The Will. 755 



the muscle force when liberated is probably from six to ten times as 

 great as the cerebral energy which touches it off. And so for the same 

 reason we may infer that the cerebral action, after attention is aroused, 

 is of far greater energy than the stimulus from the environment which 

 sufficed to arouse the attention. 



We are not conscious of willing to contract any muscle. We move 

 our limbs long before we know that such things as muscles exist. There 

 is a disappearance of the will after it is formed, and in disappearing it 

 is succeeded by a nervous motor current which stimulates the contrac- 

 tion of some muscles. But of this action we are not conscious. We do 

 not know what muscle is being contracted from any subjective sensation 

 we may have of it. If we find out, we do it objectively, through the ex- 

 ternal senses, by experimental inquiry and by analogical inference. 

 When the nervous stimulation disappears in muscle contraction, the re- 

 sult appears to us in the new position of the limb which has been moved. 

 Our knowledge of this, too, is gained objectively through the musclar 

 sense or the optical sense ; we feel it or see it in its new position. 



We thus trace the stimulating energy from the external sense organs 

 through the afferent nerves into the internal sense organs, and through 

 these into the motorial centers, thence through the efferent nerves to the 

 limbs. Our consciousness, such as it is, of each step taken in this chain 

 of sequences, is in each and every case subsequent to the fact. We be- 

 come aware of each stage of the progress of the stimulation after it is 

 over, not before ; that is to say, of each of the stages of which we ever 

 become aware, for of some of them we get no sensation or other direct 

 knowledge. 



( 1 ) We have no sensation of the first impact of the stimulus upon 

 the sense organ. 



( 2 ) We have no sensation of the passage of the stimulus up the af- 

 ferent nerve to the sensory ganglia or to the cortical organs of the cere- 

 brum. (It divides and goes to both destinations, fig. 354.) 



(3) The agitation of the cortical organ constitutes or involves sen- 

 sation, and here we get the first sensation of the fact that such a stimu- 

 lus has struck us. We call this an objective sensation. The stimulus, 

 upon reaching the cortical organs, disturbs the equilibrium of the polar 

 tensions there, and sets up a variet} 7 of movements, working toward a 

 readjustment which shall include the new stimulation. 



(4) We may get sensations of these processes, and we name them 

 variously, as perception, comparison, discrimination, reasoning, emo- 

 tion ; and following these, desire, determination, and, lastly, will. 



( 5 ) After the formation of a will, so much of our stimulus as has 

 been engaged in it, disappears with the will, and with it disappears sen- 

 sation of its subsequent performance which is now motorial and effer- 



