organs, as well as the emotional expression, although as yet there is no channel prepared whereby the stimulus may flow towards the appropriate members. The child whose foot is pricked by a needle in its dress is undoubtedly impelled by an active stimulus, but as no primitive link exists between an irritation in the foot and the movement of the hand towards the part affected, the stimulus is wasted on vain efforts, and there is nothing to be done but to drown the pain by the outburst of pure emotion. It is the property of almost every feeling of pain to stimulate some action for the extinction or abatement of that pain; it is likewise the property of many emotions of pleasure to stimulate an action for the continuance and increase of the pleasure; but the primitive impulse does not in either case determine which action. We are left to a laborious and tedious process of acquisition in so far as the singling out of the requisite movement is concerned.

If there exist at the commencement only a vague indeterminate impulse attaching to our painful or pleasurable states, how can we ever get these vague impulses to run into the true channels, or to be associated with the appropriate movements? We seem as yet no nearer the solution of the grand difficulty.

29. I will endeavour to indicate what seems to me to be the circumstance that leads to this remarkable union between the two great isolated facts of our nature, namely, on the one hand, feelings inciting to movement in general, but to no action in particular, and, on the other hand, the spontaneous movements already spoken of.

If, at the moment of some acute pain, there should accidentally occur a spontaneous movement, and if that movement sensibly alleviates the pain, then it is that the volitional impulse belonging to the feeling will show itself. The movement accidentally begun through some other influence, will be sustained through this influence of the painful emotion. In the original situation of things, the acute feeling is unable of itself to bring on the precise movement that would modify the suffering; there is no primordial link between a state of suffering and a train of alleviating movements. But should the proper movement be once actually begun, and cause a felt

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diminution of the acute agony, the spur that belongs to states of pain would suffice to sustain this movement. Once assume that the two waves occur together in the same cerebral seat— a wave of painful emotion, and a wave of spontaneous action tending to subdue the pain,-there would arise an influence out of the former to sustain and prolong the activity of the latter. The emotion cannot invite, or suggest, or waken up the appropriate action; nevertheless, the appropriate action once there and sensibly telling upon the irritation, is thereupon kept going by the active influence, the volitional spur of the irritated consciousness. In short, if the state of pain cannot awaken a dormant action, a present feeling can at least maintain a present action. This, so far as I can make out, is the original position of things in the matter of volition. It may be that the start and the movements resulting from an acute smart, may relieve the smart, but that would not be a volition. In volition there are actions quite distinct from the manifested movements due to the emotion itself; these other actions rise at first independently and spontaneously, and are clutched in the embrace of the feeling when the two are found to suit one another in the alleviation of pain or the effusion of pleasure.

An example will perhaps place this speculation in a clearer light. An infant lying in bed has the painful sensation of chillness. This feeling produces the usual emotional display, namely, movements, and perhaps cries and tears. Besides these emotional elements there is a latent spur of volition, but with nothing to lay hold of as yet owing to the disconnected condition of the mental arrangements at our birth. The child's spontaneity, however, may be awake, and the pained condition will act so as to irritate the spontaneous centres, and make their central stimulus flow more copiously. In the course of a variety of spontaneous movements of arms, legs, and body, there occurs an action that brings the child in contact with the nurse lying beside it; instantly warmth is felt, and this alleviation of the painful feeling becomes immediately the stimulus to sustain the movement going on at that moment. That movement, when discovered, is kept up in preference to the others occurring in the course of the random spontaneity.

Possibly some little time may be requisite in the human infant to develop this power of clutching the right movement when it comes. But the power must be an original endowment; no experience could confer such a faculty as this. We are driven to assume some fundamental mode of connexion between the detached elements of feeling and movement occurring in the same brain at the same moment; and I know of no better way of expressing this primordial tendency of the one to embrace the other than by saying that, when both are present together, the volitional spur of the feeling can stimulate the continuance of the movement, provided a soothing and pleasurable effect is the conscious result.

By a process of cohesion or acquisition, which I shall afterwards dwell upon, the movement and the feeling become so linked together, that the feeling can at after times waken the movement out of dormancy; this is the state of matters in the maturity of volition. The infant of twelve months, under the stimulus of cold, can hitch nearer the side of the nurse, although no spontaneous movements to that effect happen at the moment; past repetition has established a connexion that did not exist at the beginning, whereby the feeling and action have become linked together as cause and effect. A full-grown volition is now manifested, instead of that vague incitement that could do nothing until the right movement had sprung up in the course of a series of spontaneous discharges of the central sources of power.

30. We must then assume it as a fact that as soon as a clear consciousness of movements sensibly remedial comes into play, that consciousness has the power of stimulating a concurring activity; in other words volition begins. It may be by a reflex action that a child commences to suck when the nipple is placed between its lips; but the continuing to suck so long as the sensation of hunger is felt, and the ceasing when that sensation ceases, are truly volitional acts. All through animal life, down to the very lowest sentient being, this property of consciousness is exhibited, and operates as the instrument for guiding and supporting existence. To whatever lengths the purely reflex instincts, or the movements

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divorced from consciousness, may be carried on in the inferior tribes, I can with difficulty admit the total absence of feeling in any being that we are accustomed to call an animal; and with feeling I am obliged also to include this property which links the state of feeling with the state of present movement. Inferiority in the animal scale is marked by the fewness of the sensations, not by an entire blank in this region; and it does not follow that because a living creature has no consciousness saving hunger, repletion, and the feeling of being hurt, that these feelings should be feeble and insufficient to stimulate and guide the animal's movements. The earthworm leaves the earth when soaked with rain, in obedience to a stimulus of uneasiness, and continues crawling until its consciousness is again serene. When the ground has dried to the proper degree, the animal makes its way back to its shelter and food. If perchance in the movements stimulated by an uneasy state, the uneasiness comes to be sensibly increased, the worm would feel itself arrested; the spur would be towards putting a stop to the movement causing pain, and some other movement would go on instead; if relief came by the change, the volitional spur would sustain the new action so long as the agreeable effect continued. Here too, I should be disposed to assume the existence of a separate spontaneous tendency to crawl in the new-born worm, a tendency growing out of its nervous and muscular organization. An animal moves and also feels; these are distinct facts, separate properties of the mental system; nevertheless, when both take place together, the feeling can, according to the nature of it, stimulate or repress the movement; and this I believe to be volition in the germ.

31. To reduce the complicacy of this speculation, I shall repeat in numerical separateness the distinct considerations that are mixed up in it.

(1.) There is a power of spontaneous movement in the various active organs anterior to, and independent of, the feelings that such movement may give birth to; and without this no action for an end can ever be commenced.

(2.) There exists consciousness, feeling, sensation or emotion,

produced from movements, from stimulants of the senses and sensitive parts, or from other causes. The physical accompaniment of this is a diffused excitement of the bodily organs constituting the outburst or expression of it, as the start from a blow.

(3.) There is a property of consciousness,-superadded to and by no means involved in, this diffused energy of expres sion, whereby a feeling can influence any present active exertion of the body so as either to continue or abate that exertion. This is the property that links feeling to movement, thereby giving birth to volition. The feelings that possess this power—including nearly all pains and many states of pleasure, I have hitherto described as volitional feelings; those that are deficient in this stimulus, being principally of the pleasurable class, are the pure, un-volitional, or serene emotions.

32. There are various actions, commonly called Instincts, that are only phases or results of this fundamental property of mind. Self-preservation, implying the revulsion from pain and injury, and the appropriation of the means of subsistence, is an example of volition as now explained. We have no original tendency to protect ourselves from injurious influences if they do not affect us as pains, nor to lay hold of beneficial influences that give no present pleasure. Excepting under the sweep of volition, self-preservation does not exist.

There are certain special instances of early precaution against harm that are often remarked upon as a portion of the original provision of nature in our behalf. Thus the dread of falling is very strong in early life, and stimulates powerful efforts by way of prevention. But this is no other than an instance of the general fact we are now considering. The remembrance of the acute pain of a past fall is one source of the spur to preserve the stability of one's footing. And even still earlier, and before experienced hurts can operate as a warning, there is a severe and distressing sensation in the sudden loss of support, that prompts us vigorously to act for restoring the firm position. The case is distinguished only by the remarkable virulence of the pained condition and the corresponding degree of volitional stimulus manifested by it.