580 PSYCHOLOGY. 



getlier with the power of inhibiting impulses irrelevant to 

 the ends desired, and of initiating movements contributory 

 thereto. It is the acquisition of these latter powers which 

 I mean by the education of the will in the narrower sense. 

 And it is in this sense alone that it is worth while to treat 

 the matter here.* 



Since a willed movement is a movement preceded by an 

 idea of itself, the problem of the will's education is the prob- 

 lem of how the idea of a movement can arouse the move- 

 ment itself. This, as we have seen, is a secondary kind of 

 process ; for framed as we are, we can have no a priori idea 

 of a movement, no idea of a movement which we have not 

 already performed. Before the idea can be generated, the 

 inovement must have occurred in a blind, unexpected way, 

 And left its ide?., behind. Rejiex, instinctive, or random exe- 

 cution of a movement must, in other words, precede its vol- 

 untary execution. Keflex and instinctive movements have 

 already been considered sufficiently for the purposes of this 

 book. ' Random ' movements are mentioned so as to in- 

 clude g-wast- accidental reflexes from inner causes, or 

 aaovements possibly arising from such overflow of nutri- 

 tion in special centres as Prof. Bain postulates in his ex- 

 planation of those 'spontaneous discharges' by which he 

 sets such great store in his derivation ot' the voluntary 



life.t 



Now how can the sensory process lohich a movement has 

 previously produced, discharge, ivhen excited again, into the 

 centre for the movement itself? On the movement's original 

 occurrence the motor discharge came first and the sensory 

 process second ; now in the voluntary repetition the sen- 

 sory process (excited in weak or ' ideational ' form) comes 

 first, and the motor discharge comes second. To tell how 

 this comes to pass would be to answer the problem of the 

 education of the will in physiological terms. Evidently the 

 problem is that of the formation of netv paths; and the 



*0n the education of the Will from a pedasjogic point of view, see an 

 article by G. Stanley Hall in the Princeloii Review for November 1882, 

 and some bibliographic references there contained. 



f See his Emotions and Will, ' The Will,' chap. i. I take the name of 

 random movements from Sullj^ Outlines of Psychology, p. 593. 



