206 



any sucli volition as constituted the crime in this case. The 

 very thoughts and feelings that came next to the volition 

 might have all been there, and yet no such volition ; but once 

 that, and all else followed. It was the absolute commence- 

 ment'^ of the act of crime. 



Writers on the side of true will are often rendered helpless 

 by false notions of motive. Mr. P. P. AUexander gives us a 

 notable instance of this. When arguing against Mr. Stuart 

 Mill in favour of freedom of will, he admits, and even repeat- 

 edly insists, that it is an inexplicable mystery ! He does 

 wor«e still. He says, The motive, considered as an act, 

 must depend on some previous motive, by which it in turn was 

 determined ; and so through a regressive series, in which 

 freedom fleets for ever, or steps back from us, and is never to 

 be caught and detained.''^* It is surely absurd to speak of a 

 motive as an act, and equally so to speak of an act of will as 

 determined by anything. The latter is as much a contra- 

 diction in terms as ^' a free slave.-'-' Motives are simply 

 objects of thought. They may be considered externally in 

 relation to the soul, or internally. A shilling is a motive to 

 a lad, if offered to him, when his ^''volitions-'-' are required for 

 a short time. This is neither a feeling nor a thought, if you 

 take it externally j it is just a shilling. In the soul of the 

 lad, psychologically,^-' it is an object of thought. Professor 

 Bain would say that the lad is conscious of the shilling. It 

 probably awakens desire, and brings the lad into a favourable 

 state of consciousness for the volitions in request, and, as a 

 consequence, their muscular results. But it is in the very 

 essence of these volitions that they shall be determined by 

 nothing but the lad himself. The lad is just as free to will in 

 the very opposite direction to the wishes of those who re- 

 quire his services, as if the shilling had never been offered. 



Mr. Herbert Spencer says that the ^' passing of an ideal 

 motor change into a real one is that which we distinguish as 

 Will.^'t I decidedly object to being included in that we.-'* 

 • An ideal motor change are to me words without meaning. 

 All ideal states have the nature of thought, not of volition ; 

 and thought is just as different from volition as seeing is from 

 walking, or indeed as any state can be difi'erent from another. 

 Ideal movement is like melodious sugar, so far as I can make 

 anything of the language. Motor change, too, is muscular — 

 not ideal. Volition is not motion, nor is it necessarily con- 

 nected with any motor change. The volition which in one 



^ Mill and Carhjle.hj P. P. AUexander, 1866, pp. 18, Id. 

 t Principles of Psychology, p. 261. 



