WILL. 567 



lei themselves go, and cannot gather themselves up again without prep- 

 aration. Lord Erskine relates the story of a man who brought an 

 action against Dr. Muuro for confining him without cause. He under- 

 went the most rigid examination by the counsel for the defendant with- 

 out discovering any aj^pearance of insanity, till a gentleman asked him 

 about a princess with whom he corresponded in cherry-juice, and he 

 became instantly insane."* 



To sum it all up in a word, the terminus of the psychologic 

 col process in volition, the point to which the ivill is directly ap- 

 plied, is alivays an idea. There are at all times some ideas 

 from wliicli "we shy away like frightened horses the moment 

 we get a glimpse of their forbidding profile upon the 

 threshold of our thought. The only resistance ivhich our 

 icill can possibly experience is the resistance ivhich such an idea 

 offers to being attended to at all. To attend to it is the voli- 

 tional act, and the only inw^ard volitional act which we ever 

 perform. 



I have put the thing in this ultra-simple way because I 



want more than anything else to emphasize the fact that 

 volition is primarily a relation, not between our Self and 



* The Duality of the Mind, pp. 141-2. Another case from the same 

 book (p, 123): " A gentleman of respectable birth, excellent education, 

 and ample fortune, engaged in one of the highest departments of trade, 

 . . . and being induced to embark in one of the plausible speculations of 

 the day . . . was utterly ruined. Like other men he could bear a sudden 

 overwhelming reverse better than a long succession of petty misfortunes, 

 and the way in which he conducted himself on the occasion met with un- 

 bounded admiration from his friends. He withdrew, however, into rigid 

 seclusion, and being no longer able to exercise the generosity and indulge 

 the benevolent feelings which had formed the happiness of his life, made 

 himself a substitute for them by daydreams, gradually fell into a state of 

 UTitable despondency, from which he only gradually recovered with the 

 loss of reason. He now fancied himself possessed of immense wealth, and 

 gave without ?tint his imaginary riches. He has ever since been under 

 gentle restraint, and leads a life not merely of happiness, but of bliss ; con- 

 verses rationally, reads the newspapers, where every tale of distress attracts 

 his notice, and being furnished with an abundant supply of blank checks, 

 he fills up one of them with a munificent sum, sends it off to the sufferer, 

 and sits down to his dinner with a happy conviction that he has earned the 

 right to a little indulgence in the pleasures of the table ; and yet, on a 

 serious conversation with one of his old friends, he is quite conscious of 

 his real position, but the conviction is so exquisitely painful ih&i JiewiU 

 not let himself believe it." 



