We cannot affirm the distinction between volition and action, save in force and as a proof of a dualistic metaphysical view, of an abstract spiritualism, with matter as being and substance for correlative term. But this point of view is eliminated by the idealist view, which recognizes only one unique substance, and that as spirituality and subjectivity. Without, however, now basing ourselves upon such considerations, and according to the order that we follow, applying ourselves to the examination of the facts of consciousness, we affirm that it would be impossible to adduce one volitional fact that should not be also a movement called physical. Those volitional acts, which according to some philosophers are consumed within the will and are in that way distinguished from external facts, are a phantasm. Every volition, be it never so small, sets the organism in motion and produces what are called external facts. The purpose is already an effectuation, a beginning of combat; indeed, simple desire is not without effects, if it be possible to destroy oneself with desires, as is in effect maintained On the other hand, it is not possible to indicate actions without volitions. Instinctive or habitual acts that have become instinctive are adduced; but these too are not set in motion, save by the will, not one by one, in their particulars, but as a whole, in the same way as a single hand sets in motion a most complicated machine which a thousand hands have previously constructed. There cannot then be volition without action, nor action without volition, as there cannot be intuition without expression or expression without intuition.
Illusions as to the distinction between these terms.
It is well, however, to indicate one among the many sources from which is derived the illusion of this distinction and separation, effectively inexistent. A volitional act, which is a process of some duration, may be interrupted and substituted for other volitional acts; it may declare itself again and again begin its work (although this will always be more or less modified), and this may give occasion to new interruptions and new beginnings. It seems that in this way the will stands on one side, as something formed and definite, and that on the other execution pursues its way and is subject to the most varied accidents. But volition and execution proceed with equal and indeed with one single step. What we will we execute; the volition changes as the execution changes. In the same way, when we are engaged upon a work of art, on a long poem for instance, the illusion arises of an abstract conception or plan, which the poet carries out as he versifies. But every poet knows that a poem is not created from an abstract plan, that the initial poetical image is not without rhythm and verse, and that it does not need rhythm and verse applied to it afterwards. He knows that it is in reality a primitive intuition-expression, in which all is determined and nothing is determined, and what has been already intuified is already expressed, and what will afterwards be expressed will only afterwards be intuified. The initial intuition is certainly not an abstract plan, but a living and vital germ; and so is the volitional act.
Distinction between action and succession or event.
When, therefore, it is affirmed that a volition is truly such, only when it produces effects, or that a volition is to be judged by its results, it is impossible not to assent, as we assent that an unexpressed expression or an unversified verse is neither an expression nor a verse. But in this signification only, because those propositions have sometimes assumed another, which on the contrary it is needful resolutely to reject. This is that in them action (will-action) has been confused with succession or event. Now, if volition coincide with action, it does not and cannot coincide with event.
Volition and event.
It cannot coincide, because what is action and what is event? Action is the act of the one; event, is the act of the whole: will is of man, event of God. Or, to put this proposition in a less imaginary form, the volition of the individual is as it were the contribution that he brings to the volitions of all the other beings in the universe, event the aggregate of all the wills and the answer to all the questions. In this answer is included and absorbed the will itself of the individual, which we have taken and contemplated alone. If, then, we wished to make the volition depend upon event, action upon succession, we should be undertaking to make one fact depend upon another fact, of which the first is a constituent part, placing among the antecedents of action what is its consequence, among things given those to be created, the unknown with the known, the future in the past.
Successful and unsuccessful actions: criticism.
The concepts of actions that are successful and of those that are unsuccessful, of actions that become fully concrete in the fact, and of those that become concrete only in part or not at all, are therefore inexact. No action (not even those that are empirically said to be most successful, not even the most obvious and ordinary) succeeds fully, in the sense that it alone constitutes the fact: every action diverges by necessity and by definition from succession or happening. If I return home every day by the usual road, my return home is every day new and different from that which might have been, imagined. This often amounts to a diversity of particulars which we may call of least importance, but which yet are not for that reason the less real. On the other hand, no action, however vain it be held (if it be action and not velleity of action and intrinsic contradiction, or by as much as it is action and not imagination and contradiction), passes without trace and without result.
If any action could be rendered altogether vain, this same rendering vain would invade all other actions and no fact would happen.