98 MENTAL OPERATIONS IN RELATION TO TIME. 



These and endless like instances might seein to 

 sanction the belief in an absolute co- existence as to 

 time of different states or acts of mind, and especially 

 of those in which volition is concerned. Such, indeed, is 

 the opinion held by Sir William Hamilton, and expressed 

 in the term of Association of Ideas. It is difficult here 

 to rescue the truth from the verbal and other ambigui- 

 ties which beset it. But I am led to believe that Sir 

 William did not sufficient Jy regard the inconceivable 

 rapidity of these sequences of mental state a rapidity 

 such that to all consciousness it becomes continuity 

 nor make due allowance for those acts become so far 

 automatic from habit that consciousness and volition 

 have lost all direct relation to them. His argument 

 that it would be impossible to compare or discriminate 

 perceptions and ideas unless they were simultaneously 

 present to the mind, implies a deeper knowledge of all 

 such functions than we really possess. It is in truth as 

 difficult to conceive the mutual relations of simultaneous 

 states of mind, as of those directly successive ; and 

 where the action of the will on the bodily organs is 

 concerned our ignorance is equally complete. 1 



But what is this will or volition of which we all 

 speak so fluently, but which it puzzles the most pro- 

 found philosophy truly to define ? We have nothing 

 to do here with the old question of ' Necessity and 

 Free-will' that metaphysical and religious puzzle of 

 all ages, the pith of which Milton has gathered up into 



1 In Aristotle's treatise TTfpi tuc&ffatuf there is a curious discussion 

 upon the question of the possible co-existence of different sensations iv 



