it is an essential condition of every 

 Volitional action, that a distinct idea should exist of the object to be attained, 

 and that there should be also a belief in the possibility of attaining it by the 

 means employed ; and further, the amount of power which can be put forth on 

 any occasion, is dependent, easterns paribus, upon the degree in which the at- 

 tention is concentrated upon the effort, and the mind withdrawn from the con- 

 templation of other objects. Hence it is (we have seen) that Emotional ex- 

 citement may either intensify or paralyze the Volitional power, according as it 

 determines or interferes with the special direction of the mental energy to the 

 object with which it is connected. But the same influence is capable of being 

 exerted by the simple dominance of ideas, in certain states of mind in which 

 the directing power of the Will over the current of thought is altogether sus- 

 pended, without the destruction of the capacity for voluntary exertion of the 

 nervo-muscular apparatus. Thus the Author has seen a man remarkable for 

 the poverty of his muscular development, who shrank from the least exertion in 



1 " Which of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit to his stature?" " Thou canst 

 'not make one hair white or black." 



