Body and Will, Being an Essay Concerning will in its metaphysical, physiological and pathological aspects
In certain rural districts it is the custom to speak of a child that has been born out of wedlock as a chance-child, and of its mother as having had a misfortune; not that any one really believes the living event to have come by chance, in violation of ordinary law, without conceivable cause, but it is an indirect way of intimating that it ought not rightly to have come, and that it is not certain who has been concerned in the begetting of it. One may compare this way of speaking of a natural event to that used by many of the advocates of the freedom of the will, who are accustomed to speak of an act of will as if it were a chance-event; thereby meaning, or persuading themselves they mean, not that some part of the will, its inmost essence, is outside the reach of present explanation, but that it is actually outside the order of natural causation: that will is essentially a self-procreating, self-sustaining spiritual entity, which owns no natural cause, obeys not law, and has no sort of affinity with matter. An immaterial entity in a material world, the events of which it largely determines—such the signal and singular position claimed for it.
For the most part those who uphold a power of this kind, self-determined and self-determining, free not merely to act but to he, do not go so far as to say that motives are not at work continually in the mind, or that the will takes no account of them; what they do earnestly protest is, that in the motivation of will there is not the uniform, inseparable connection between motive and will which there is between cause and effect in physical nature. In the internal world of mind there is the self-consciousness of a freedom that is not perceivable nor conceivable in the external world of matter: the particular will is not the unconditionally necessary consequent of antecedent motives. It, or some allied entity in the individual, which, having abstracted it virtually from the concrete self, they call his non-bodily self, has a spontaneous, independent, arbitrary power to make this or that motive preponderate as it pleases, to choose this or that one among motives and to make it the motive; in doing which the self-determining principle is held by some to act without motive, of its own internal motion, without other cause or reason than pure self-evolution; by others, however, who think it not self-sufficing enough to dispense entirely with motives, to take remote account only of motives of so high and superlatively refined a nature that they do not weigh at all upon its freedom, insinuating themselves into its essence without actuating it, permeating and inspiring it without in the least constraining it.
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For the most part those who uphold a power of this kind, self-determined and self-determining, free not merely to act but to he, do not go so far as to say that motives are not at work continually in the mind, or that the will takes no account of them; what they do earnestly protest is, that in the motivation of will there is not the uniform, inseparable connection between motive and will which there is between cause and effect in physical nature. In the internal world of mind there is the self-consciousness of a freedom that is not perceivable nor conceivable in the external world of matter: the particular will is not the unconditionally necessary consequent of antecedent motives. It, or some allied entity in the individual, which, having abstracted it virtually from the concrete self, they call his non-bodily self, has a spontaneous, independent, arbitrary power to make this or that motive preponderate as it pleases, to choose this or that one among motives and to make it the motive; in doing which the self-determining principle is held by some to act without motive, of its own internal motion, without other cause or reason than pure self-evolution; by others, however, who think it not self-sufficing enough to dispense entirely with motives, to take remote account only of motives of so high and superlatively refined a nature that they do not weigh at all upon its freedom, insinuating themselves into its essence without actuating it, permeating and inspiring it without in the least constraining it.
Body and Will, Being an Essay Concerning will in its metaphysical, physiological and pathological aspects
In certain rural districts it is the custom to speak of a child that has been born out of wedlock as a chance-child, and of its mother as having had a misfortune; not that any one really believes the living event to have come by chance, in violation of ordinary law, without conceivable cause, but it is an indirect way of intimating that it ought not rightly to have come, and that it is not certain who has been concerned in the begetting of it. One may compare this way of speaking of a natural event to that used by many of the advocates of the freedom of the will, who are accustomed to speak of an act of will as if it were a chance-event; thereby meaning, or persuading themselves they mean, not that some part of the will, its inmost essence, is outside the reach of present explanation, but that it is actually outside the order of natural causation: that will is essentially a self-procreating, self-sustaining spiritual entity, which owns no natural cause, obeys not law, and has no sort of affinity with matter. An immaterial entity in a material world, the events of which it largely determines—such the signal and singular position claimed for it.
For the most part those who uphold a power of this kind, self-determined and self-determining, free not merely to act but to he, do not go so far as to say that motives are not at work continually in the mind, or that the will takes no account of them; what they do earnestly protest is, that in the motivation of will there is not the uniform, inseparable connection between motive and will which there is between cause and effect in physical nature. In the internal world of mind there is the self-consciousness of a freedom that is not perceivable nor conceivable in the external world of matter: the particular will is not the unconditionally necessary consequent of antecedent motives. It, or some allied entity in the individual, which, having abstracted it virtually from the concrete self, they call his non-bodily self, has a spontaneous, independent, arbitrary power to make this or that motive preponderate as it pleases, to choose this or that one among motives and to make it the motive; in doing which the self-determining principle is held by some to act without motive, of its own internal motion, without other cause or reason than pure self-evolution; by others, however, who think it not self-sufficing enough to dispense entirely with motives, to take remote account only of motives of so high and superlatively refined a nature that they do not weigh at all upon its freedom, insinuating themselves into its essence without actuating it, permeating and inspiring it without in the least constraining it.
For the most part those who uphold a power of this kind, self-determined and self-determining, free not merely to act but to he, do not go so far as to say that motives are not at work continually in the mind, or that the will takes no account of them; what they do earnestly protest is, that in the motivation of will there is not the uniform, inseparable connection between motive and will which there is between cause and effect in physical nature. In the internal world of mind there is the self-consciousness of a freedom that is not perceivable nor conceivable in the external world of matter: the particular will is not the unconditionally necessary consequent of antecedent motives. It, or some allied entity in the individual, which, having abstracted it virtually from the concrete self, they call his non-bodily self, has a spontaneous, independent, arbitrary power to make this or that motive preponderate as it pleases, to choose this or that one among motives and to make it the motive; in doing which the self-determining principle is held by some to act without motive, of its own internal motion, without other cause or reason than pure self-evolution; by others, however, who think it not self-sufficing enough to dispense entirely with motives, to take remote account only of motives of so high and superlatively refined a nature that they do not weigh at all upon its freedom, insinuating themselves into its essence without actuating it, permeating and inspiring it without in the least constraining it.
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Body and Will, Being an Essay Concerning will in its metaphysical, physiological and pathological aspects
Body and Will, Being an Essay Concerning will in its metaphysical, physiological and pathological aspects
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Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940013222298 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | VARIETY BOOKS |
| Publication date: | 10/25/2011 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 3 MB |
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