WILL. 531 



FIVE TYPES OF DECISION. 



Turning now to the form of tlie decision itself, we may 

 distinguish four chief tjpes. The first may be called the 

 reasonable type. It is that of those cases in which the 

 arguments for and against a given course seem gradually 

 and almost insensibly to settle themselves in the mind and 

 to end by leaving a clear balance in favor of one alternative, 

 which alternative we then adopt without eftbrt or constraint. 

 Until this rational balancing of the books is consummated 

 we have a calm feeling that the evidence is not yet all in, 

 and this keeps action in suspense. But some day we wake 

 with the sense that we see the thing rightly, that no new 

 light will be thrown on the subject by farther delay, and 

 that the matter had better be settled noio. In this easy 

 transition from doubt to assurance we seem to ourselves 

 almost passive ; the ' reasons which decide us appearing to 

 flow in from the nature of things, and to owe nothing to 

 our will. We have, however, a perfect sense of being /ree, 

 in that we are devoid of any feeling of coercion. The con- 

 clusive reason for the decision in these cases usually is the 

 discovery that we can refer the case to a class ujDon which 

 we are accustomed to act unhesitatingly in a certain stereo- 

 typed way. It may be said in general that a great part of 

 every deliberation consists in the turning over of all the 

 possible modes of conceiving the doing or not doing of the 

 act in point. The moment we hit upon a conception which 

 lets us apply some principle of action which is a fixed and 

 stable part of our Ego, our state of doubt is at an end. 

 Persons of authority, who have to make many decisions in 

 the day, carry with them a set of heads of classification, 

 each bearing its motor consequence, and under these they 

 seek as far as possible to range each new emergency as it 

 occurs. It is where the emergency belongs to a species 

 without precedent, to which consequently no cut-and-dried 

 maxim will apply, that we feel most at a loss, and are 

 distressed at the iudeterminateness of our task. As soon, 

 however, as we see our way to a familiar classification, we 

 are at ease again. In action as in reasoning, then, the great 

 thing is the quest of the right conception. The concrete dilem- 



