53o PSYCHOLOGY. 



sive efficacy of particular motives compared with otliers. 

 It is where the normally less efficacious motive becomes 

 more efficacious and the normally more efficacious one less 

 so that actions ordinarily efibrtless, or abstinences ordi- 

 narily easy, either become impossible or are effected, if at 

 all, by the expenditure of effort. A little more description 

 will make it plainer what these cases are. 



There is a certain normal ratio in the impulsive poiver of 

 different sorts of motive, which characterizes ivhat may he called 

 ordinary healthiness of ivill, and which is departed from only 

 at exceptional times or by exceptional individuals. The 

 states of mind which normally possess the most impul- 

 sive quality are either those which represent objects of 

 passion, appetite, or emotion — objects of instinctive reac- 

 tion, in short ; or they are feelings or ideas of pleasure or of 

 pain ; or ideas which for any reason we have grown accus- 

 tomed to obey so that the habit of reacting on them is in- 

 grained ; or finally, in comparison with ideas of remoter 

 objects, they are ideas of objects present or near in space 

 and time. Compared with these various objects, all far-off 

 considerations, all highly abstract conceptions, unaccus- 

 tomed reasons, and motives foreign to the instinctive history 

 of the race, have little or no impulsive power. They prevail, 

 when they ever do prevail, tvith effort ; and the normal, as 

 distinguished from the -psbthologicail, sphere of effort is thus 

 found wherever non-instinctive motives to behavior are to rule 

 the day. 



Healthiness of will moreover requires a certain amount 

 of complication in the process which precedes the fiat or 

 the act. Each stimulus or idea, at the same time that it 

 wakens its own impulse, must arouse other ideas (associated 

 and consequential) with their impulses, and action must 

 follow, neither too slowly nor too rapidly, as the resultant 

 of all the forces thus engaged. Even when the decision is 

 very prompt, there is thus a sort of preliminary survey of 

 the field and a vision of which course is best before the 

 fiat comes. And where the will is healthy, the vision must 

 he right (Le., the motives must be on the whole in a normal 



