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the other hand, compared with the cerebral consciousness which a man exclusively recognises as his consciousness, it is certainly unconscious, and it is accordingly shown that there exists in us an unconscious will, since these nerve-centres are all contained in our corporeal organism, therefore in us.

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It seems requisite to add, in conclusion, a remark with respect to the sense in which the word Will is here taken. We started with understanding by this word a conscious. intention, which is the ordinary signification. We have found, however, in the course of our investigation, that in a single individual, but in different nerve-centres, there may exist consciousnesses and wills more or less independent of one another, each of which can at the most be conscious for the nerve-centre through which it is expressed. In saying this, the usual limited meaning of Will is necessarily abandoned; for I must now recognise another will in me than that which has been exerted through my brain, and has thereby become conscious to me. After these limitations of meaning have fallen away, we can no longer avoid understanding by Will the immanent cause of every movement in animals, which is not produced reflectorially. This may also be taken as the sole characteristic and infallible mark of the will of which we are conscious, that it is a cause of preconceived action. It is now seen, that it is somewhat accidental to the will, whether it passes through the cerebral consciousness or not; its essence remains thereby unaffected. What then in the present work is denoted by the word "Will" is no other than the same essential principle in both cases. If, however, it is particularly desired to distinguish the two kinds of will, for conscious will language already offers a term exactly covering this conception-Freewill-whilst the word Will must be retained for the general principle. Will, we know, is the resultant of all contemporaneous desires; if this struggle of desire is consciously waged, it appears as choice of the result, or freewill, whilst the origin of the unconscious will

is withdrawn from consciousness, consequently even the semblance of choice among desires cannot here occur. One sees from the existence of this term Freewill, that the idea of a more general will with non-selected content or aim, whose actions thus appear to consciousness not as free, but as inward compulsion, has long been in the popular consciousness.

I do not merely rely upon the precedent of Schopenhauer and the wide-spread acceptance (even abroad) that this use of the word Will has already found, but upon the fact, that no other word in general use in the Teutonic languages is more appropriate to designate the broad principle which is treated of in the present and following chapter. Desire" is volition still incomplete, in the making, as it were, one-sided as not having yet stood the test of resisting other desires. It is only an unfinished product of the psychological laboratory of Volition, not the final collective expression of the activity of the whole individual (be it of higher or of lower order). It is only a component of the will, which, in consequence of being paralysed by other opposite desires, may be condemned to remain velleity. If "desiring" cannot be substituted for "willing," still less can "Impulse;" since it not only suffers from the same one-sidedness and limitation as desire, but does not even include the notion of actuality. It rather only represents the latent disposition to certain one-sided tendencies to action, which, if they become actual in consequence of some motive, are no longer called impulse but desire. Every impulse thus denotes a definite aspect, not of volition, but of the character, i.e., the tendency of the latter to react on certain classes of motives with desires of a fixed direction (e.g., sexual impulse, migratory impulse, acquisitive impulse, &c; cf. the phrenological "instincts" or "primitive faculties "). As specific predispositions the impulses rightly stand for inner springs of action, just as motives represent the outer ones. Impulse then, as such, has necessarily a definite concrete content, which is

conditioned by the physical predispositions of the general bodily constitution and the molecular constitution of the central nervous system. Will, on the other hand, as universal formal principle of movement and change, stands altogether behind the concrete dispositions, which, when conceived as informed by the will, are called impulses, and is realised in the resulting volition, which receives its particular content through the psychological mechanism of motives, impulses, and desires (cf. Chap. iv. B.) Although in the lower animals and in the subordinate central organs of man this mechanism is simple in comparison with that of the human brain, it is none the less present, and easily reveals itself in reflex movements. Even in the case of the independent functions of the spinal cord and ganglia the inherited innate material predisposition of the medulla oblongata to effect the respiratory movements may very well be called a "respiratory impulse," if only it be not forgotten that behind this material arrangement stands the principle of the will, without which it could as little be functional as, say, the innate cerebral disposition for compassion, and that the exercise of the respiratory movements themselves is an actual willing, whose direction and content is conditioned by such predisposition.

II.

UNCONSCIOUS IDEATION IN THE EXECUTION OF

VOLUNTARY MOVEMENT.

I WILL to lift my little finger, and the finger is lifted. Does, then, my will directly move my finger? No; for if the brachial nerve be divided the will cannot move it. Experience teaches that for every movement there is only one part, namely, the central ending of the nervefibres concerned, which is able to carry into effect the volitional impulse for this particular movement of this particular member. Should this one part be injured, the will would have just as little power over the member, as it would have if the nervous communication between that place and the muscles were interrupted. The motor impulse itself we cannot, intensity apart, imagine to be different for different nerves; for since the excitation in all motor nerves is to be looked upon as homogeneous, it cannot be otherwise with the excitation at the centre, whence the current issues; consequently movements only differ in this, that the central endings of different motor nerves are affected by the volitional impulse, and thereby different muscles are constrained to contract. We may thus picture to ourselves the central termination of motor fibres in the brain as a kind of keyboard. The touch is, intensity apart, always the same; the touched keys alone are different. If, then, I intend a specific movement, e.g., the lifting of the little finger, what is required is to compel those muscles to contract which by their combination produce this movement, and for that purpose to strike

with the will that chord in the keyboard of the brain, the single keys of which set the related muscles in motion. If in framing the chord one or more false keys are struck, there occurs a movement which does not correspond with the one intended; e.g., in making a slip in speaking, miswriting, tripping, in the awkward handling of children, &c. It is true the number of the central endings of fibres in the brain is considerably smaller than that of the motor fibres in the nerves, provision being made through the intervention of a peculiar mechanism, to be further mentioned in Chap. V., for the simultaneous excitation of many peripheral fibres by means of one central fibre. However, the number of different movements within the power of the conscious will, consequently dirigible by the brain, is, by means of a thousand little modifications of direction and combination, for each single limb sufficiently large-for the whole body, indeed, simply immeasurable; so that the probability would be infinitely small that the conscious idea of the lifting of the little finger should, without causal connection, coincide with the actual elevation. The mere mental representation of the lifting of the little finger cannot act on the central nerve-endings, since they have nothing to do with one another; the mere will, however, as motor impulse, would be absolutely blind, and therefore the striking of the right key would be left to pure chance. If there were no causal connection at all, practice could avail nothing; for nobody finds in his consciousness an idea or a feeling of this infinite number of central endings. Thus, if accidentally once or twice the conscious idea of the lifting of the finger should coincide with the executed movement, experience would have nothing to go upon; and on the third occasion when the man willed to raise his finger, the touch of the right key would be as much left to chance as in the former cases. It is, then, clear that practice can aid the linking of intention and execution only if there be a causal nexus between the two, in which case certainly the passage from one to the

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