On invention, see Josiah Royce, "The Psychology of Invention", in the Psychological Review for 1898, Vol. 5, pp. 113-144; also F. W. Taussig's Inventors and Money-Makers, 1915.
CHAPTER XX
WILL
PLANNED ACTION, ACTION IN SPITE OF INTERNAL CONFLICT, AND ACTION AGAINST EXTERNAL OBSTRUCTION
If the psychologist were required to begin his chapter on the will with a clean-cut definition, he would be puzzled what to say. He might refer to the old division of the mind into the "three great faculties" of intellect, feeling, and will, but would be in duty bound to add at once that this "tripartite division" is now regarded as rather useless, if not misleading. It is misleading if it leads us to associate will exclusively with motor action, for we also have voluntary attention and voluntary control in reasoning and inventing, and we have involuntary motor reactions. "Will" seems not to be any special kind of response, but rather to refer to certain relationships in which a response may stand to other responses--but this is certainly too vague a definition to be of use.
"Will" is not precisely a psychological term, anyway, but is a term of common speech which need not refer to any psychological unit. In common speech it has various and conflicting meanings. "Since you urge me", one may say, "I will do this, though much against my will." Let the dictionary define such words. What psychology should do with them is simply to take them as a mining prospector takes an outcropping of ore: as an indication that it may pay to dig in the neighborhood.
Voluntary and Involuntary Action
About the first thing we strike when we start digging is the distinction between voluntary and involuntary. A man has committed homicide, and the question in court is whether he did it "with malice aforethought", i.e., with full will and intention, whether he did it in a sudden fit of anger, i.e., impulsively rather than quite voluntarily, or whether it was an accident and so wholly unintentional or involuntary. The court wishes to know, since a man who has committed one sort of homicide is a very different character from one who has committed another sort; different acts can be expected from him in the future and different precautions need to be taken accordingly.
It is a fact, then, that an act may be performed either with or without foreknowledge--a remarkable fact both ways! An intentional act is remarkable from the side of physics or chemistry or botany--which is to say that it is very exceptional in nature at large. On the other hand, a completely involuntary act is rather exceptional in human behavior and perhaps in animal behavior as well, for almost always there is some striving towards an end, some impulse. The simplest reflexes, to be sure, are completely involuntary. The pupillary reaction to light is not done with malice aforethought, cannot be so done. The lid reflex, or wink of the eye, occurs many times in the course of an hour, without foreknowledge, or after-knowledge for that matter, though the same movement can be made voluntarily. Sneezing and coughing are not voluntary in the full sense, but they are distinctly impulsive, they strive towards desired relief. To sneeze voluntarily is to sneeze when you don't want to, and to sneeze involuntarily is to sneeze when you want to--which seems queer, since we usually think of a voluntary act as one done to further our wishes. The solution of this puzzle is, [{525}] of course, that a voluntary sneeze is desired not because of a direct impulse but to gain some ulterior end, such as to prove we can do it, or for histrionic purposes--in short, for some purpose beyond the immediate satisfaction of an impulse.