WILL It has been usual to classify mental phenomena under the three headings of cogni tion, feeling and will or conation. In the last class are included all those processes in which the mind is regarded as effecting some change in its own states, or in the physical environment by means of bodily movements. These changes may take place in a more or less conscious say: that ts, in producing changes by means of inner or outer acts of will, we may be more or less explicitly aware of the nature of the result to he attained and of other possible lines of action. It is an essential characteristic of the states that we name impulses or instincts that they are not deliberative. These processes, however, as expressions of the appetitive or active powers of the mind, are conative in character. Automatic or reflex acts, on the other hand, being brought about without any mediation of consciousness, cannot be regarded as belonging to will at all. In impulse the act is initiated by a feeling of uneasiness or crav ing which has a tendency to discharge imme diately in some movement to relieve this feel ing. It is from such immediate and impulsive reactions of consciousness that those more ex plicit and conscious processes that we call volun tary acts develop. We are not born with the power of performing voluntary acts, but this is a progressive acquirement that presupposes an experience of the results of involuntary acts, and the means of obtaining or avoiding these results. The development of will, in the true sense in which it is an endowment that belongs only to rational beings, as it passes from the stage of impulse and instinct, involves a grow ing consciousness of the relative value of various ends, and also of the means that may be used for the realization of these ends. The development of will is thus only possible through the development of the mind as a whole. Moreover, it is to be noted that this development implies further the systematic integration and union of the rational and emotional sides of mind with its active or conative aspect. As
mind deselops, all of its functions become more closely and organically connected.
%%la* has just been said may serve to show the fallacy in the view of the older psychology which regarded will as a distinct faculty, op posed, as if it were a separate department, to feeling and cognition. It was too often forgot ten in making this division that these faculties were nut each soli gcrereis, and that the so-called 'faculty' is only an abstraction if thought of as a kind of entity apart from the concrete proc esses of consciousness. Moreover, the emotional and cognitive states of mind do not exist in separation from the conative aspect, hut the latter is necessarily implicated and involved in them. It has been one of the most important achievements of recent psychological analysis to exhibit the presence of will in various intel lectual processes, like perception, association and thinking, in the form of the selective ac tiiity of attention. The true view then is that cognition, feeling and conation are •moments' or "aspects' of mind that can be distinguished by analysis, hut which exist and function con cretely only in relation to each other. At the present time, psychologists arc not agreed as to whether it is possible to discover by analysis any definite collative process as a structural de ment in conscious life, correspon•ing to the elementary sensations or feelings. The reality and functional efficiency of the will is not really at stake in this question, however, as has been too hastily assumed by certain .representativ es of both parties to the dispute. Even if it is found that the processes of will cannot be iso lated as separate and distinct states of mind, there will be no ground for denying the real activity of the subject. The truth seems to be that will cannot properly be represented in the form of one particular kind of mental con tent, just because it is the expression of the attitude of the self toward all mental content.