THE SEARCH FOR THE SOUL 467 



ency to glorify the mind and to give to it, or to some part of it, or to 

 something like it, a leading role on the stage of events is seen in the 

 voluntaristic movement. The voluntarists do not necessarily hold to 

 any old-fashioned notions of the will as real. The tendency in volun- 

 tarism is a part of the general tendency to believe that processes are 

 more real than things. Our volitions, therefore, being obviously proc- 

 esses, movements, springs, are better types of psychical reality than 

 sensations or ideas. So on every side we find emphasis laid upon will, 

 impulse, instinct, inner activity, mental initiative and attention. 

 " Inner activity " is spoken of in the case of the lowest animal organ- 

 isms and even of plants. In studying animal behavior, we learn that 

 the earliest movements are not mere reflexes, but a series of " trial 

 movements of the most diverse character and including at times prac- 

 tically all the movements of which the animal is capable."^- Likewise 

 the reflex mechanical theory fails to account for the " tropisms " of 

 plants. Although few biologists would explain the " tropisms," or 

 perhaps even the " trial " movements of the microorganisms as psy- 

 chical, nevertheless it is admitted that they are forms of inner activity 

 and not reflexes, and it is hard for psychologists not to associate them 

 with such human phenomena as attention, impulse and initiative. The 

 suggestive term " restlessness " has been used to characterize these 

 simple forms of self-activity.-^ Something like an eternal restlessness 

 seems to be present in every form of living matter from the micro- 

 organism with its incessant " trial " movements to the adult human 

 being with his exhaustless aspirations. It manifests itself in the varia- 

 tions and mutations of plants and animals, in the " try, try again " 

 movements of the creeping child, in the play of youth,** in the inner 

 stirrings, passionate longings and ceaseless, activities of the adolescent, 

 and in the inventions, explorations, ambition and progress of the mature 

 man of culture. Despite every effort of naturalism to explain the power 

 of voluntary and sustained attention, the apparent freedom of the will, 

 and the art impulse, there remains in these phenomena an unexplained 

 residue which apparently depends upon this inherent principle of 

 self-activity. 



The term " restlessness," however, suggestive as it may be, does not 

 quite rightfully express the character of this profound principle of 

 inner activity which eludes all scientific analysis. It is something 

 more than restlessness and something less than aspiration. All at- 

 tempts to account for progress, whether cosmic or human, without the 

 assumption of some such deep psychic factor, have failed. There is 

 apparently in man, as in nature, a spring of progress, an upward and 



** Jennings, " Behavior of the Lower Organisms," p. 280. 

 " Koyce, " Outlines of Psychology," Chaps. VII. and XIII. 

 **Idem, p. 319. 



