The Will. 765 



He resolves to go to Chicago, to-morrow, to see, and if they suit, to buy 

 them. When the time comes to go a member of his family has become 

 dangerously sick and he is afraid to leave, and so postpones going till 

 next day. The motive to go is still the same, but is modified as to the 

 time. This may happen the second, third and fourth day, the purpose 

 to go remaining persistent because the stimuli which first formed it re- 

 main continuously the same. But on the fourth day, A learns that B, 

 tired of waiting for him, has closed out the goods to another man. 

 One of the chief factors that helped to form the purpose being now 

 withdrawn, the purpose itself summarily terminates. Dr. Adam Clark 

 spent twenty-five years in writing his commentaries on the Bible, and 

 fifteen more in printing and publishing them ; a rare instance of a per- 

 sistent purpose. The motives which originally formed the purpose re- 

 mained the same for a time after the work began, so that if counter 

 motives had postponed it for some years, still it might have been com- 

 menced. But after its commencement the conditions which entered into 

 the construction of the motives began to change. The doctor gradually 

 discovered the task to be a much more difficult one than he had antici- 

 pated, and his own equipment and resources to be less adequate than he 

 had imagined. On the other hand, while the stimulus of supposed duty 

 and approval of conscience, mixed with the expectation of the approval 

 of his friends and society remained the same impulse to the continued 

 prosecution of the work; the real ability to do the work increased by the 

 habit of working, and the amount still to be done constantly decreased. 

 So that the balance of motives continued to be, on the whole, constantly 

 formed in favor of the prosecution of the work until it was finally com- 

 pleted. After its completion he speaks of it as "a labor which, were 

 it yet to commence, with the knowledge I now have of its difficulty, 

 and my, in many respects, inadequate means, millions even of the gold 

 of Ophir, and all the honors that could come from man, could not in- 

 duce me to undertake. Now that it is finished, I regret not the labor ; 

 I have had the testimony of many learned, pious and judicious friends 

 relative to the execution and usefulness of the work, &c. " * In this 

 case, and obviously it is the same in most cases, the motives were de- 

 rived, in part, from stimuli which were only partial and incomplete 

 transcripts of objective realities. A partial truth is, in reality, an un- 

 truth. The brain seldom has a complete impression from every part of 

 an} 7 object in the environment, and of necessit}', motives and wills are 

 based upon incomplete and therefore only partially true data. 



The force of the will is not the same in all directions in the case of 

 any individual. An object, or class of objects, for the accomplishment 

 of which one man will put forth his most intense exertion, will com- 

 1 Clark's commentaries at the end of Malachi. 



