In the training of animals, a hastening process is resorted to, which well exemplifies the difficulties in the early education of the will. In breaking a horse, the whip and the curb form the earliest instrumentality. The animal must still commence moving of its own accord. The business is to guide the spontaneity into definite channels, in consistency with the law of the will, and to connect all the various desired movements with language and signs, by whose means they can always be brought into play. When the colt under discipline is moving in the desired pace, it is allowed to go on without molestation or hindrance; when it deviates in any way, it is made to feel the pain of the whip or other check; this, by the law of pain, abates the existing movements; and if the abatement is the thing sought, the end is gained. The application may, however, be such as to quicken the movements by the smarting stimulus; an effect both exceptional and uncertain, and of use as causing a diversion of pace, out of which may come the movement desired. The surest agency of control, however, in the early and crude stage of the will, is the abatement of an excessive or a wrong movement by a decidedly painful check, such as the operation of the curb, which by pressing severely on a sensitive surface, is a certain means of depression; whereas, the light, irritating smart of the whip operates by a spasmodic uncertain stimulation. It is by the tendency of pain to put an arrest upon the wrong movement. 394 and of the relief from pain to indicate the right movement, that the trainer secures the obedience of the animal; he, at the same time, familiarizing its ear with the sounds that are to signify the various paces and movements. The spontaneous commencement is essential under all circumstances; according as this spontaneity is, from the first, ready, vigorous, and various, is the facility in attaining and cementing the initial links of voluntary command.
It will now be apparent that the immediate antecedent of a voluntary act is not solely the idea of the action to be performed. The successive upbuilding of the voluntary associations developes a series of phases, under which the direct antecedent is transformed into various shapes. The sensation of hunger may be the sole antecedent in prompting an animal to the search for food; the painful sensation is coupled at a very early stage with the sight and the idea of food. When a child first attains the power of lifting a sweet morsel to its mouth, the antecedent of the voluntary act is the sight of the morsel coupled with the remembrance of the sweetness. A farther advance takes place by associating the ultimate object with intermediate actions, as when the child learns to entreat what it wants from other persons. The stage that first brings in an idea of the moving members themselves is Imitation; in imitating by sight, the antecedent is the view of the parts moved. Through this medium, we pass to what is popularly considered the type of voluntary control, the moving from a wish to move. I will to raise the arm, and the act follows; the antecedent is the idea of the raised arm (together with some feeling to be gratified by the act). In the highest developments of voluntary acquisition, there is another case, also of frequent occurrence; namely, where the intellectual antecedent is the idea of the work to be done; as, for example, in the act of washing the hands, where we do not think of the movements to be gone through, but of a certain appearance to be produced.
In Chapter X., on Memory, it is [remarked]:—‘When we 395 are said to will, there must be in the mind what is willed.’ But the idea of what is immediately willed, with reference to the same ultimate end, may assume all the variations above described. To gain a pleasure or free ourselves from a pain, we may employ different instrumentalities; and the explanation of the will should comprehend them all.—B.
CHAPTER XXV.
INTENTION.
THE word “intend,” the concrete, seems to be employed on two occasions. 1. We are said to intend, or not to intend, certain actions of our own. 2. And we are said to intend, or not to intend, certain consequences of our own actions.
We have to examine what is the state of mind which the word designates on each of those occasions.
1. We are said to intend only a future action. When the action is immediate, we are not said to INTEND, but to WILL it; an action intended, is an action of ours contemplated as future, or certainly to be.
We have minutely analysed, on a former [occasion], the state of mind which exists, when events, other than actions of our own, are contemplated as future. An association, from prior habit, exists, between antecedent and consequent, in a series of events; an association, such, that we cannot think of one of the events as existing, without thinking of the others as existing; that is, without anticipating their existence.