246 Life and Tjetters of Francis GaKon 



Again, appetites as motives automaticiilly direct the will, and these cases 

 may be aisrt^rded, nor did Galton trouble about cases in which two motives 

 of the sjuiie kind were in conflict and the greater j)revailed. "There is no 

 more anomaly in these than there is in the heavier scale-pan of a balance 

 descending." Galton ultimately a8st)ciated the possible csises of free-will 

 with cases of irresolution, and to his great surprise found that not more tlian 

 about one such case arose in the day. "All the rest of my actions seenu'd 

 clearly to lie within the province of normal cause and consequence." 



Galton classified these classes of "irresolution" into three categories: 



(i) Each of two alternative plans grew less attractive the longer it was 

 looked at, and so the mind "swung to and fro incapable of wholly fixing 

 itself on either." 



(ii) A Htfulness in the growth of a desire to change one's condition or 

 occupation. "The resolution was delayed until a considerable rise of the 

 new desire corresponded with a sudden fall of the old one." Galton illus- 

 trates this by the daily act of waking up and rising in the morning. 



(iii) A change of Ego. An Ego which wants to continue staying com- 

 fortably in bed, and an Ego with a faint voice preaching the merits of early 

 rising. 



"To this I may give intellectual assent, but l)efore it is possible for me to will to rise the 

 Ego that is subsisting in content must somehow bo abolished and a transmigration must take 

 place into a different Ego, that of wide-awake life." 



The mind may be shifted into a new position of stable equilibrium, by 

 such a small matter as a twig tapping against the window. 



"I suspect that much of what we stigmatise as irresolution is due to our Self being Ijy no 

 means one and indivisible, and that we do not care to sacrifice the Self of the moment for a 

 different one. There are, I believe, cases in which we are wrong in reproaching ourselves sternly, 

 saying, 'The last week was not Sf)ent in the way you now wish it liad been' because the Self 

 was not the same throughout. There is room for applying the greatest happiness of the greatest 

 number, the particular Self at the moment of making retrospect being not the only one to be 

 considered." (p. 409.) 



Galton next turns' to what he terms 'incommensurable motives,' cases 

 in which 



"the one that was not the most keenly felt, nor gave the greatest pleasure in any sense of the 

 word, emerged triumphant." (p. 409.) 



He argues that the 'apparently' stronger psychical motive may not be 

 the physiologically stronger motive, had we an exact cognisance of the battles 



* He gives the following illustration: "An imperious old lady, infirm and garrulous, calh-d 

 at my house just as 1 hat! finished much weary work and wits preparing with glee for a long walk. 

 Hearing that I wa.s at home, she dismissed her carriage for three quarU-r.s of an hour, so I was 

 her prisoner for all that time. As she talked with little wssiition, I hiul full o]>portunity for 

 <jue«tioning myself on the feeling that supporte<] me tlnx)Ugh the iiilliction. The responst; always 

 i^ped itself in the same way, 'social duties may not l)c disregiirde<l ; beside^s this is a capital 

 occasion for introspection.'" Ualton comments: "I^eaving aside the last clause of the reply we 

 •ee here. ..how a keen desire may wither under the iiiHuenee of something alKiut which our 

 oonaciousness is scarcely exercised ; some one of the many habits, whose quiet and firm domination 

 gives a steadiness and calm to mature life that children cannot comprehend." (p. 410.) 



