plant, and they retain their own individuality and produce their own kind. In the act of digestion the animal organism manifests the self-activity of the individual just as the plant does. Life is the manifestation of originating energy in an individual form.

§ 70. Self-activity is plainly manifest in the process of digestion common to plants and animals. But feeling, which is a higher manifestation of self-activity, does not seem to be higher, for the reason that we are prone to look upon it as a passivity affected by external influences. Feeling is higher, however, than assimilation, because in it the soul makes or repeats for itself the form of the environment. In digestion the soul gives its form to matter; in sensation it gives form to itself without matter. We do not do any violence to external objects in perceiving them or hearing them; we form representations of them for ourselves. In the rational intellect the soul contemplates universals, forming them by self-definition. It sees causal energies as the essence of phenomena, and to these causal energies correspond the general terms of language. As will, the soul shows its individuality and independence in the most direct way.

8 71. The matter of the brain and nerves is constantly changing. The living individual energy of the soul aggregates matter and organizes it into an

instrument adapted for its purposes: First, it learns the world through the sensory nerves; secondly, it acts on the world through its motor nerves and realizes its ideals by its will. It is incorrect to call a living organism a "mechanism," for a mechanism is wholly a means, and not an end; it is moved by causation from without, while in an organism its parts are alike means and ends to the whole. But while the body is organic, the soul is not organic, but a higher form of being—namely, a pure self-activity which makes its product (that is to say, its organism) for the sake of self-relevation.

CHAPTER XV.

The Will.

$ 72. IN our last three chapters we have attempted to give an outline of what has been discovered up to date in what is called physiological psychology as far as it relates to the general theory of the two sorts of nerves, the two ganglionic centres at the base of the brain, and the localization of functions in the cerebrum. We have omitted any notice of the fields of labour now diligently worked in the psycho

physiological laboratories of America and Europenamely, the ascertainment by exact quantitative experiments of the velocity and intensity of nerve-currents to the brain from various organs, or outwardly from the former to the latter. All quantitative measurement is useful in the process of inventorying Nature, and there is no doubt that the devotees of psycho-physics " will discover much that is valuable on their road. De Soto and others went in search of the "Fountain of Youth," and discovered vast rivers and the details of the continent, though the object of their expeditions was a figment of the imagination. "Saul, the son of Kish, went out to find his father's asses, but found a kingdom." Many people have done the reverse of this, and men of average capacity are usually well satisfied if in their search for kingdoms they are rewarded by finding useful beasts of burden. In the laboratories of the students of psychology no metaphysical results, nor results in pure psychology of a positive character, will be arrived at, it is safe enough to say. But it is equally safe to expect very useful discoveries relating to the proper care and nurture of our nervous system-in short, a stock of pathological and educational knowledge, and scientific insight into the relation of man to other animals, and to his own historic evolution.

873. We take up now the topic of the will. In our three chapters on the logical structure of senseperception we have called attention to the inner or spiritual structure of mind as contradistinguished from the physiological structure of its instruments of manifestation, which is the subject investigated by the laboratory students whose chief discoveries have been noticed in the three chapters preceding this. The will, inasmuch as it is the most direct and immediate form of self-activity, lies within the field of observation open to introspection. It is a fact of consciousness. Nevertheless, its existence is denied freely on metaphysical grounds urged against self-activity by minds that have reached the second stage of thought. If there is no such thing as selfactivity or self-determination, there is certainly no such thing as will-power. We have already discussed the so-called inconceivability of self-activity in Chapters III and V, and will ask the reader who denies spontaneity or freedom or will-power, on account of the dogma of inconceivability, to go over once more, and yet again, the arguments already submitted to remove his objection.

The centre of pure psychology is this principle of selfactivity which we have so many times considered. It has been found to be the presupposition of all causal action;

of all influence of one body upon another; of all dependence, all change, and all motion. Finally, in the will as we are aware of it in our actions, it is not a presupposition inferred as the logical condition of the existence of some perceived thing or event, but the direct and immediate object of our inner consciousness, although we do not picture this object. We see ourselves as self-active in volition-originating motion in our bodies, acting on the external world, and setting things in motion to realize thoughts or ideals which we conceive in our minds. We are conscious of ourselves, therefore, as feeling, thinking, and willing, and, strange to say, we have many grades of consciousness of these activities. The child or the savage has some dim consciousness of these activities; the cultured man has a reflective consciousness of them, and grasps them much more firmly and clearly. The scientific state of mind has a still more thorough grasp of them by means of a third degree of consciousness, a new reflection, so to speak, upon them. For the philosopher or scientific student of psychology not only has these activities and the dim consciousness of them, and, secondly, the reflective consciousness of them, which the cultured man adds to the first or dim inward perception, but he also has a higher order of reflection on them which seizes them as special objects of observation, neglects the particular subject-matter with which they deal, and confines itself to their form.-To illustrate: I touch the surface of this paper and feel its texture with my hand, just as a child or savage might do, and am conscious of the sensuous impression it makes, and at the same time I am dimly conscious of myself as subject of the feeling-I know that it is my hand that feels, and my self that perceives the senseimpression. The child or savage makes this reference to himself spontaneously as I now do to myself; but he does not reflect on this reference as I am doing, for his mind is directed to the object and not to the act of perceptionhis perception is a so-called " objective" perception, and the inward perception of consciousness is not by itself the object of special attention, but occurs without any