THE OPJGm OF THE WILL. 451 



are balanced, the resultant preponderance being expressed in the 

 act. It will be easily seen that while this statement is true in re- 

 gard to cases where the elements of the calculation are known, it is 

 not true where any or all of them are unknown. The difference 

 in the two cases is very great. All likes and dislikes are based 

 upon experience or knowledge ; and when there is no knowledge, 

 likes and dislikes can not be said to exist. Since likes and dis- 

 likes constitute motives, where the former are wanting the latter 

 are also wanting. Whatever inducements are presented from be- 

 yond the field of knowledge are derived from the imagination, 

 and are in self-conscious minds relatively weak as motives, or 

 absolutely without weight. They might be regarded as motives 

 in embryo, ready to become such on the acquisition of a corre- 

 sponding experience. The imagination can prefigure one alterna- 

 tive as well as another, in a direction where experience is wanting, 

 and might indeed be said under such circumstances to have no 

 existence, and the expression, "I can't imagine," be thought to 

 have foundation in fact. The influence of such a guide is not 

 imperative, and raises no obstacle to the origin of a new feature 

 of consciousness by an act of choosing, when the pressure to act 

 at all is suJOficiently great. 



There is, perhaps, but one situation of the mind where the 

 pressure of feeling is strong enough, and predication and imagina- 

 tion sufficiently excluded, to develop a will which shall create 

 motives rather than obey them. This is in the cases where self- 

 interest is weighed in the balance against the interest or good of 

 other people. Here the feelings are most severely pressed, and 

 the future results to self most uncertain. Self-sacrifice may be 

 beneficial to self, or it may not : one may be the gainer by the 

 general prosperity, or he may be the loser. Morality may promise 

 future good to the community, but why sacrifice self for the com- 

 munity ? Gratitude for services rendered is an uncertain antici- 

 pation. Man's most limited knowledge and greatest inability in 

 predication is in the field of human motives and actions, and 

 chiefly in respect to those which belong to his moral feelings. As 

 already remarked, the complication in this direction is so great as 

 to jiroduce the effect of novelty : so that man, come into posses- 

 sion of an intellect which is the product of ages of development, 

 finds before him a new field of his own making, where his in- 

 herited powers fail. 



This is the field where the most momentous decisions possible 



