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involving the disposition of the moving organs to come into 

 operation of themselves previous to and apart from the 

 stimulation of the senses or the feelings the activity being 

 increased when such stimulation concurs with the primitive 

 spontaneity I think there is evidence so show that the pro- 

 fuse activity attendant on health, nourishment, youth, and a 

 peculiar temperament called the active temperament, springs 

 in a very great degree from inherent active power, with no 

 purpose at first, but merely to expend itself, and that such 

 activity gradually comes under the guidance of the feelings 

 and purposes of the animal. It is the surplus nervous power 

 of the system discharging itself without waiting for the 

 promptings of sensation. In the course of education the 

 spontaneity is so linked with our feelings as to be an instru- 

 ment of our well-being, in promoting pleasures and removing 

 pains. The voice, by mere spontaneity, sends forth sounds; 

 the ear controls and directs them into melody, and the wants 

 of the system generally make them useful in other ways. 

 Mere spontaneity, however, would not give us all that we 

 find in the impulses of the will. Being the overflow of vital 

 power, it would show itself only whenever and wherever 

 there is such an overflow. We want a kind of activity that 

 shall start forth at any time when pleasure is to be secured, 

 or pain to be banished, and that shall be directed to the very 

 points where these effects can be commanded. This power 

 is exemplified in the fundamental law of pleasure and pain 

 to which I have already referred. Such I conceive to be the 

 groundwork of volition, greatly, but never entirely, overlaid 

 in mature life by a process of education or acquirement." 1 



In dealing with the heredity of the will the analytical 

 method hitherto pursued, concerning the heredity of instinct, 

 i Professor Bain's " Mind and Body." 



