22 WILLIAM JAMES ON 



he, can he, obey it ? Is it not better just to let his aching body 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 volitional fiat demands great effort though the 

 muscular exertion be insignificant, e. g., the getting out of bed and bathing oneself on a 

 cold morning. 



Finally, we may have the fiat in all its rigor, with no motor representation what- 

 ever involved, or one so remote as not to count directly at all in the mental motivation. 



Of the former class are all resolutions to be patient rather than to act. Such a one we 

 have to make in the dentist's chair : The alternatives are a state of inward writhing, and 

 mental swearing, coupled with spasmodic respiration, and all sorts of irregularly antag- 

 onistic muscular contractions — a state of shrinking and protest in a word, on the one 

 hand; and on the other a state of muscular relaxation and free breathing, a sort of 

 mental welcoming of the pain, and the elated consciousness that be it never so savage, 

 we can stand it. This is a state of consent, and the passage from the former state to it, 

 not the passage the other way, is in this instance the one requiring the fiat, and char- 

 acterized by the mental " click " of resolve. 



As examples of the last class, take Regulus returning to Carthage, the priest who 

 decides to break with his church, the girl who makes up her mind to live single with her 

 ideal, rather than accept the good old bachelor who is her only suitor, the embezzler who 

 fixes a certain day on which to make public confession, the deliberate suicide, yea the 

 wretch who after long hesitation, resolves that he will put arsenic into his wife's cup. 

 These pass through one moment which like a knife-edge parts all their past from all their 

 future, but which leads to no immediate muscular consequences at all. 



Now if we analyze this great variety of cases, we shall find that the knife-edge moment 

 where it exists, has the same identical constitution in all. It is literally Sifiat, a state of 

 mind which consents, agrees, or is willing, that certain represented experiences shaU con- 

 tinue to be, or should now for the first time become, part of Reality. The consent comes 

 after hesitation. The hesitation came because something made us imagine another alter- 

 native. When both alternatives are agreeable, as in the intoxication of the mountain morn- 

 ing, or the liberum arbitrium indiffer entice, the hesitation is but momentary ; for either 

 course is better than delay, and the one which lies nearest when the sense that we are 

 uselessly delaying becomes pungent, is the one which discharges into act — thus no men- 

 tal tension has time to arise. 



But in other cases both alternatives are images of mixed good and evil. Whatever 

 is done has to be done against some inhibitory agency, whether of intrinsic unpleas- 

 antness in the doing, or of represented odiousness of the doing's fruits : the fiat has to 

 occur against resistance. Volition then comes hand in hand with the sentiment of effort, 

 and the proper problem of this essay lies before us. 



What does the effort seem to do ? To bring the decisive volition. What is this 

 volition ? The stable victory of an idea, although it may be disagreeable, the permanent 

 suppression of an idea although it may be immediately and urgently pleasant. 



What do we mean by " victory " ? The survival in the mind in such form as to consti- 

 tute unwavering contemplation, expectation, assent, or affirmation. What do we mean by 



