glass, and the movement of the arm up to that point; and under the stimulus of pain, or of expected pleasure, the movement is executed. The mind is largely filled with associations of this nature, connecting every conceivable motion or position of all the organs with the precise impulse of realizing them, provided only that the proper instigator of the will is present. It takes a long time to perfect such a multifarious acquisition as this, and there is only one road and one set of means. With every action performed by the hands, arms, or other visible parts, there is an appearance to the eye, and also an appreciation to the muscular sensibility, and these become connected with the central impulse that gives the direction and degree proper for the performance of the act; and the result is, that a mere idea suffices for the guiding antecedent of the voluntary operations, if duly accompanied with the motive or prompting antecedent. What was an entire blank at the opening of the active career is now supplied; channels of communications are established where there existed only blind impulse.

8. From the fact that such is the character of the will in maturity, we are so familiar with it as to reckon it the typical form of the faculty. A somewhat fuller exposition will, therefore, not be superfluous. There is in it an element of conception, ideation, or intellectual retentiveness, whereby we store up impressions of the external positions of things, and of the movements of all the organs in every direction, extent, and degree. We have distinct recollections of the open hand, the closed hand, the spread fingers, the close fingers, the arms straight, the bendings at every angle; we can conceive movements slow, rapid, varying; we can further entertain the idea of much or little force expended. All these particulars, originally experienced only as present and actual, are in the end self-sustaining ideas or conceptions of the mind. I have no difficulty in recalling and retaining the entire image of a firm grasp of the hand, or of the swing of the foot in giving a kick. These are a part of our mental possessions, growing out of our unavoidable experience in life. We may not give much heed to them, but silently they play an indispensable part in our

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various operations. They enter into associations with the movements that they picture to the mind; and so firm and secure are these ties, that the ideal exertion can determine the occurrence of the real. The hand closed in vision can guide the nervous power into the channels necessary for closing it in reality. I have said that this is a guiding or determining association, because, in fact, we find that the proper stimulus of the will, namely, some variety of pleasure or pain, is needed to give the impetus. That primary constitution, so much insisted on, under which our activity is put in motion by our feelings, is still the same to the last. However well a connexion may be formed between the conceiving and the doing of an action, the intellectual link is not sufficient for causing the deed to arise at the beck of the idea (except in case of an 'idée fixe'); just as, in imitation, we do not necessarily fall in with everything that is done in our presence by others. Should any pleasure spring up, or be continued, by performing an action that we clearly conceive, the causation is then complete; both the directing and the moving powers are present. The idea of giving a kick, concurring with an obstacle at the foot, is enough to bring on the act, no counteracting motive existing.

I have formerly remarked, that among the earliest acquirements of the young quadruped, are the alliances between its locomotive movements and the appearances of things approaching to, or receding from, the eye. The enlarging picture is connected in the mind with approach, the diminishing with withdrawal. The human subject has to pass through the experience that leaves the same trace in the mind. This is one important accessory to the operation of the will, in the opposite circumstances of pursuit and flight. The motive element must be present; some pleasure or pain must have possession of the animal, urging a movement in correspondence. If the feeling be to get at some distant object of food, the guiding association is a forward pace; if to escape pain, there is a different course given to the impelling influence through the same experience, and the animal retreats.

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rapidity and sureness of the proper action look as if it were. an instinct, but, after all, there is nothing but a secure association, the growth being very quick, although still traceable as a growth in the lower animals. Being one of their most interested acquisitions, concerned in their very strongest feelings, there is a great concentration of mind attending the lessons in it. Another case coming under locomotion is the leap over chasms or obstacles, which is also an acquired power, demanding an adhesion to be formed in the mind between the apparent width of the obstacle, and the energy thrown into the muscles that propel the body to a leap. The animal must grope its way to this power by many experiments, abiding by the successful, and shunning the other modes. The lamb, the puppy, the kitten, are at first incapable of such an effort. Their spontaneous impulses of locomotion lead them to make attempts at it, and any attempt causing a hurt is desisted from; after a number of trials and failures the proper adjustment is come to, and finally cemented.

9. The acquired actions of human beings are more various and complicated; for which reason, among others, man is a late learner. The moveable parts of our framework are greatly more numerous, and in the end more variously brought into play, so that the mere ideas that we have to form as the handmaids of the will range over a great compass. Moreover, it is to be noted that these intellectual accessories to volition are not confined to ideas of the appearances of the moving organs; the will to raise the arm is not necessarily led by the notion, or mental picture of a raised arm, although this is one way of inducing the act. We come to look at the effects produced on external things, and associate the appearance of those with the action that brings them on. Thus, to pluck a flower we have, as the intellectual antecedent, the idea of the flower held in the hand and moved away; there being at the same time a notion of power exerted in some definite muscles. We have now departed from the picture of the movements of the hand and arm, and fastened the mental tie between

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the changes made on the thing to be operated on, and the operating action. So in driving a nail; although one may put forth this energy under the lead of the ideal motion of the arm and the hand, it is done in fact under the lead of the nail conceived as sinking in the wood at every stroke. In walking from one end of a street to the other, under some stimulus of feeling, the guiding antecedent is the picture of the street through the various phases encountered as we pass along it. This is the intellectual element of the volitional association, which, along with the prompting or motive, gives the power of effectively willing to go from one place to some other. Such is the general case in all our mechanical proceedings, being, in fact, the last stage of volitional acquirement. I have a motive for drawing a circle; after an educational career of many different steps, I find that the mental conception of the desired circle is associated in me with a series of movements and configurations of the hand and arm, and this makes up my ability to draw the figure, when instigated to do so by the motive of pleasure or pain I am under at the time. The sense of chillness urges me to some action for abating it; the instrumentality at the moment is to stir the fire; the intellectual antecedent, initiating the requisite movements, is the appearance of the fire now, coupled with the vision of a brighter blaze, and of the application of the poker. The substitution of these antecedents, for the picture of the play of the arm, is owing to the circumstance that the attention is fixed upon that point where we can judge of the effect produced. In lifting a window to admit the air, we have in the mind the size of opening to be made, which is sufficient to give the lead to the proper muscles, and impart the proper amount of impulse to each, subject to the correcting power inherent in the original organization of the will; which correcting power is always at hand to supply every deficiency in the volitional associations. The highly-trained workman, looking at the thing before him, has in his mind an association between the fracture he is to make and the precise impetus to be thrown into the muscles of the arm, and

at one blow he produces the exact effect.

Another person,

less developed in this particular department, does too little or too much; but, having in view the end, continues to operate until he sees it accomplished, falling back upon the primary and natural prompting of volition.

10. We might pursue the examples through the gratification of every sense, and the providing against every pain incident to human nature, but the principles involved would still be the same. We have to deal with pleasure and pain in the state of idea as well as actual. But it is a property of our intellectual nature, that for all purposes of action the remembrance, notion, or anticipation of a feeling, can operate in essentially the same way as the real presence. The bitter taste in the mouth inspires the efforts of riddance; the same thing foreseen in idea checks the movement that would bring it near. The child, enjoying the sugary savour, keeps it up by every means within the range of its volitional attainments; after the actual stimulation of the sense has completely subsided, the lively recollection may urge a fury of endeavour to revive the full enjoyment. As we make progress in years we have more and more the ideal presence of things that give us delight, or suffering: consequently our voluntary impulses come into a new service, without in any way altering their genuine character. Without some antecedent of pleasurable, or painful, feeling-actual or ideal, primary or derivative-the will cannot be stimulated. Through all the disguises that wrap up what we call motives, something of one or other of these two grand conditions can be detected. The only appearances of exception to this rule are those furnished by neverdying spontaneity on the one hand, and habits and fixed ideas on the other; but those do not affect the integrity of the principle contended for. I shall afterwards advert to their effect upon the proper course of the will. For the present, I hold it as a rule, beyond all dispute, that there is at the bottom of every genuine voluntary impulse, some one variety of the many forms wherein pain or pleasure takes possession of the conscious mind. Nor is there any intermediate machinery