11. On the whole we must regard spontaneous redintegration as a process in which two forces are balanced against, or in conflict with, each other, the movements supporting vividness and habit of images and their sequences on one side, those supporting specific pleasures and interests on the other; the degree of vigour or elasticity in the movements of both sides being favourable to the first kind of movements if it is low, to the second if it is high. The conflict between these two kinds of movement is often nearly equally balanced, and then comes itself into consciousness, as a sense of effort or tension; a state of consciousness which is more or less painful. In using the term conflict of nerve movements, I must guard against being supposed to imply any particular mode of conflict in which they are balanced against each other, or to infer that it is any perception of their being in conflict which causes the resulting state of consciousness to be a sense of effort. It is we who characterise their state as one of balance or conflict; the conflict is not perceived at all at first, but only when the feelings on either side are strong and of nearly equal strength; it becomes then an element in their perception, not in the shape of a conception of their being in conflict, but in that of a sense of effort or tension. The moment this state of consciousness arises, the process in which it arises begins to pass into a process of voluntary redintegration. The same forces, the same images, are carried up into a new arena, with increased powers. The sense of effort is but the evidence of this increasing energy in the movements which are in conflict with each other. The next step in the enquiry, therefore, is the analysis of voluntary redintegration. BOOK I. CH. III. $ 53. spontaneous 12. Before however entirely quitting the present subject, it must be distinctly remarked, that redinThe laws of tegration both spontaneous and voluntary is redinredintegration. tegration of emotions and passions, no less than of images which are their frameworks; the pleasures and interests which are motives in their sequences are emotional no less than sensational; redintegration includes passion no less than thought. The changes of emotion through which we pass, the changes of passion which we experience, are accounted for by this analysis which places the motives of redintegration in specific pleasures and interests. This fact is concealed from common observation by the circumstance, that the expression of sequences of emotion and of passion, at any rate for purposes of analysis, for music is one mode of expressing them, is only possible by means of words, and words express immediately only the images which are their framework; and it consequently appears as if the process of redintegration was nothing more than an intellectual process, than what was formerly understood by the phrase Association of Ideas. The movement of emotions and passions is found delineated only in poetry, and chiefly in dramatic poetry, expressed chiefly in lyrical; in real life this movement is only expressed imperfectly and by fragments. And even in dramatic poetry, the greater part of the imagery employed to express the movement of passion is the invention of the poet, in the sense that he makes his characters speak not only much more than they would in real life, but also in imagery which only a poetical mind could invent; bare verisimilitude is departed from, in order to express more perfectly the real truth of na ture. The spontaneous redintegrations of the actors in a drama are thus clothed in language which is the result of the voluntary redintegration of the poet imagining their spontaneous redintegrations. They speak in the drama the language which they would speak in real life, had they the freedom and the wish to express the emotions which agitate them, added to the poet's facility in expressing the images which those emotions pervade. Hence it is to poetry that we must look for those instances of redintegration, both spontaneous and voluntary, and the one interwoven with the other, where the passions and emotions predominate over the framework, where the motives of change are strongly marked as of an emotional and not of a sensational nature. Transports of passion, enthusiastic emotions, are cases of extreme vividness of the emotional element in spontaneous redintegration. § 54. 1. We now enter on the examination of voluntary redintegration, the most important part of our subject for the purposes of Ethic, since it includes all actions for which the agent is said to be a responsible person. The link which connects spontaneous with voluntary redintegration is the sense of effort, and this depends upon a conflict between nerve movements which are seeking to become harmonised. The sense or perception of effort alone, without the perception of what the effort is for, that is, without the perception called wish, desire, purpose, or choice, is not volition; it will lead if continued to the perception of desire, were it only the desire to get rid of the sense of effort, but it is not a desire by itself. A volition is a compound feeling, one component of which is the sense of effort; it is the sense of effort for a purpose, that is, a wish, a desire, or a choice. BOOK I. § 53. The laws of redintegration. spontaneous $ 54. Analysis of voluntary redintegration. Book I. $ 54. Analysis of voluntary spe The hypothesis of two kinds of movements opposed to each other, one evidenced by vividness and habit, the other by specific pleasure or interest, which we redintegration. will now call the retentive and the reactive movements, gives us the clue to explain the mode in which spontaneous becomes voluntary redintegration. Desire is nothing else, to express it in terms of consciousness, than an increase in the vividness of cific pleasures or interests in contrast to the habitual feelings, or to the feelings which are vivid and painful, in antagonism to them. That is to say, in volition we feel both the contrast, which depends upon the nerve conflict, and the pleasureable side of one of the contrasted states, with greater vividness than before. The explanation is, that the reactive movements, evidenced by the specific pleasure or interest, are increased in energy. In terms of consciousness, desire, wish, sense of effort for a purpose, in one word, volition, is the greater intensity of pleasureable states in greater contrast with habitual states, or with states which are vivid without being pleasureable. In terms of nerve movement, the reactive movements, being themselves increased in energy, find also a greater resistance than before from the retentive movements. The sense of effort is the result and the evidence of the conflict between the two movements; the desire is the result and the evidence of the contrast between them in kind, one being a movement supporting a pleasure, the other supporting a comparative pain. The nature of the desire, consisting in the nature of the contrasted states, depends upon the nature of the movements supporting them; the effort in desiring depends upon the conflict between them. Воок І. $ 54. Analysis of voluntary 2. All voluntary actions may be described generally as those in which we are conscious, not only of what we are doing while we are doing it, but of what we mean to do before we do it; in other words, as redintegration. a constant application of means to ends, of doing something as a step to something else. Now in voluntary actions thus generally described it is clear that there are two main divisions, one which is an effort of attention or of reasoning, having no immediate effect beyond the mind, the other an effort of action by means of muscles upon the external world; the first may be called immanent, the second transeunt action; and these correspond respectively to the distinctions which we have traced in both the groups of organs below the third group, namely, the distinction between perception on one side and the muscular sense and motion on the other. This being a general description of voluntary action, let us now see how our analysis of voluntary redintegration harmonises with and explains it. 3. Let us take a case which includes both immanent and transeunt action; suppose that in spontaneous redintegration we have the image of the Paris Exhibition, and of the pleasure of going to Paris to see it. We are then conscious in the first place of a wish, desire, or choice, that is, of a representation of a kind which is pleasureable, and in contrast to representations painful or less pleasureable, which are those forced upon us by habit or vividness of perception, which form part of the same total state of representation; (and note here that we always identify ourselves with the desire or pleasure, and consider the antagonist representations as forced upon us, which is not the first origin of the perception of the Ego |