WILL. 601 



If I will to utter tlie word Pavl rather tlian Peter, it is 

 the thought of my voice falling on my ear, and of certain 

 muscular feelings in my tongue, lips, and larynx, which 

 guide the utterance. All these are incoming feelings, and 

 between the thought of them, by which the act is mentally 

 specified with all possible completeness, and the act itself, 

 there is no room for any third order of mental phenome- 

 non. There is indeed the Jiat, the element of consent, 

 or resolve that the act shall ensue. This, doubtless, to 

 the reader's mind, as to my own, constitutes the essence of 

 the voluntariness of the act. This Jlat will be treated of 

 in detail farther on. It may be entirely neglected here, 

 for it is a constant coefficient, affecting all voluntary 

 actions alike, and incapable of serving to distinguish them. 

 No one will pretend that its quality varies according as the 

 right arm, for example, or the left is used. 



An anticipatory image, then, of tJie sensorial consequences 

 of a movement, plus {on certain occasions) tlie fiat that these 

 consequences shall become actual, is the only psychic state 

 which introspection lets us discern as the forerunner of our 

 voluntary axits. There is no introspective evidence what- 

 ever of any still later or concomitant feeling attached to 

 the efferent discharge. The various degrees of difficulty with 

 which the fiat is given form a complication of the utmost 

 importance, to be discussed farther on. 



Now the reader may still shake his head and say : 

 " But can you seriously mean that all the wonderfully 

 exact adjustment of my action's strength to its ends is not 

 a matter of outgoing iuuervatiou ? Here is a caunou-ball, 

 and here a pasteboard box : instantly and accurately I 

 lift each from tlie table, the ball not refusing to rise 

 because my iunervation was too weak, the box not flj'iug 

 abruptly into the air because it was too strong. Could 

 representations of the movement's different sensory effects 

 in the two cases be so delicatel}" foreshadowed in the 

 mind? or being there, is it credible that the}' should, 

 all unaided, so delicately graduate the stimulation of the 

 unconscious motor centres to their Avork ? " Even so ! 

 I reply to both queries. We have a most extremely deli- 

 cate foreshadowing of the sensory effects. "Why else the 



