554 General Notes. 
acting from the simplest of motives—not free, of course, but none 
the less a remarkable property of protoplasm, conscious and 
unconscious. No inorganic machine can do this. 
What relations do these decisions bear to the amount of energy 
expended in the resulting act? A physical movement costs energy, 
nd ental act costs energy. The mental activity inci- 
dent to a decision of will costs energy, and the more per- 
fectly ratiocination is performed, the more perfectly is the 
energy consumed and the less dissipated, as heat. But does the 
decision to use the left hand, eye, or ear cost more or less than the 
decision to use those of the opposite side? Evidently not. Does 
the decision to climb a tree cost more than the decision to enter a 
hole? I venture to say that it costs a man no more to decide to 
build a house than to decide to stand a brick on end, so far as the 
act itself is concerned. is is because the act is the outcome of a 
process of ratiocination or feeling, in which the dynamics are not 
correlated to the forms of the sensations embraced under those two 
terms. The fact of anything being done for reasons indicates that 
it takes its direction from other than dynamic sources. The question 
of the decision is quite different from that of acquiring motives 0 
action. This is a more complex process, for motives are reached 
by very various routes. But even in attaining motives there can 
be = equivalency between the energy expended and the mental 
result, 
Of course it may be said that there is no separate act involved in 
a decision of will. It may be correctly said that the determination 
is simply due to the predominating pressure of the most important 
and weighty motives. Let this be accepted as true. It is conscious- 
ness, past or present, which knows which are the weighty motives. 
Like the prism which bends the course of the rays of light, what- 
- ever passes through the psychical connection between incoming an 
outgoing stimulus is determined in accordance with what it finds 
there, and it is consciousness and its residua which is responsible for 
the bending. The physiological labor is performed in acquiring the 
motives which, when acquired, perform acts of will which | at 
incommensurate with energy, both with regard to their own SS 
qualities and with regard to the objects towards which they act. 
is this property of mind which enables it to direct the movements 
of matter without violation of the law of the conservation of energy. 
This fact is of the utmost importance to philosophy and to ya 
conceptions of the universe and of the place of consciousness In 1% 
These decisions, which we term will, are common to all one 
beings, from the bottom of the scale up. Every animal w a 
selects an article of food or which rejects one, for reasons, lowly sre 
simple though they be, performs an act of will, and as 
energy, and in so far appears to be superior to the Sie 
of the conservation of energy. With the lapse 0 wie 
con 
ness, such as we see in the vegetable kingdom, acts of will prop" ay 
