the consent is not obtained until a great many rea sons for and against a line of conduct have been considered, and until the agent understands the relation of the act to his desires or impulses or hopes or moral aims.1 I may say yes to a line of conduct when I discover by reasoning or otherwise that it agrees with an ideal of mine, an ideal which I have already chosen by an act of will.

5. Conclusions. Our main conclusions here are: (1) Not all human conscious action is willed action.

(2) Man is prompted to action by his instincts, impulses, desires, feelings, thoughts, perceptions, and volitions, i.e., consciousness in every shape and form tends to be followed by action.

(3) Man is determined to will by his instincts, impulses, desires, feelings, thoughts, perceptions, i.e., any state of consciousness may cause the ego to render a decision; and hence,

(4) It cannot be true that pleasure alone determines action or volition.

6. The Hedonistic Psychology of Action. Let us now look at the hedonistic psychology itself, and

"the dull, dead heave of the will" (see James, Psychology, chapter on "The Will"). But this feeling, whatever it may be, is not the fiat, or veto, itself, though it may be necessary to bring about the fiat, or veto. The view which identifies will with mental activity, and regards all psychic energy as will, will look upon the effort-feeling as a most typical case of willing, or soul-action.

1 See James, Psychology, chapter on "The Will," the reasonable type of willing.

subject it to criticism. It asserts that all men are prompted to action either by pleasure or pain. This may mean that all action, both voluntary and nonvoluntary (in our sense), is caused by pleasure and pain; or, that only willed action is determined in that way, i.e., that pleasure and pain are the sole motives of willing.

In either case the sole motive may be :

(1) Some variety of pleasure or pain, present or apprehended; that is, pleasure or pain, or the idea of pleasure or pain;

(2) Always a feeling of present pleasure or pain; (3) A feeling of pain alone; or,

Unconscious pleasure or pain, or an unconscious idea of pleasure or pain.

7. Present or Apprehended Pleasure-Pain as the Motive. Interpreting the theory in the first sense, it means that actions are performed or not performed because they give us or promise us pleasure or pain. To quote Bain,1 a typical hedonistic psychologist: "A few repetitions of the fortuitous concurrence of pleasure and a certain movement will lead to the forging of an acquired connection under the Law of Retentiveness and Contiguity, so that, at an after time, the pleasure or its idea shall evoke the proper movement." "The remembrance, notion, or anticipation of a feeling can operate in essentially the same way as the real presence. Without some antecedent of pleasurable or painful feeling,

"2

1 Emotions and Will, 3d edition, pp. 303-504.

2 Ib., chap. i, § &

66

-actual or ideal, primary or derivative, the will cannot be stimulated. There is at bottom of every genuine voluntary impulse some one variety of the many forms wherein pain or pleasure takes possession of the conscious mind."1 Every object that pleases, engages, charms, or fascinates the mind, whether present, prospective or imagined, whether primitive or generated by association, is a power to urge us to act, an end of pursuit; everything that gives pain, suffering, or by whatever name we choose to designate the bad side of our experience, is a motive agent in like manner. The same remarks are made to apply to higher acts of willing, according to the same authority. "In this whole subject of deliberation, therefore, there is no exception furnished against the general theory of the will, or the doctrine, maintained in the previous pages, that, in volition, the executive is uniformly put in motion by some variety of pleasure or pain, present or apprehended, cool or excited." 3 "It is not necessary, however, it is not a condition of our enjoyment, that we should be every moment occupied with the thought of the subjective pleasure or pain connected with our pursuits; we are set in motion by these, and then we let them drop out of view for a time."4

1 Emotions and Will, chap. iii, § 8, pp. 354 ff. 2 Ib., p. 357. 3 lb., chap. vii, p. 416. See also pp. 420 ff.: "A voluntary act (as well as some acts not voluntary) is accompanied with consciousness, or feeling; of which there may be several sorts. The original motive is some pleasure or pain, experienced or conceived."

4 Ib., p. 347. See also Jodl, Lehrbuch der Psychologie, pp. 425, 719 ff., 726.

That is, men think and act in order to procure pleasure and to avoid pain. Thus, for example, I am studying philosophy because of the pleasure I am deriving from it now, or because I expect pleasure hereafter. And I assist my fellow-men in their struggle for existence for the sake of the happiness my conduct procures for me. Pleasure, or the idea of it, in every case stimulates me to act as I do.

(1) The psychology of action does not seem to me to bear out this view. Pleasure, or the idea of pleasure, is, of course, an antecedent to volition and action, but it is not the only one by any means. I do not necessarily eat for the pleasure it gives me, nor do I get angry for the enjoyment of the thing. I do not necessarily obey the moral law because I get, or expect to get, pleasure, or desire to avoid pain. As was noticed before, psychology presents us with countless instances in which acts follow immediately upon the appearance in consciousness of certain ideas. As Professor James says: "So widespread and searching is this influence of pleasures and pains upon our movements that a premature philosophy has decided that these are our only spurs to action, and that wherever they seem to be absent, it is only because they are so far on among the ' remoter' images that prompt the action that they are overlooked. This is a great mistake, however. Important as is the influence of pleasures and pains upon our movements, they are far from being our only stimuli. With the manifestations of instinct

and emotional expression, for example, they have absolutely nothing to do. Who smiles for the pleasure of the smiling, or frowns for the pleasure of the frown? Who blushes to escape the discomfort of not blushing? Or who in anger, grief, or fear is actuated to the movements which he makes by the pleasures which they yield? In all these cases the movements are discharged fatally by the vis a tergo which the stimulus exerts upon a nervous system framed to respond in just that way. The objects of our rage, love, or terror, the occasions of our tears and smiles, whether they be present to our senses, or whether they be merely represented in idea, have this peculiar sort of impulsive power. The impulsive quality of mental states is an attribute behind which we cannot go. Some states of mind have more of it than others, some have it in this direction, and some in that. Feelings of pleasure and pain have it, and perceptions and imaginations of fact have it, but neither have it exclusively or peculiarly. It is of the essence of all consciousness (or of the neural process which underlies it) to instigate movement of some sort. That with one creature and object it should be of one sort, with others of another sort, is a problem for evolutionary history to explain. However the actual impulsions may have arisen, they must now be described as they exist; and those persons obey a curiously narrow teleological superstition who think themselves bound to interpret them in every instance as effects of the secret solicitancy of