LECTURE XXIX

§ I. Voluntary Action. § II. The Causality of Will. § III.
Relation of the Individual to the General Will. § IV.
Character as the Ultimate Cause of Will.

§ I

WHEN we were considering will in its significance as an
elementary psychical phenomenon, we found that the
facts comprehended under the term constituted the
links in a chain of development. The lower stages of this de¬
velopment, simple voluntary acts, were classed together as
manifestations of impulse ; the higher stages, acts of choice, as
those of volition proper. In reviewing the expressions of in¬
stinct we have become familiar with a whole num'oer of pheno¬
mena whose invariable mental condition is some impulsive act,
while at the same time the peculiarities of the physical organi¬
sation exercise a determining influence upon their development.
It now remains to consider briefly the second and higher form of
voluntary activity, volition proper, in its relation to the entirety
of conscious processes.

We took our best examples of instinctive action from the
animal kingdom. In the present investigation of volition, on
the other hand, we are exclusively restricted to the human con¬
sciousness, although it is certain enough that instances of
volitional action are not infrequent in the animal world, and
especially among its more highly organised members. But the
problem of volition, or, as it is generally called in consequence
of the popular restriction of the concept of will to the sphere of
choice, the problem of will, is practically confined to man, for
this reason,—that the one question which is of decisive import¬
ance for our understanding of the nature of voluntary action and
its relation to the other facts of our inner experience, a ques-