THE FEELING OF EFFORT. 31 



brought about by the idea shoving the molecules of the ganglionic matter sideways from 

 their course, well and good ! Only we had better assume ourselves imconscious of the 

 dynamism. We are unconscious of the molecules as such, and of our lateral push as such. 

 Why should we be conscious of the " force " as such, by which the molecules resist the 

 push ? They are one thing, and the consciousness which they subserve is always an idea 

 of another thing. The only resistance which the force of consciousness feels or can feel, 

 is the resistance which the idea Tnakes to being consented to as real. 



Conclusions. 



1. Muscular effort, properly so called, and mental effort properly so called, must be 

 distinguished. What is commonly known as " muscular exertion," is a compound of the 

 two. 



2. The only feelings and ideas connected with muscular motion are feelings and ideas 

 of it as effected. Muscular effort proper, is a sum of feelings in afferent nerve tracts, 

 resulting from motion being effected. 



3. The pretended feeling of efferent innervation does not exist — the evidence for 

 it drawn from paralysis of single eye muscles, vanishing when we take the position of the 

 sound eye into account. 



4. The philosophers who have located the human sense of force and spontaneity in 

 the nexus between the volition and the muscular contraction, making it thus join the inner 

 and the outer worlds, have gone astray. 



5. The point of application of the volitional effort always lies within the inner 

 world, being an idea or representation of afferent sensations of some sort. From its 

 intrinsic nature or from the presence of other ideas, this representation may spontaneously 

 tend to lapse from vivid and stable consciousness. Mental effort may then accompany 

 its maintenance. That (being once maintained) it should by the connection between 

 its cerebral seat and other bodily parts, give rise to movements in the so-called 

 voluntary muscles, or in glands, vessels, and viscera, is a subsidiary and secondary matter, 

 with which the psychic effort has nothing immediately to do. 



6. Attention, belief, affirmation and motor volition are thus four names for an identical 

 process, incidental to the conflict of ideas alone, the survival of one in spite of the 

 opposition of others. 



7. The surviving idea is invested with a sense of reality which cannot at present be 

 further analyzed. 



8. The question whether, when its survival involves the feeling of effort, this feeling 

 is determined in advance or absolutely ambiguous and matter of chance as far as 

 all the other data are concerned, is the real question of the freedom of the will, and 

 explains the strange intimateness of the feeling of effort to our personality. 



9. To single out the sense of muscular resistance as the " force sense " which alone can 

 make us acquainted with the reality of an outward world is an error. We cognize outer 

 reality by every sense. The muscular makes us aware of its hardness and pressure, 

 just as other afferent senses make us aware of its other qualities. K they are too 

 anthropomorphic to be true, so is it also. 



