The latter distinguishes between the ability and the willingness to do; the former includes them both in the idea of power. In order to the actual doing there must be both. But does the word power properly include both? In ordinary language, certainly, we distinguish the two. I can do a thing, and I wish to do it, are distinct propositions, and neither includes the other. It is only by a license of speech that we sometimes say I cannot, when we mean simply, I have no wish or disposition. If we make the distinction in question between power and disposition, then we can do what we have no wish to do. If we do not make it, but include in the term power the disposition to exert the power, then we cannot do what we have no disposition to do.
§ III.—Influence of Motives
I. Is the Will always as the greatest apparent Good?
The Answer depends on the Meaning of the Question.—If by this be meant simply whether the mind always wills as it is, on the whole, and under all the circumstances, disposed or inclined to will, I have already answered the question. If more than that be meant, if we mean to ask whether we always, in volition, act with reference to the one consideration of advantage or utility, the good that is to accrue, in some way, to ourselves or others from the given procedure—and this is what the question seems to imply—I deny that this is so. I have already shown, in presenting the psychological facts respecting the will, that our motives of action are from two grand and diverse sources: desire and duty—self-love, or, at most such love as involves mere natural emotion, and sense of obligation; that we do not always act in view merely of the agreeable, but also in view of the right, and that these two are not identical. Now the greatest apparent good is not always the right; nor even the apparent right. We are conscious of the difference, and of acting, now from the one, now from the other, of these motives. But to say that the will is always according to the greatest apparent good, is to resolve all volition into the pursuit of the agreeable, and all motives of action into self-love. It is to merge the feeling of obligation in the feeling of desire, and lose sight of it as in itself a distinct motive of action.
Defect in the Socratic Philosophy.—This was the capital defect in the ethical system of Socrates, who held that men always pursue what they think to be good, and, therefore, always do what they think is right, since the good and the right are identical; sometimes, indeed, mistaking an apparent good for a real one, but always doing as well as they know how; from which it is but a short step to the conclusion that sin is only so much ignorance, and virtue so much knowledge—a conclusion to which the modern advocates of the doctrines under discussion would by no means assent, but from which that shrewd thinker and most consistent logician saw no escape.
II. Is the Will determined by the strongest Motive?
The Term "strongest" as thus employed.—Much depends on what we mean by "strongest" in this connection, and what by the word "determined?" If we mean, by the strongest motive, the one which in a given case prevails, that in view of which the mind decides and acts, then the question amounts merely to this. Does the prevalent motive actually prevail? To say that it does, is much the same as to say, that a straight stick is a straight stick. And what else can you mean by strongest motive? What standard have you for measuring motives and gauging their strength, except simply to judge of them by the effects they produce? Or, who ever supposed that, of two motives, it was not the stronger but the weaker one that in a given case prevailed?
The Word "determined."—The question may be made, however, to turn upon the word determined. Is the will determined by that motive which prevails? Is it determined at all by any motive or by any thing? If by this word it be meant or implied that the motive, and not the mind itself is the producing cause of the mind's own action, then I deny that the will is, in any such sense, determined, whether by the strongest motive, or any other. The will is simply the mind or the soul willing; its acts are determined by itself, and itself only. If you mean simply that the motive influences the will, prevails with it, becomes the reason why the will decides as it does, this I have already shown to be true, and in this sense, undoubtedly, the motive determines the volition, just as the fall of an apple from a tree is, in the first instance, produced or caused by the law of gravitation; but the particular direction which it takes in falling, depends on, and is determined by, adventitious circumstances as, e. g., the obstacles it meets in its descent. Those obstacles, in one sense, determine the motion; they are the reason and explanation of the fact that it falls just as it does, and not otherwise; but they are not the producing cause of the motion itself.
III. Are Motives the Cause, and Volitions the Effect?