The Mental Highway
	The Will <  Previous Contents Next  >

Will power or the action of the will is a conscious choice between two or more alternatives. A choice implies that a content may be chosen, and this content must acquire a value in consciousness. Volitional choice is a result of certain developments of cognitive feeling and does not exist in the lower stages of consciousness.

The simplest organisms have the power to set up movement independent of an external stimulus. Internal changes in the organism, in which potential energy is set free, cause this automatic movement. We see an example in the function of nourishment, which is a fundamental organic process. The range of automatic movement is limited, for life depends upon a definite relation of reciprocity between the organism and its environment. To live entirely separate from environment would involve absolute spontaneity, acting without any outer influence or impulse whatever, and the effect would be similar to that of an animal living on its own fat. They soon exhaust the supply.

Automatic ideas may also arise from chemical changes in the blood, in which carbonic acid and other poisons directly affect the higher nerve centers, causing what we know as automatic ideas such as dreams, images, hallucinations and other mental movements. Movement precedes or acts before sensuous perceptions and is at first independent of all outer stimuli. Fichte said that "the most natural thing in us is the impulse to action." The impulse to action arises before consciousness of the actual world and is not derived from it. However, the independence of sense perceptions indicated by these spontaneous movements cannot be absolute.

We class the next step in movement as reflex. It is the effort to adapt the organism to the external conditions and to decide its activity by the nature of its surroundings. We see an illustration in the action of the foetus: In responding to pressure from outside, it does not show conscious deliberation, but a reflex or mechanical movement, which is an advance from the automatic-toward-actual volition and the motived action growing out of it.

When the cerebrum shares in determining movement by elaborating the impulse, we have a higher spontaneity called instinctive movement. Instinct requires a stimulus to set it to work, but the motor tendencies implanted in the individual determine the resultant action far more than the nature of the impulse itself. We might expect a certain stimulus to lead a person to do a certain thing, but his constitutional temperament may give the movement an entirely different direction. In other words, a sort of hereditary tendency seems to move in a certain direction upon the action of a certain stimulus. Science is still debating whether instinct is really linked to and located in the cerebrum, but it is a fact that in some animals, the removal of the cerebrum or parts of it, will destroy the feeding and sexual instincts, which seem to be centered there.

Having discussed the field of automatic, reflex and instinctive movements, we question what the exercise of the will really is. Science links volition to the cerebrum. The ideas of the end of the action, the means of its realization, and a vivid feeling of the worth of that end when we attain it characterize volition, so that actual volition comprehends cognition and feeling and its own action. The movement from automatic to volitional is parallel to the development from unconscious to conscious activities. Volition occurs when we are conscious of activity and are not entirely receptive. We would have no volition if we were absolutely receptive and passive, since cognition and feeling are synthetically bound up in the activity of the will, so that we base the existence of consciousness upon volition.

We know because we will to know, feel because we will to feel, and see because we will to see. The stronger the individual sensations and ideas are, the more volitional activity falls into the background. That means that more of the automatic and reflex are action involved in it. Automatic movements resulting from exclusive and repeated sensations all tend to produce hypnotic states.

Steadily stroking the fingers from the center of the forehead down to the bridge of the nose (in fact on any part of the body), constantly repeating a monotonous sound, or insistently repeating a single idea, all tend to inhibit volitional activity and produce hypnotic states.

Any single sensation of unvarying intensity, sustained for any length of time, tends to suspend the will and objective consciousness.

Our attention to any stimulus or excitation may be voluntary or involuntary. The stimulus itself causes the powers of the mind to turn in a certain direction in involuntary attention, while in voluntary attention the powers of the mind have already turned before the stimulus has reached us. Choice ranges from purely instinctive up to rational motived action of the volitional powers.

We see what we will to see, and usually only what we will to see. The inspiration of the prophet, and of genius overall, arises because the volition commands inner illumination. Daniel saw his great visions, after a few days’ fast. He knew that he could exercise vision power by means of fasting. That he was sick certain days afterward was a necessary reaction. This very same fact explains some farfetched forms of philosophy and mysticism.

The will actively retains the connection between ideas in all our thinking. An inner action precedes all outer action, the end of the action draws our attention, the means of securing it, and the value of it when realized. Cognition begins with excitation. Will power ends with the starting of the motor impulse. The moment that I will for my finger to move, the will power ends in the physiological process called the transmission of impulse, which causes muscular action.

Many of our actions are instinctive and involuntary because we act from a memory of movement under similar impulse without distinct volition. We really will movements when we make then with a distinct intention directed to a certain end. This is not so much a memory of our actions, but a racial memory, which is what instinct really is. We may distinguish impulse and desire from instinct: Impulse and desire always possess an idea of the end, while instinct leads to means applied to an unconscious end.

The pleasure we anticipate at the end of the action supplies the motive for that action, although the end is not always satisfactory. For instance, an alcoholic’s desire for a drink is motivated by the sensations he anticipates, which are greater that the sensations that actually result. As we study the motives to determine the true self, we find the criterion to be those facts and feelings which in the course of our life have taken the deepest root in us. Our ruling passion is not determined by a single action, but by that which expresses itself out of the main channels of our consciousness.

Resolution is the highest form of the will’s action, and is the result of thought and feeling, which forms the single motive. The will is not creative, but modifying and selective. It further influences our ideas by isolation and combination. Sequence of thought and firmness of character are closely related because they imply the steady pressure of the will toward a chosen end. The will reacts upon feeling by preventing it from spreading, by arguing with it, and by inhibiting the organic movements that would result otherwise. Self-control consists in developing the power to limit and inhibit the play of the feelings. It is not well to try entirely to suppress the feelings, and many neurotic conditions arise in the suppression of feeling. A better way to control the feelings with the will is to change the external conditions with the purpose of changing internal movements. This will often greatly alter the state of feeling.

We may easily eradicate a headache or mental depression, by the diversion of a walk outside, filling the lungs with fresh air, and diverting our attention to other things. Gaining a clear insight into the cause of feeling will often react upon and modify the feeling.

Often we can greatly modify sorrow by resolutely facing its cause as an inevitable thing, and reach a state of resignation, and of trust.

The will reacts upon itself. Our ideas and feelings furnish the motives of the will, but we may turn them around to become the objects of will. In other words we may will to will. We may will to have a strong will and actually produce it, just as we may will to have a strong memory and get it by following the laws of memory.

Our will is limited to a single thing as its object. To change this object tends to weaken it. The will is strongest when we fix it upon the ultimate thing. "If any man wills to do his will, he shall know of the doctrine" is another way of saying that if we would seek and find the largest happiness, let us not make happiness itself the end, but something else, external to happiness, by the carrying out of which we attain to happiness.

All real conscious life is individual. The form the personality takes depends on what elements predominate. If cognition predominates, we have the critical tendency of mind, if feeling predominates we have the emotional tendency, and if will predominates we have the dogmatic, and stubborn tendencies. These come under the heading of temperament, and the organic constitution, genetic stock determines that.

Physical, mental, social, and hereditary tendencies supply the elements that create personal character. Everything in human life is relative. Nothing is absolute. Nothing has an absolute beginning or ending. That which is perfectly unexplainable in the individual is explainable in the species. We may explain the world through humanity and we may explain humanity through the world. We can go no further back than the necessities of thought require, but we must go that far.

The psychological method is to find an understanding of purely mental processes by their relation to the physical, and finding an explanation of the physical by its relation and interaction with the mental. The relative and human life understand the Absolute Life and its activities, while the Absolute, of which the human life is a partaker, explains humanity’s activities.