528 PSYCHOLOGY. ' 



sion of the breatli are movements as much as an act of 

 locomotion is. A king's breath slays as well as an assas- 

 sin's blow ; and the outpouring of those currents which the 

 magic imponderable streaming of our ideas accompanies 

 need not always be of an explosive or otherwise physically 

 conspicuous kind. 



ACTION AFTER DELIBE3RATION. 



We are now in a position to describe what happens in 

 deliberate action, or whsn the mind is the seat of many ideas 

 related to each other in antagonistic or in favorable ways.* 

 One of the ideas is that of an act. By itself this idea would 

 prompt a movement ; some of the additional considerations, 

 however, which are present to consciousness block the 

 motor discharge, whilst others, on the contrary, solicit it to 

 take place. The result is that peculiar feeling of inward 

 unrest known as indecision. Fortunately it is too familiar 

 to need description, for to describe it would be impossible. 

 As long as it lasts, with the various objects before the at- 

 tention, we are said to deliberate ; and when finally the orig- 

 inal suggestion either prevails and makes the movement 

 take place, or gets definitively quenched by its antagonists, 

 we are said to decide, or to utter our voluntary fiat in favor of 

 one or the other course. The reinforcing and inhibiting 

 ideas meanwhile are termed the reasons or motives by which 

 the decision is brought about. 



The process of deliberation contains endless degrees of 

 complication. At every moment of it our consciousness 

 is of an extremely complex object, namely the exist- 

 ence of the whole set of motives and their conflict, as ex- 

 plained on p. 275 of Vol. I. Of this object, the totality of 

 which is realized more or less dimly all the while, certain 

 parts stand out more or less sharply at one moment in the 



* I use the common phraseology here for mere convenience' sake. The 

 reader who has made himself acquainted with Chapter IX will always under- 

 stand, when he hears of many ideas simultaneously present to the mind 

 and acting upon each other, that what is really meant is a mind with one 

 idea before it, of many objects, purposes, reasons, motives, related to each 

 other, some in a harmonious and some in an antagonistic way. With this 

 caution I shall not hesitate from time to time to fall into the popular 

 Lockian speech, erroneous though 1 believe it to be. 



