438 METAPHYSICAL EVOLUTION. 



etc. ; and the Vvilling here is necessary ; but whether we yield to 

 the impulse of the benevolent, reverential, or musical faculty, and 

 indulge therein their various willings, is not so ; here we are free, 

 and can yield or abstain as we list." This passage renders it the 

 more clear that the latter part of Locke's statement, in which he 

 defines freedom, is that in which he really refers to the will as 

 generally understood ; and Dr. Willis's assertion of the existence 

 of our ability 'Ho yield or abstain as we list," grants all that the 

 advocate of 'Hhe freedom of the will" could desire. 



The modern automatic school only avoid discarding the term 

 will altogether by using it in the sense of Locke's definition. 

 They make it merely the conscious mental activity that precedes 

 the act ; the direction of that activity being necessary in its char- 

 acter ; i. e., the result of impinging stimuli. In other words, on 

 the automatic theory, the spontaneous activity of the body is 

 directed or deflected by stimuli, whose ultimate form depends on 

 the existing mental machinery through which they pass. There 

 is avowedly no room for a self-determination in such a process, 

 and its existence is therefore denied by this school. Inasmuch as 

 a faculty of self-determination is what is here understood by the 

 term will, and the question in the present article is whether there 

 be or be not such a faculty, the inquiry to which we address our- 

 S3lves is whether a human will exist or not. Says Dr. Carpenter : * 

 '' The psychologist may throw himself into the deepest waters of 

 speculative inquiry in regard to the relation between his mind 

 and its bodily instrument, provided that he trusts to the inherent 

 buoyancy of that great fact of consciousness that zue have within 

 us a self'determiiiing poiuer which we call will, " The existence of 

 such a faculty is in these words assumed by Dr. Carpenter, but I 

 have looked in vain in his writings for a demonstration of the 

 truth of this position. The same is true of the works of many 

 other metaphysicians. 



Will may be considered in two aspects : first, as a control over 

 the origin of mental or bodily movements ; and second, as a con- 

 trol over the direction which those movements take. The latter 

 case is the one chiefly considered here, as the one involved in cus- 

 tomary definitions of human will. 



It need scarcely be added that the concept will is an abstrac- 

 tion from supposed special exhibitions of it, and represents a sup- 

 posed mental property. 



* " Mental Physiology," p. 28. 



