570 FSTCHOLOO Y. 



bilities, we next think that A is impossible, and that B is- 

 or forthwith shall be real. lu either case a new object is 

 before our thought ; and where effort exists, it is where 

 the change from the first object to the second one is hard. 

 Our thought seems to turn in this case like a heavy door 

 on rusty hinges ; only, so far as the effort feels spontaneous, 

 it turns, not as if by some one helping, but as if by an 

 inward activity, born for the occasion, of its own. 



The psychologists who discussed ' the muscular sense ' 

 at the international congress at Paris in 1889 agreed at the 

 end that they needed to come to a better understanding 

 in regard to this appearance of internal activity at the 

 moment when a decision is made. M. Fouillee, in an article 

 which I find more interesting and suggestive than coherent 

 or conclusive,* seems to resolve our sense of activity into 

 that of our very existence as thinking entities. At least so 

 I translate his words.f But we saw in Chapter X how hard 

 it is to lay a verifying finger plainly u23on the thinking 

 process as such, and to distinguish it from certain objects 

 of the stream. M. Fouillee admits this ; but I do not think 

 he fully realizes how strong would be the position of a man 

 who should suggest (see Vol. I. p. 301) that the feeling of 

 moral activity itself which accompanies the advent of cer- 

 tain ' objects ' before the mind is nothing but certain other 

 objects, — constrictions, namely, in the brows, eyes, throat, 

 and breathing apparatus, present then, but absent from 

 other pulses of subjective change. Were this the truth, 

 then a part, at any rate, of the activity of which we become 

 aware in effort would seem merely to be that of our body ; 

 and many thinkers would probably thereupon conclude 

 that this ' settles the claims ' of inner activity, and dismisses 

 the whole notion of such a thing as a superfluity in psy- 

 chological science. 



I cannot see my way to so extreme a view ; even al- 

 though I must repeat the confession made on pp. 296-7 of 

 Yol. I, that I do not fully understand how we come to our 

 unshakable belief that thinking exists as a special kind of 



* ' Le Sentiment de I'Effort, et la Conscience de I'Action,' in Revue- 

 Philosophique, xxvni. 561. t P- 5"7. 



