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54 
VOLITION. 
effort in its own direction. I cannot find that anything more 
than this is involved in the idea. Conflicting motives appear 
only in the very highest class of voluntary actions ; in those 
which follow a certain period of reflection and deliberation, 
and which, to pre-evolutional psychology, were the chosen 
types of volition. But the embryology of “Will” is more 
instructive than its mature development. 
Even the “ conscious mental effort,” which may seem so 
trivial an expression to denote the awful majesty with which 
“Will” has been invested, is sometimes so slight as to be 
barely perceptible. The boundary between volition and 
automatism is very vaguely defined. I set out to walk; the 
first step is not automatic in the sense in which the succeeding 
steps are automatic, and yet the “ conscious mental effort ” 
is reduced to a minimum. Still it is there ; and if my foot 
happens to be sore, the effort will be much more distinctly 
felt, and will increase with each step, instead of ceasing to 
exist. If my mind is passive, and open to every trivial 
fleeting suggestion, then its processes are effortless ; but 
directly I begin to attend to anything there is a conscious 
effort, which corresponds to an actual nervous tension ; but 
if the subject is interesting to me, and is one with which I am 
familiar, the effort may disappear from consciousness after 
the first moment. We understand a speaker in our own 
language without effort; his meaning comes to us whether 
we will or no; but there is always a certain effort required to 
follow a speaker in a language not perfectly familiar to us. 
But instead of describing voluntary actions, I shall begin 
by very briefly classifying involuntary ones, not only because 
they form by far the larger division, but also because their 
characteristic physiological conditions are more positive, more 
definite, and hence more easily understood. 
Involuntary actions fall naturally into two great classes, 
the automatic and the impulsive. 
Automatism implies the existence of a more or less com¬ 
plete nervous and muscular mechanism, which renders the 
exercise of certain functions easy, and, under given circum¬ 
stances, inevitable. The current of nerve-energy always flows 
in the direction of least resistance; in the case of automatic 
actions, there is no perceptible resistance along a certain 
definite line, while all other lines are more or less blocked. 
Lowest of all are the primary automatic actions, which 
have nothing to do with consciousness, and are performed 
perfectly by the new-born infant. These include breathing, 
coughing, sucking, the organic functions, and various reflex 
actions depending upon the medulla oblongata, the spinal 
