THE ORIGIN OF THE WILL. 441 



rational order. The unconscious actions of both the ansesthetic 

 and rational kinds are called " reflex ; " and all of them are " auto- 

 matic," in so far as they are performed without will ; terms more 

 fully defined in the following pages. The process of intellection 

 in unconsciousness is called unconscious cerebration. 



Actions of the second great class, the altruistic, demand for 

 their performance the attributes necessary for the highest of the 

 appetent class. They require intelligence enough for the percep- 

 tion of what is the pleasure of the object, and self-consciousness, 

 to know that that pleasure is inconsistent with its own, or subject- 

 ive pleasure. 



The arrangement may be summarized as follows : 



I. Appetent class. 



1 A r^ L- \ Unconscious (reflex). 



1. Anaesthetic. 1 ^^ . 



( Conscious. 



( Unconscious (reflex). 



2. Eational. ■< Conscious. 



( Self-conscious. 



II. Altruistic class ; rational and self-conscious. 



Under the definition of will above given, it can not be present 

 in unconscious or reflex actions, and the inquiry is limited to the 

 conscious groups exclusively. It may then be well to add a few 

 words on the nature of consciousness. 



This faculty is here understood in its broadest sense, namely, 

 subjective perception. The term consciousness expresses the 

 knowledge by the subject of the effects of stimuli on itself, which 

 ranges all the way from the mere sense of contact to the sense of 

 an idea. An unprejudiced scrutiny of the nature of conscious- 

 ness, no matter how limited that scrutiny necessarily is, shows that 

 it is qualitatively comparable to nothing else. The attempts to 

 correlate it with the physical forces have so far been utter failures, 

 although the vital forces, to which it gives direction, are evidently 

 not excluded from the laws of quality and quantity. The com- 

 mon hypothesis that consciousness is the product of evolution 

 appears to the writer, in view of this primary fact, to be irra- 

 tional ; while the converse, that evolution is a product of con- 

 sciousness, is far more likely to receive ultimate demonstration. 

 From this stand-point it is looked upon as a state of matter 

 which is co-eternal with it, but not co-extensive. Itself in its 

 totality a reservoir of force, it is the source of all physical and 

 vital forces, with which it has therefore an equivalency of quanti- 



