288 PSYCIIOLOOY. 



longing for more flowery ways, to keep the foot nnflincli- 

 ingly on the arduous path, these are characteristic ethical 

 energies. But more than these ; for these but deal with 

 tlie means of compassing interests already felt by the man 

 to be supreme. The ethical energy par excellence has to go 

 farther and choose which interest out of several, equally 

 coercive, shall become supreme. The issue here is of the 

 utmost pregnancy, for it decides a man's entire career. 

 When he debates, Shall I commit this crime? choose that 

 profession ? accept that office, or marry this fortune ? — his 

 choice really lies between one of several equally possible 

 future Characters. What he shall become is fixed by the 

 conduct of this moment. Schopenhauer, who enforces his 

 determinism by the argument that with a given fixed charac- 

 ter only one reaction is possible under given circumstances, 

 forgets that, in these critical ethical moments, what con- 

 sciously seems to be in question is the complexion of the 

 character itself. The problem wutli the man is less wdiat 

 act he shall now choose to do, than what being he shall 

 now resolve to become. 



Looking back, then, over this review^ we see that the mind 

 is at every stage a theatre of simultaneous possibilities. 

 Consciousness consists in the comparison of these with each 

 other, the selection of some, and the suppression of the rest 

 by the reinforcing and inhibiting agency of attention. The 

 highest and most elaborated mental products are filtered 

 from the data chosen by the faculty next beneath, out of 

 the mass offered by the faculty below that, Avhich mass in 

 turn was sifted from a still larger amount of yet simpler 

 material, and so on. The mind, in short, works on the 

 data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block 

 of stone. In a sense the statue stood there from eternity. 

 But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and 

 the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one 

 from the rest. Just so the Avorld of each of us, howsoever 

 different our several views of it may be, all lay embedded 

 in the primordial chaos of sensations, which gave the mere 

 matter to the thought of all of us indifferently. We may, 

 if we like, by our reasonings unwind things back to that 



