A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution Part 24

If we return to the act of food-taking in the individual, we perceive that, avoiding any exact a.s.sumption as to the definite nature of the act in its first appearance in the infant, we may make the general a.s.sertion that, as in the case of the supposed physiologist who finally comes to eat with a direct view to the preservation of health in his offspring as well as his own preservation and health, the act itself, while remaining unchanged in nature, connects itself, in the process of development, with various ends. As the individual becomes conscious of farther and farther reaching and more and more complicated results of the act, he postulates these as ends, not forgetting, however, important ends earlier postulated. He may eat, as a boy, for the pleasure of eating, later with his health and the capacity for useful work in view, and finally to the end also, or perhaps primarily, of securing healthy offspring; but he eats, in all these cases; and it is even supposable that he may eat the same kinds of food, healthful food being, from the beginning, agreeable to him. The widening of knowledge by experience, in the case of the human individual, furnishes him with more distant and more complex ends, which were earlier impossible to him, since he knew nothing of them.

Something similar appears to be the truth in the case of the mental progress of the human species as a whole. The growth of knowledge is, in fact, a growth of consciousness of the constant connection of particular processes with particular results, and of human acts as affecting these; with which increase of knowledge a further coordinate development in the sense of a postulation of further and further and more and more complex ends keeps pace. We are continually making "discoveries,"--performing or observing operations some or all of the observed results of which are unforeseen by us, though these very results may be later sought as ends.

We are often able to predict the results even of entirely new experiments; but we foresee, and can therefore a.s.sume as end, no results the elements of which in their connection with their conditions have not first come, in some way, within our knowledge. Nothing is a discovery which does not involve some new element or new combination of elements.

The growth of knowledge, in individual and species, and the increase in distance and complexity of ends never attain completeness, not all results become known; new discoveries are constantly being made which show us that we have hitherto been blind to results continually before our eyes, action in accordance with which would have been most advantageous to us.

With all these facts before us, how are we to decide as to the end in view in any non-human act? How can we be sure whether the bird which covers its eggs is acting with a view to the production of offspring or merely, as some authors have a.s.sumed, to the more immediate end of cooling its own breast.[125] How do we know whether any feeling which we might term mother-love is active in the sphex's care for her eggs, whether they are, as some authors have suggested, a part of her own ego and therefore cared for, or whether the act of caring for them has not finally come to have some immediate pleasure connected with it, such as accompanies the satisfaction of hunger or the s.e.xual instinct, the pleasure itself being sought as an end? How do we know even whether the impaled b.u.t.terfly is endeavoring to escape pain or merely attempting to continue its flight?

There appear to be some general lines that we may draw. Thus, for instance, all facts seem to justify the a.s.sumption that the possession of a nervous system involves sensibility and susceptibility to pain and pleasure; and thus it is hardly consistent to suppose that the struggle of the impaled b.u.t.terfly can be without pain. It might be at times more agreeable to our selfishness to suppose animals insusceptible of pain, but I think we can scarcely lay that flattering unction to our soul, and must face the a.s.sumption of their sensibility and feeling. The question as to whether the b.u.t.terfly has any distinct idea of escape as an end to be striven for is a different one and not so easily solved. Yet as regards conscious ends, too, we may be able to arrive at some general conclusions with respect to the acts of animals, even of those low in the scale. Some such conclusions have already been reached in our considerations. But it is to be noted that all these are purely negative--exclusions not inclusions. We may be able to say, for instance, after careful experiment and observation, that this or that act takes place where there is no possibility of previous knowledge, on the part of the animal performing it, of this or that result (which we may, however, regard as an end that should especially be desired by the animal), and that this particular result cannot, therefore, be an end present to the animal mind, as such, in performing the act. Lubbock believes that the pa.s.sive state of the caterpillar in its coc.o.o.n during its transformation to a b.u.t.terfly is a necessary condition of its preservation, since the mouth while undergoing change to an organ adapted to sucking, and the digestive organs during their preparation for the a.s.similation of honey, must be useless, and therefore the animal in an active state must perish of starvation. It is scarcely to be supposed, however, that the insect is aware of these ends of self-preservation involved in the state of pa.s.sivity in the coc.o.o.n and knowingly seeks them as ends. Since the metamorphosis takes place but once in the individual life, the insect has no means of learning anything about it beforehand from his individual experience (though, even if this were not true, there would still remain the first instance of coc.o.o.n-spinning to be explained); and it is both difficult to suppose that the caterpillar has always had opportunity to be instructed in some way by b.u.t.terflies of his kind, as well as unnecessary to suppose this, since we see, in other cases, that acts useful to the individual may take place without previous instruction or experience. In the case of the sphex, too, as in that of many other lower species that provide for offspring they will never see, it is not to be supposed that the welfare of the offspring but rather some result nearer than this is the end in view, if any end be present to consciousness.

With regard to primary acts of instinct such as those of the newly hatched chicken, and the new-born infant, it would seem as if an argument like the following might hold; it is, in fact, often made use of in a somewhat different form. We have seen that not only the progress of the individual but also that of the human species as a whole has involved an ever increasing knowledge of the connection of processes with their results and the coordinate a.s.sumption of these increasingly distant and complex results as ends. The ends which animals with a less extensive knowledge of natural processes may postulate, must be nearer and less complex than our own, the ends of those whose experience affords them least extensive knowledge being nearest and simplest, until we arrive thus at those lowest forms of animal life which cannot be supposed to have any knowledge that may be termed such, whose action and reaction, in its psychical aspect, can be figured only as vague sensation.

But first as to this vague sensation. Among our own acts, in which "blind instinct" seems to play a rather larger part than reason, there are those in which the gratification of the instinct involved is attended with a peculiar pleasure, while the denial of gratification to a sufficient degree is correspondingly painful; these are the acts connected with the gratification of the primary appet.i.tes of hunger, thirst, and s.e.x. The strength of the appet.i.tes, the degree of emotion involved in them, seems to be directly coordinate with their character as connected with primary functions. This being the case, why may we not suppose the functions of the simplest forms of life, which we believe to have been pa.s.sed on from generation to generation almost unchanged, for the whole period of time occupied in the evolution of the human race, to be connected with feelings equally as strong as any of our own, or even stronger since function has been exercised on these few lines only?

Feeling changes direction with the growth of man's knowledge, with the development of reason; it may be connected with new and more complex processes; but it would be difficult to prove that strength of feeling has increased except as connected with increased exercise of _particular_ function--that is, it would be difficult to prove that the whole sum of feeling has increased. And if we may a.s.sume that it has not increased, then we must suppose as great a degree of feeling to be possible in the lowest animals as in man; and no reason appears why we should not suppose it to exist also in as great a degree in the plants and in the inorganic matter from which both these forms of the organic have sprung.[126]

And we have to notice a second fact: If the ends present to human reason are nearer ones according as the knowledge of the individual performing them is narrower, these nearer ends and the means of their attainment may yet be very clearly and thoroughly known, the narrower knowledge including the minute, often the minutest particulars, as far as it goes; and why may we not suppose the so-called "instinctive" movements of animals very low in the scale of being, which exhibit a most perfect adaptation as far as it reaches, to be connected with a like perfect, if very narrow, action of reason? Or why should we draw a line here between the movements of animals and all other movements?

We are thus brought face to face with a dilemma to which there appears to be no solution. If the solution is impossible, however, why attempt it? In this case, anything we may term solution can be only dogmatic a.s.sertion or else mere speculation. If the question is unanswerable, it is unanswerable, and there is no use in further endeavor in this direction. But, in reviewing our arguments, we shall find, I think, that that which led us astray at every turn and induced us to hope for an answer, now on this side, now on that, was the tendency to look for some independent cause, some essence, effecting change rather than being effected, or of which phenomena were only the properties. It was this which made us believe that we had found the means to an answer in reason as the cause of action towards ends, as also, again, that we had found it in the development of the higher organism from the lower, and of the organic from the inorganic. We know no such independent cause, no such essence. We know only variables, preceding conditions and succeeding conditions, all of which preceding and succeeding conditions we must regard as equally essential since they are equally actual; and we know in all variation a certain constancy of relations, which we, by abstraction, term law.

The argument which starts with the dependence of "ends" upon reason, and so infers a necessary intervention of reason where motion is such as to attain results regarded by the onlooker as ends to be desired, is often applied in a still wider form in Theology. Of course if we start with a definition of ends as results actually desired and premeditated, then we may infer reason from the a.s.sumed existence of "ends" in any case; but such a form of argument is evidently a gross case of _pet.i.tio principii_; we a.s.sume that which is to be proved,--namely, the desire and premeditation of the results attained. This fallacy ordinarily escapes the eye through the double significance of the word "end" as it is generally used; in the premises of the argument the use of the word is justifiable if no implications of reason and will are a.s.sociated with it; but, with such a non-committal definition of the word, the conclusion noticed could never be reached, we should find ourselves at the end of the argument no nearer it than we were at the beginning.

The gradual development of stability from instability, harmony from disharmony, a state where collision is at a minimum from one where it was at a maximum, may be regarded as furnishing the best phase possible of a teleological argument. Even the dissolution of any system is part, according to the theory, of the evolution of some higher system of stability, that is, of one including more elements. This leads us, however, to the question of the definition of "higher"; the friends of theological Teleology are very ready to define the development of life up to man as the development of higher from lower forms, but are they willing to regard a succeeding stage of still greater stability, a state of barren and lifeless rest like that of the moon's surface, which our earth will probably one day attain, as a yet higher stage of development, the destruction of man and of the earth as part of a higher evolution? We have to consider, further, that, unless we a.s.sume some final state of absolute stability for the universe, we can suppose only an asymptotic evolution towards it, in which higher and higher systems of stability are developed only to be again destroyed. We know nature only as involving such processes of evolution and dissolution; we know no enduring stability. If we regard merely the side of evolution in these processes, we may seem to have a strong argument for design; but if we give attention to the dissolution succeeding every evolution, the argument loses its force. And, again, if we a.s.sume the continual order of destruction, reconstruction, and re-destruction finally to give place to a condition of absolute stability, the question may be recurred to whether this state could be one of motion, whether it must not rather be conceived as one of absolute rest, some frozen peace of which the moon's is but an imperfect type. We may ask, then, whether the friends of the teleological argument would agree to designate this state, which is highest from a mathematical point of view since it includes all the elements of the universe, as highest in any point of view favoring a theological theory of design. The teleological argument is accustomed to take into consideration only the evolution side of natural process; the pessimistic argument lays emphasis, on the other hand, on all forms of dissolution,--both views corresponding thus, as a matter of fact, to but half the truth. Even if we do not look beyond the evolution upon the earth, it is evident that each step in advance is marked by wide-spread destruction, each survival of the few bought at the expense of the slaughter of the many. We may overlook the slaughter, but it does not the less exist; we may egoistically shut our eyes to the pain, when it is not our pain, but it is not the less a fact.

But further than this: Our previous investigations have shown us difficulties on every side, when we have attempted to a.s.sume reason in matter as the cause of stability or harmony, preservative action, or the survival of the fittest. We may argue that mere matter and motion cannot have produced such results as these; but how do we know this? How have we such an intimate acquaintance with the nature of matter and motion that we can a.s.sert this? Where were we at the origin of the universe (if we suppose such) or where were we at the origin of life, that we should be able to be a.s.sured of this? Or how do we know in any case, from an origin, what might evolve with time? We obviously cannot argue from the a.n.a.logy of man's action, since he is a part of the problem itself, included in the question, and such an a.n.a.logy is a _pet.i.tio principii_.

If we have found it impossible to a.s.sume reason as cause in his case, how can we, by the a.n.a.logy of his action and by a universal generalization, a.s.sume it as a Universal Cause? We have, in fact, absolutely no precedent from which to argue, and may answer,--when Wallace a.s.serts that combinations of chemical compounds might produce protoplasm, but that no such combinations could produce living or conscious protoplasm,[127]--How do you know that they could not? We have, indeed, no evidence to the contrary: we do not know. If we a.s.sume the creation of protoplasm or the creation of the world to have been a.n.a.logous to any of the phenomena of our experience, in which we find only certain constant results of the forces resident in matter, then certainly we have no precedent for a.s.serting the necessity of divine creation; and if we a.s.sume the creation to have been essentially different from any of the phenomena of our experience, then certainly we have no data upon which to base any theory whatever concerning it. But the a.s.sumption that the creation of protoplasm, of the earth, or of the universe, was essentially different from any of the processes that we know, is a mere a.s.sumption, without basis: we have no data from which to argue in this direction; any hypothesis of such sort is made purely and absolutely _a priori_. A first appearance of protoplasm upon the earth we must infer from the facts furnished us by Geology and Astronomy; but a creation of either matter or motion is a mere a.s.sumption. As we know matter, it can neither be created nor destroyed. We cannot draw any inference from man's will, for man creates nothing; his action is itself a part of nature. Advanced theological doctrine tends more and more to limit the creation to the first communication of motion to matter or to a.s.sume some transcendental government of the universe, known, according to the a.s.sumption, transcendentally, or inferred from the existence of moral tendency or from desire for the transcendental in man. With Transcendentalism we have, as yet, nothing to do; and with moral principle in its bearings on this matter we cannot deal until later. But as for the hypothesis of a first communication of motion to "dead"

matter, we may remark, as before, that this is a mere hypothesis with no facts to support it. We know nothing of motion apart from matter, or of matter except through motion; the two cannot be separated in fact, and there is no reason for their separation in hypothesis or theory. Du Prel says: "Whether causeless motion is scientifically conceivable, depends on whether we have to regard rest or motion as the natural condition of matter; for a motion that is not primary must, as newly appearing change, be preceded by a cause. But though experience might incline us to regard rest as the original condition of matter, and therefore to seek a cause for every motion, this is, nevertheless, only the result of an incomplete induction. For if it is true that we never see a motionless body pa.s.s into a state of motion without a cause, on the other hand, it is just as certain that a moving body can never pa.s.s into a state of rest without cause; and if this axiom can never be directly proved in processes on the earth, we can, nevertheless, show reason for it: motion on the earth cannot be imagined without resistance from obstacles, since the attraction of the earth and the moments of friction can never be removed. But the axiom is indeed indirectly proved by the fact that we see the velocity of a body decrease in proportion to the resistance of obstacles; the body can only then attain to a condition of rest when the moving force is consumed to the last remnant. Hence, if we subtract the whole sum of resistance to the motion, we have again the former condition, the motion with its original velocity.... Which condition of matter is the original one, rest or motion, experience cannot inform us. We have as good reason for regarding rest as arrested motion, as for regarding motion as disturbed rest. The requirement of an outer cause for the first impulsion of matter therefore has meaning only in so far as rest is claimed to be the original, natural condition of matter; but this claim cannot be substantiated, and the opposite is just as conceivable, namely, that rest is only arrested motion, and that all cosmic matter had motion from the beginning."[128]

Wallace practically abandons his own ground, not only in his later works in ascribing much to natural selection which he was at first inclined to believe the effect of some supernatural cause, and omitting from his chapters on the application of the conception of evolution to man several arguments for supernatural intercession employed in his earlier work, but even in his first book, by admitting that natural selection takes advantage of mental superiority just as it does of physical superiority. We may notice at this point, however, a consistent inconsistency of his, in that, though he denies the existence of consciousness in matter, he leaves no logical room for the opposite theory of a gradual development of consciousness, since he a.s.serts that all instinctive actions were at first self-conscious. This position is held by others also.

We may note here an objection of Wallace's that "because man's physical structure has been developed from an animal form by natural selection, it does not necessarily follow that his mental nature, even though developed _pari pa.s.su_ with it, has been developed by the same causes only." The question may be again repeated as to what is meant by cause; and it will be well to keep distinct, in our thought, transcendental cause and cosmic conditions. We must admit that we have no proof of the absence of transcendental causes. Neither the constancy of nature nor the inseparability and indestructibility of matter and motion can prove the absence of such causes, which might be entirely consistent with these things; we have no data from which to argue that they are not so.

But though the law of Excluded Middle must hold good here as elsewhere, it is also to be noticed that the absence of proof in the natural order of things, with respect to the non-existence of transcendental causes, is not equivalent to the presence of proof of the opposite. We cannot infer, from the fact that no proof can be given of the non-existence of transcendental causes, that therefore proof can be given of the existence of such causes; or, from the fact that transcendental causes may be, that therefore transcendental causes are; they may also not be.

There is, in fact, absence of proof for either view. Of the transcendental, if it exists, we can know by definition absolutely nothing. The man who endeavors to prove its existence generally bases his argument on this very fact in order to disprove the validity of any argument of his opponent from natural facts; when he, therefore, after legitimately silencing his opponent, goes on himself to prove the transcendental, he is guilty of self-contradiction. When Fiske a.s.serts that there is no problem "in the simplest and most exact departments of science which does not speedily lead us to a transcendental problem that we can neither solve nor elude,"[129] we may admit the point, but surely it does not follow, because we cannot solve it, that therefore we must solve it, far less that we must solve it in one particular way. If we cannot solve it, we cannot solve it, and there is an end to the matter, unless we find new proof. We may not be able, as Fiske says, to elude the problem, but we certainly are able to elude the answering of it, and must do so perforce if the first part of the a.s.sertion,--namely, that we cannot answer it,--be correct. When Fiske urges us to accept one view because "the alternative view contains difficulties at least as great,"

we fail to perceive any grounds in this position for such acceptance. To Fiske's question as to whether we are to regard the work of the Creator as like that of the child, who builds houses just for the pleasure of knocking them down again, we may answer that the existence of a Creator must first be proved before we, from a scientific basis, may make any inference as to his purpose; and that we certainly cannot use an a.s.sumption of his existence in order to protest against a theory of Disteleology,--as Fiske seems to do,--if we use the teleological argument to prove his existence.

We may furthermore protest against the elevation of any negative term, as, for instance, Spencer's "Unknowable," to a term signifying a positive existence. We do not know whether there is any positive Transcendental that is to us unknowable; this mere negative term is admissible only on the a.s.sumption that it expresses such an absence of knowledge. The Unknowable a.s.sumed as existent ent.i.ty is the Unknowable known,--a self-contradiction.

A similar criticism may be applied to Spencer's use in his "First Principles" of the word "Force," spelled with a capital, and defined as designating "Absolute Force," an "Absolute, Unconditioned Reality,"

"Unconditioned Cause,"[130] etc. The attribution of reality to a mere mental abstraction is a survival of old conceptions repudiated by Spencer in their older form. Of forces we know much, but of abstract Force nothing,--except as an abstraction from reality; and the dangers in the use of such a term are made manifest by Spencer's elevation of this concept to the character a.s.signed it by the other terms quoted.

To sum up. We have found in nature only variables, no constant and invariable factor, no independent one according to which the others vary; we have found no cause that was not also an effect; that is, we have discovered nothing but a chain of phenomena bearing constant relations to each other, no causes except in this sense. We have no precedent or data from which to a.s.sert that chemical combinations could not have resulted in protoplasm and in living protoplasm, no data from which to a.s.sert that mere evolution could not have produced consciousness. As a matter of fact, however, we find the relations of consciousness and physiological process as constant as those of the different forms of material force, and while discovering no grounds upon which to p.r.o.nounce either consciousness or physiological process the more essential, find none, either, for p.r.o.nouncing one more than the other independent of what we call natural law. The logic of all our experience leads us to believe that neither protoplasm, nor the earth, nor any of the parts of the universe, could have originated otherwise than under natural law, that is, as the result of preceding natural conditions which must have contained all the factors united in the result, and would thus explain to us, if we knew them, in as far as any process is explained by a.n.a.lysis, the results arising from them. We know matter and motion only as united; we know no state of absolute rest, and we have no grounds for supposing any initial state of such absolute rest, or any state in which motion not previously existent in the universe entered. On the other hand, we have no proof of the absence of consciousness outside animal life, and no proof of the non-existence of transcendental causes, though likewise no proof of their existence.

FOOTNOTES:

[112] "Origin of Species," 6th ed., Vol. I. p. 320.

[113] "Lecture on Cell-souls and Soul-cells," 1878.

[114] "Entwicklungsgeschichte des Weltalls," p. 349 _et seq._

[115] See Part I. p. 161.

[116] "Der menschliche Wille," p. 13.

[117] On the Motions of the Tendrils of Plants; among the essays of Knight published under the t.i.tle, "A Selection from Physiological and Horticultural Papers," 1841.

[118] See "Insectivorous Plants," Chaps. I. and II.

[119] "The Movements of Plants," Chap. III.

[120] See experiments made by Eimer: "Entstehung der Arten," etc., p.

263 _et seq._

[121] E. Pfluger: "Die sensorischen Functionen des Ruckenmarks der Wirbelthiere," 1853.

[122] See Lange: "Geschichte des Materialismus," II. Theil, p. 486.

[123] "The Science of Ethics," p. 60.

[124] "Der thierische Wille," p. 161.

[125] See, for instance, Eimer: "Entstehung der Arten," p. 283.

[126] Carneri's instance, cited in support of his theory of the possibility of sensation without pleasure or pain, that certain nerves connected with fine sense-perception, may yet be cut without special pain to the owner, is a poor one, first, because highly developed nerves, the media of fine perceptions, are especially inapt examples for citation in support of any theory of primitive sensation in lower organisms, and, second, because the problem of pain and pleasure in such cases is very different from the problem of pain and pleasure in connection with ordinary excitation of nerve endings or the outer covering of the organism from which the nervous system has developed.

The fact that, in highly developed organisms, some parts are less susceptible of pleasure and pain might as easily be construed into an argument that corresponding parts of lower organisms differ, in the same manner, in susceptibility. Furthermore, sensation being admitted, as Carneri admits it, or rather a.s.serts it, of all forms of animal life, it is difficult to conceive how he can interpret the phenomena of appet.i.tion and repulsion as devoid of feeling. Most authors have argued, with much more reason, that pleasure and pain are primordial. Carneri's further argument that he who conceives the lower species as feeling pleasure and pain introduces an immense amount of pain into the world (p. 113, "Grundlegung der Ethik") is quite aside from the question as to the facts of the case. Nor can man create pain by his conception of its existence, or destroy it, if it exists, by a refusal to acknowledge its existence.

[127] See Part I. pp. 19, 22.

[128] "Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Weltalls", p. 350 _et seq._

[129] See Part I. p. 80.

[130] Pp. 170, 192d.

CHAPTER III

THE WILL

In any discussion of the will, we are met at the outset by the difficulties of definition, on which whole chapters might be, and have been, written. But one great difficulty has already been considered in the discussions of the previous chapter, in the questions as to the existence of consciousness in inorganic nature, in organisms which differ from our own in not possessing a centralized nervous system, and in connection with actions of our own body known to our centralized consciousness only as results. Leaving these questions open, as we have found it necessary to do, and confining ourselves, in speaking of consciousness, to consciousness as we immediately know it, or as we may, with some degree of probability, infer it in animals const.i.tuted similarly to ourselves, we find one obstacle to our definition removed.

For by will is generally meant a psychical faculty; and to speak of "unconscious will" is either a self-contradiction or a mere figure of speech.

We shall also find, I think, that the most essential characteristic of the will as a psychical faculty is that it is connected with action which has in view some end consciously sought; action to which there corresponds no conscious end, whether a long premeditated end or an end instantaneously comprehended and a.s.sumed in the moment of need, we term reflex. The question may arise as to whether there are not acts which we name merely "involuntary," which must be cla.s.sified, from a pyschological standpoint, as midway between the voluntary and the reflex. But it may be answered that here, as everywhere in connection with the organic, there is difficulty in drawing distinct lines; there are psychical conditions in which some strong emotion, for instance, terror, so takes possession of the mind as almost to exclude plan of action, and the individual appears to act, as we say, "unconsciously"; but I think this very adverb solves, for us, to all practical purposes, the question we have put. When we a.n.a.lyze such psychical conditions, we often find that, besides emotion, there was some degree of preconception of action, though the emotion so absorbed our attention at the time that the other appeared subordinate and was easily forgotten; but the fact that we term action of this sort, where we fail to discover preconception, "unconsciously" performed, would go to confirm the definition with which we began, though we may have difficulty in deciding whether or not a particular action comes under the head of willed action, that is, action to a preconceived end.

Another question which has been frequently asked, in a.n.a.lyses of the will, is whether mere abstinence from action, the negation of action, can be cla.s.sed as an instance of willing, willing being, by definition, an active, not a pa.s.sive state. It may be answered that, from the physiological point of view, a point of view not to be wholly disregarded even by the conservative psychologist, the arresting action of the will as the control of lower by higher centres, is its most important function. And to this physiological fact corresponds the psychological fact that no stronger exertion of will-power is known to us than that sometimes necessary to the attainment of mere pa.s.sivity. A definition that would exclude such pa.s.sive states from the province of the will must exclude, on the same principle, all other willing not issuing in muscular action, and so all voluntary control of thought. The choice between activity and pa.s.sivity may be as real and as difficult as between two different forms of activity.

We have here introduced the concept of choice, and it may be well to define this, and its significance in our definition of will, more exactly. Voluntary action is, we say, often preceded by long deliberation and severe struggle, ending finally in the choice of one of the many modes of action deliberated. We can conceive of this struggle as not so long, as shorter and shorter, until it occupies so little time and attention as to be scarcely perceptible. But we can conceive, also, of a premeditation which includes no struggle, in which one motive appears so strong as to exclude consideration of any but the one end, and the deliberation has reference only to the best means of attaining that end. The murderer, inspired by a desire for revenge, may seek his end with the same directness, if not the same instantaneousness, or with the same directness and instantaneousness, as the dog who snaps at a piece of meat; yet we call his action voluntary, whatever we may think of the dog's action, our conception of which may be rendered indistinct by our uncertainty as to the nature of instinct and the part it plays in the action of other species. We call the action of the murderer voluntary because we conceive that he consciously sought the end involved. We are even inclined to call it voluntary in cases where the criminal is moved by momentary pa.s.sion, since we conceive that he might have exerted self-control.