176 COSMIC FHILOSOPHY. [pt. ii. 



of ideas in the hemispherical ganglia, there is in like manner 

 a reaction or desire of determination of energy outwards, 

 in accordance Avith the fundamental property of organic 

 structure to seek what is beneficial and to shun what is 

 hurtful to it. It is this property of tissue that gives the 

 impulse which, when guided by intelligence, we call volition ; 

 and it is the abstraction from the particulciv volitions which 

 metaphysicians personify as the Will. . . . Physiologically 

 we cannot choose but _TJect the Will : volition we know, and 

 will we know, but the Will, apart from particular acts of 

 volition or will, we cannot know. To interpose such a 

 metapliysical entity between reflection and action thereupon, 

 would bring us logically to the necessity of interposing a 

 similar entity between the stimulus to the spinal cord and 

 its reaction. Thus instead of unravelling the complex by 

 help of the more simple, we should obscure the simple by 

 speculations concerning the complex." As scientific in- 

 quirers, " we have to deal with volition as a function of the 

 supreme centres, following reflection, varying in quantity 

 and quality as its cause varies, strengthened by education 

 and exercise, enfeebled by disease, decaying with decay of 

 structure, and always needing for its outward expression the 

 educated agency of the subordinate motor centres. We 

 have to deal with will, not as a single undecomposable 

 faculty unaffected by bodily conditions, but as a result of 

 organic changes in the supreme centres, affected as certainly 

 and seriously by disorder of them as our motor faculties are 

 by disorder of their centres. Loss of power of will is one ot 

 the earliest and most characteristic symptoms of mental 

 derangement; and whatever may have been thought in times 

 past, we know well now that the loss is not the work of 

 some unclean spirit that has laid its hands upon the Will, 

 but the direct effect of physical disease." 

 Volition is, accordingly, that transformation of feeling into 



^ £..'j and Mind, pp. 22, 23. 



