208 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 
THE TEMPORAL CONDITIONS OF VOLUNTARY 
CONTROL. 
BY GEORGE S. SNODDY. 
The investigations which form the basis of the report 
I shall give today have been in progress for the last five 
years and have been performed largely in the laboratory 
of experimental psychology at Clark University. Some 
experiments in continuation of the original investigation 
have been performed in the laboratory of the University of 
Utah. This paper will attempt to abstract certain portions 
of the results which I believe will be interesting and intelli- 
gible to a group rather more interested in general science 
than in the subtle points of psychological theory and ex- 
perimentation. 
Before we attempt to present the point of view develop- 
ed in these experiments, a few statements about the field 
of voluntary control in general, would seem to be of value 
in clearing up the meaning and purpose of the investigation. 
In the first place voluntary control has not been submitted 
to very careful experimentation; which state of affairs is 
largely due to two conditions. On the one hand, psycholo- 
gists have not, until very recently, found it necessary to 
learn very much about the conditions of control, and, on the 
other hand, when they did resort to experiment, they were 
often misled into unprofitable theories and speculations. 
When modern industry turned to the psychological labora- 
tories for aid in the securing ways and means by which they 
could get more efficient service out of workmen and at the 
same time make the life of the employee longer and more 
enjoyable, experimental psychologists were stimulated to 
attempt some fairly well directed experiments in this field. 
Prior to this time, however, experimental efforts were in 
part suppressed and in part misdirected by the prevailing 
conception of will which is the heritage of psychology as 
well as of common life. 
The gist of the popular or common sense conception 
of will is most clearly seen by redirecting our attention to 
