1877.] ORIGIN OF THE WILL. 449 
balanced, the resultant preponderance being expressed in the act. 
It will be easily seen that while this statement is true in regard to 
cases where the elements of the calculation are known, it is not true 
where any or all of them are unknown. The difference in the two 
cases is very great. All likes and dislikes are based upon experi- 
ence or knowledge; and when there is no knowledge, likes and dis- . 
likes cannot be said to exist. Since likes and dislikes constitute 
motives, where the former are wanting the latter are also wanting. 
Whatever inducements are presented from beyond the field of knowl- 
edge, are derived from the imagination, and are in self conscious 
minds relatively weak as motives, or absolutely without weight. 
They might. be regarded as motives in embryo, ready to become 
such onthe acquisition of a corresponding experience. The imag- 
ination can prefigure one alternative as well as another, in a direc- 
tion where experience is wanting, and might indeed be said under 
such circumstances to have no existence, and the expression, “I 
can’t imagine,” be thought to have foundation in fact. The influ- 
ence of such a guide is not imperative, and raises no obstacle to the 
origin of a new feature of consciousness by an act of choosing, when 
the pressure to act at all, is sufficiently great. 
There is, perhaps, but one situation of the mind where the prés- | 
sure of feeling is strong enough, and predication and imagination 
sufficiently excluded, to develop a will which shall create motives 
rather than obey them. This is in the cases where self-interest is 
weighed in the balance against the interest or good of other people. 
Here the feelings are most severely pressed, and the future results 
to self most uncertain. Self-sacrifice may be beneficial to self, or it 
may not: one may be the gainer by the general prosperity, or he 
may be the loser. Morality may promise future good to the com- 
munity, but why sacrifice self for the community? Gratitude for 
services rendered is an uncertain anticipation. Man’s most limited 
knowledge and greatest inability in predication is in the field of hu- 
man motives and actions, and chiefly in respect to those which be- 
long to his moral feelings. As already remarked the complication 
in this direction is so great, as to produce the effect of novelty: so 
that man, come into possession of an intellect which is the product 
of ages of development, finds before him a new field of his own 
making where his inherited powers fail. 
This is the field where the most momentous decisions possible 
in human life are made. Since questions of right and wrong re- 
