26 ' WILLIAM JAMES ON 



V. No Conscious Dynamic Connection between the Inner and Outer Worlds. 



Now if we take this psychic fact for just what on the face of it it seems to be, namely, 

 the giving to an idea the full degree of reality it can have in and for the mind, we are 

 led to a curious view of the relations between the inner and the outer worlds. The 

 ideas, as mere representatives of possibility, seem set up midway between them to form 

 a sort of atmosphere in which Reality floats and plays. The mind can take any 

 one of these ideas and make it its reality — sustain it, adopt it, adhere to it. But 

 the mind's state will be Error, unless the outer force " backs " the same idea. If it backs 

 it, the mind is cognitive of Truth ; but whether in error, or in truth, the mind's espousal 

 of the idea is called Belief. The outer force seems in no wise constrained to back 

 the mind's adoptions, except in one single kind of case, — where the idea is that of bodily 

 movement. Here the outer force (with certain reservations) obeys and follows the 

 mind's lead, agreeing to father as it were every child of that sort which the mind may 

 conceive. And the act by which the mind thus takes the lead is called a Volition. 



The ideas backed by both parties are the Reality ; those backed by neither, or by the 

 mind alone, form a residuum, a sort of limbo or no-man's land, of wasted fancies and 

 aborted possibilities. 



But is it not obvious from this that the difference between Belief and Volition is not 

 intrinsic ? What the mind does in both cases is the same. It takes an image, and says, 

 '' so far as I am concerned, let this stand ; let it be real for me." The behavior of the 

 outer force is what makes all the difference. Generally constrained in the case of the 

 motor volition, it is independent in the case of the belief It is true that volition may be 

 impotent and belief delusive ; — but be they however never so false or powerless, by 

 their inward nature they are ejusdetn farinm, — beliefs and volitions still. 



Belief and Will are thus concerned immediately only with the relation between pos- 

 sibilities /or the mind, and realities for the mind. The notion of reality for the mind, 

 becomes thus the pivotal notion in the analysis of both. To analyze this notion itself 

 seems at present an impossible task. Professor Bain has exerted his utmost powers upon 

 it, but, to our mind, without avail ; and what J. S. Mill says^ still remains true, that when 

 we arrive at the element which makes a belief differ from a mere conception, " we 

 seem to have reached as it were, the central point of our intellectual nature, presupposed 

 and built upon in every attempt 'to explain the more recondite phenomena of our being." 



The sense of reality must then be postulated as an ultimate psychic fact. But we know 

 that it may come with effort, or without, in the theoretic as well as in the motor sphere ; 

 and the reader who has had the patience to follow our study of effort as far as this, will 

 not object to going on now to consider it in both spheres together. 



Hume said that to believe an idea, was simply to have it in a lively manner. We, on 

 our part, have seen the ideo-motor cases in which to will an idea is simply to have it. 

 But a moment's reflexion shows that such spontaneous belief a;nd will are possible only 

 where the mind's contents are at a minimum of complication. In the trance-subject's mind 



1 His edition of James Mills' "Analysis." Vol. i., p. 423. his Emotions and Will. 

 Bain's reply is in the chapter on Belief in the 3d edition of 



