262 ELEMENTS OF SCIENCE 



mere likings or dislikings, or from pleasurable or pain- 

 ful feelings occasioned by the good-will or hostility of our 

 fellow creatures. 



The last of our faculties to which, in this elementary 

 work, it seems to us indispensable to call attention, 

 is our faculty of will. Our acts of will, our volitions, 

 may be of two different kinds. They may either be ( i ) 

 acts in which we simply follow, without any deliberate 

 choice, our spontaneous inclinations ; or (2) acts in which, 

 after full deliberation, we elect to follow a course 

 opposed to that towards which the balance of the 

 attractions and repulsions acting on us would lead us to 

 pursue. The common sense of mankind leads them to 

 perceive this distinction, for when a man has lost this 

 power of voluntarily " choosing," he is said to be not 

 accountable. The conscience of every reasonable man 

 assures him that he has, at least occasionally, a power of 

 voluntarily fixing his attention upon one thing rather 

 than another ; and that he can, at any rate sometimes, 

 act in oppositon to a strong temptation to violate duty. 

 Our reason tells us that men are right in declaring that 

 no moral blame can be attached to actions over which a 

 man has no choice but which he is simply compelled to 

 perform. 



Thus over and above those powers which we possess, 

 in common with the higher animals, we possess self- 

 consciousness and powers of intellectual perception, 

 memory and reflection, of forming abstract ideas (such as 

 being, substance, cause, activity, passivity, self, not-self, 

 difference and succession, extension, position, shape, size, 

 number, motion, novelty, dubiousness, necessity, agree- 

 ment, disagreement, &c), and of making abstract judg- 

 ments. We also possess a power of reasoning, of 

 apprehending truth and goodness, as such, and of ivitting 



