I have put the thing in this ultra-simple way because I want more than anything else to emphasize the fact that volition is primarily a relation, not between our Self and extra-mental matter (as many philosophers still maintain) but between our Self and our own states of mind. But when, a short while ago, I spoke of the filling of the mind with an idea as being equivalent to consent to the idea's object, I said something which the reader doubtless questioned at the time, and which certainly now demands some qualification ere we pass beyond.
It is unqualifiedly true that if any thought do fill the mind exclusively, such filling is consent. The thought, for that time at any rate, carries the man and his will with it. But it is not true that the thought need fill the mind exclusively for consent to be there; for we often consent to things whilst thinking of other things, even of hostile things; and we saw in fact that precisely what distinguishes our 'fifth type' of decision from the other types (see [p. 534]) is just this coexistence with the triumphant thought of other thoughts which would inhibit it but for the effort which makes it prevail. The effort to attend is therefore only a part of what the word 'will' covers; it covers also the effort to consent to something to which our attention is not quite complete. Often, when an object has gained our attention exclusively, and its motor results are just on the point of setting in, it seems as if the sense of their imminent irrevocability were enough of itself to start up the inhibitory ideas and to make us pause. Then we need a new stroke of effort to break down the sudden hesitation which seizes upon us, and to persevere. So that although attention is the first and fundamental thing in volition, express consent to the reality of what is attended to is often an additional and quite distinct phenomenon involved.
The reader's own consciousness tells him of course just what these words of mine denote. And I freely confess that I am impotent to carry the analysis of the matter any farther, or to explain in other terms of what this consent consists. It seems a subjective experience sui generis, which we can designate but not define. We stand here exactly where we did in the case of belief. When an idea stings us in a certain way, makes as it were a certain electric connection with our self, we believe that it is a reality. When it stings us in another way, makes another connection with our Self, we say, let it be a reality. To the word 'is' and to the words 'let it be' there correspond peculiar attitudes of consciousness which it is vain to seek to explain. The indicative and the imperative moods are as much ultimate categories of thinking as they are of grammar. The 'quality of reality' which these moods attach to things is not like other qualities. It is a relation to our life. It means our adoption of the things, our caring for them, our standing by them. This at least is what it practically means for us; what it may mean beyond that we do not know. And the transition from merely considering an object as possible, to deciding or willing it to be real; the change from the fluctuating to the stable personal attitude concerning it; from the 'don't care' state of mind to that in which 'we mean business,' is one of the most familiar things in life. We can partly enumerate its conditions; and we can partly trace its consequences, especially the momentous one that when the mental object is a movement of our own body, it realizes itself outwardly when the mental change in question has occurred. But the change itself as a subjective phenomenon is something which we can translate into no simpler terms.
THE QUESTION OF 'FREE-WILL.'
Especially must we, when talking about it, rid our mind of the fabulous warfare of separate agents called 'ideas.' The brain-processes may be agents, and the thought as such may be an agent. But what the ordinary psychologies call 'ideas' are nothing but parts of the total object of representation. All that is before the mind at once, no matter how complex a system of things and relations it may be, is one object for the thought. Thus, 'A-and-B-and-their-mutual-incompatibility-and-the-fact-that-only-one-can-be-true-or-can-become-real-notwithstanding-the-probability-or-desirability-of-both' may be such a complex object; and where the thought is deliberative its object has always some such form as this. When, now, we pass from deliberation to decision, that total object undergoes a change. We either dismiss A altogether and its relations to B, and think of B exclusively; or after thinking of both as possibilities, we next think that A is impossible, and that B is or forthwith shall be real. In either case a new object is before our thought; and where effort exists, it is where the change from the first object to the second one is hard. Our thought seems to turn in this case like a heavy door on rusty hinges; only, so far as the effort feels spontaneous, it turns, not as if by some one helping, but as if by an inward activity, born for the occasion, of its own.
The psychologists who discussed 'the muscular sense' at the international congress at Paris in 1889 agreed at the end that they needed to come to a better understanding in regard to this appearance of internal activity at the moment when a decision is made. M. Fouillée, in an article which I find more interesting and suggestive than coherent or conclusive,[496] seems to resolve our sense of activity into that of our very existence as thinking entities. At least so I translate his words.[497] But we saw in Chapter X how hard it is to lay a verifying finger plainly upon the thinking process as such, and to distinguish it from certain objects of the stream. M. Fouillée admits this; but I do not think he fully realizes how strong would be the position of a man who should suggest (see Vol. I. p. 301) that the feeling of moral activity itself which accompanies the advent of certain 'objects' before the mind is nothing but certain other objects,—constrictions, namely, in the brows, eyes, throat, and breathing apparatus, present then, but absent from other pulses of subjective change. Were this the truth, then a part, at any rate, of the activity of which we become aware in effort would seem merely to be that of our body; and many thinkers would probably thereupon conclude that this 'settles the claims' of inner activity, and dismisses the whole notion of such a thing as a superfluity in psychological science.
I cannot see my way to so extreme a view; even although I must repeat the confession made on pp. 296-7 of Vol. I, that I do not fully understand how we come to our unshakable belief that thinking exists as a special kind of immaterial process alongside of the material processes of the world. It is certain, however, that only by postulating such thinking do we make things currently intelligible; and it is certain that no psychologist has as yet denied the fact of thinking, the utmost that has been denied being its dynamic power. But if we postulate the fact of the thinking at all, I believe that we must postulate its power as well; nor do I see how we can rightly equalize its power with its mere existence, and say (as M. Fouillée seems to say) that for the thought-process to go on at all is an activity, and an activity everywhere the same; for certain steps forward in this process seem prima facie to be passive, and other steps (as where an object comes with effort) seem prima facie to be active in a supreme degree. If we admit, therefore, that our thoughts exist, we ought to admit that they exist after the fashion in which they appear, as things, namely, that supervene upon each other, sometimes with effort and sometimes with ease; the only questions being, is the effort where it exists a fixed function of the object, which the latter imposes on the thought? or is it such an independent 'variable' that with a constant object more or less of it may be made?
It certainly appears to us indeterminate, and as if, even with an unchanging object, we might make more or less, as we choose. If it be really indeterminate, our future acts are ambiguous or unpredestinate: in common parlance, our wills are free. If the amount of effort be not indeterminate, but be related in a fixed manner to the objects themselves, in such wise that whatever object at any time fills our consciousness was from eternity bound to fill it then and there, and compel from us the exact effort, neither more nor less, which we bestow upon it,—then our wills are not free, and all our acts are foreordained. The question of fact in the free-will controversy is thus extremely simple. It relates solely to the amount of effort of attention or consent which we can at any time put forth. Are the duration and intensity of this effort fixed functions of the object, or are they not? Now, as I just said, it seems as if the effort were an independent variable, as if we might exert more or less of it in any given case. When a man has let his thoughts go for days and weeks until at last they culminate in some particularly dirty or cowardly or cruel act, it is hard to persuade him, in the midst of his remorse, that he might not have reined them in; hard to make him believe that this whole goodly universe (which his act so jars upon) required and exacted it of him at that fatal moment, and from eternity made aught else impossible. But, on the other hand, there is the certainty that all his effortless volitions are resultants of interests and associations whose strength and sequence are mechanically determined by the structure of that physical mass, his brain; and the general continuity of things and the monistic conception of the world may lead one irresistibly to postulate that a little fact like effort can form no real exception to the overwhelming reign of deterministic law. Even in effortless volition we have the consciousness of the alternative being also possible. This is surely a delusion here; why is it not a delusion everywhere?
My own belief is that the question of free-will is insoluble on strictly psychologic grounds. After a certain amount of effort of attention has been given to an idea, it is manifestly impossible to tell whether either more or less of it might have been given or not. To tell that, we should have to ascend to the antecedents of the effort, and defining them with mathematical exactitude, prove, by laws of which we have not at present even an inkling, that the only amount of sequent effort which could possibly comport with them was the precise amount which actually came. Measurements, whether of psychic or of neural quantities, and deductive reasonings such as this method of proof implies, will surely be forever beyond human reach. No serious psychologist or physiologist will venture even to suggest a notion of how they might be practically made. We are thrown back therefore upon the crude evidences of introspection on the one hand, with all its liabilities to deception, and, on the other hand, upon a priori postulates and probabilities. He who loves to balance nice doubts need be in no hurry to decide the point. Like Mephistopheles to Faust, he can say to himself, "dazu hast du noch eine lange Frist," for from generation to generation the reasons adduced on both sides will grow more voluminous, and the discussion more refined. But if our speculative delight be less keen, if the love of a parti pris outweighs that of keeping questions open, or if, as a French philosopher of genius says, "l'amour de la vie qui s'indigne de tant de discours," awakens in us, craving the sense of either peace or power,—then, taking the risk of error on our head, we must project upon one of the alternative views the attribute of reality for us; we must so fill our mind with the idea of it that it becomes our settled creed. The present writer does this for the alternative of freedom, but since the grounds of his opinion are ethical rather than psychological, he prefers to exclude them from the present book.[498]