562 PSTCHOLOGY. 



our purely theoretic beliefs. We saw in effect in the ap- 

 propriate chapter, how in the last resort belief means only 

 a peculiar sort of occupancy of the mind, and relation to 

 the self felt in the thing believed ; and we know in the case 

 of many beliefs how constant an effort of the attention is 

 required to keep them in this situation and protect them 

 from displacement by contradictory ideas.* (Compare 

 above, p. 321.) 



Effort of attention is thus the essential phenomenon of 

 ivill.f Every reader must know by his own experience that 

 this is so, for every reader must have felt some fiery pas- 

 sion's grasp. What constitutes the difficulty for a man 

 laboring under an unwise passion of acting as if the passion 



* Both resolves and beliefs have of course immediate motor conse- 

 quences of a quasi-emotional sort, changes of breathing, of attitude, in- 

 ternal speech movements, etc,; but these movements are not the objects 

 resolved on or believed. The movements in common volition are the ob- 

 jects Avilled. 



f This volitional effort pure and simple must be carefully distinguished 

 from the muscular effort with which it is usually confounded. The latter 

 consists of all those peripheral feelings to which a muscular ' exertion ' 

 may give rise. These feelings, whenever they are massive and the body is 

 not ' fresh,' are rather disagreeable, especially when accompanied by stopped 

 breath, congested head, bruised skin of fingers, toes, or shoulders, and 

 strained joints. And it is only as thus disagreeable that the mind must 

 make its volitional effort in stably representing their reality and conse- 

 quently bringing it about. That they happen to be made real by muscular 

 activity is a purely accidental circumstance. A soldier standing still to be 

 fired at expects disagreeable sensations from his muscular passivity. The 

 action of his will, in sustaining the expectation, is identical with that 

 required for a painful muscular effort. What is hard for both i?, facing an 

 idea as real. 



Where much muscular effort is not needed or where the ' freshness ' ia 

 verj^ great, the volitional effort is not required to sustain the idea of move- 

 ment, which comes then and stays in virtue of association's simpler laws. 

 More commonly, however, muscular effort involves volitional effort as 

 well. Exhausted with fatigue and wet and watching, the sailor on a 

 wreck throws himself down to rest. But hardly are his limbs fairly 

 relaxed, when the order ' To the pumps ! ' again sounds in his ears. Shall 

 he, can he, obey it ? Is it not better just to let his aching ])ody lie, and let 

 the ship go down if she will? So he lies on, till, -with a desperate heave 

 of the will, at last he staggers to his legs, and to his task again. Again, 

 there are instances where the fiat demands great volitional effort though 

 the muscular exertion be insignificant, e.g., the getting out of bed and 

 bathing one's self on a cold morning. 



