WILL. 495 



untary acts there is nothing else, in the mind hut the Tcincesthetic^ 

 idea, thus defined, of ivhat the act is to be. 



A powerful tradition in Psychology will have it that, 

 something additional to these images of passive sensation, 

 is essential to the mental determination of a voluntary act*. 

 There must, of course, be a special current of energy going 

 out from the brain into the appropriate muscles duriug the 

 act ; and this outgoing current (it is supposed) must have- 

 in each particular case a feeling sui generis attached to it, or 

 else (it is said) the mind could never tell which particular 

 current, the current to this muscle or the current to that one, 

 was the right one to use. This feeling of the current of out- 

 going energy has received from Wundt the name of the 

 feeling of innervation. I disbelieve in its existence, and must: 

 proceed to criticise the notion of it, at what I fear may ta 

 some prove tedious length. 



At first sight there is something extremely plausible in 

 the feeling of innervation. The passive feelings of move- 

 ment with which we have hitherto been dealing all come 

 after the movement's performance. But wherever a move- 

 ment is difficult and precise, we become, as a matter of fact, 

 acutely aware in advance of the amount and direction of 

 energy which it is to involve. One has only to play ten- 

 pins or billiards, or throw a ball, to catch his will in the 

 act, as it were, of balancing tentatively its possible efforts^ 

 and ideally rehearsing various muscular contractions nearly- 

 correct, until it gets just the right one before it, when it 

 says ' Now go ! ' This premonitory weighing feels so much 

 like a succession of tentative sallyings forth of power into 

 the outer world, followed by correction just in time to avoid 

 the irrevocable deed, that the notion that outgoing nerve- 

 currents rather than mere vestiges of former passive sensi- 

 bility accompany it, is a most natural one to entertain. 



We find accordingly that most authors have taken the= 

 existence of feelings of innervation as a matter of course. 

 Bain, Wundt, Helmholtz, and Mach defend them most 

 explicitly. But in spite of the authority which such writers 

 deservedly wield, I cannot help thinking that they are in 

 this instance wrong, — that the discharge into the motor 

 nerves is insentient, and that all our ideas of movement, in- 



