http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/1568788

The diseases of the will

"In recent years several authors, especially in foreign countries, have given a detailed exposition of certain branches of psychology according to the principle of evolution. It has seemed to me that there would be some profit in treating these questions in the same spirit, but under another form, that of dissolution. I propose, then, in this work to attempt for the will what I have formerly done for the memory; to study its anomalies, and to draw from this study conclusions regarding its normal state. Whether one considers memory as a function, a property, or a faculty, it remains none the less a stable mode of being, a psychic disposition, regarding which all the world can come to an agreement. The will, on the contrary, resolves itself into volitions, each one of which is an element, an unstable form of activity, a resultant varying according to the causes that produce it. Beyond this first difficulty there is another which may appear greater still, but of which we will not hesitate to summarily disembarrass ourselves. Can the pathology of the will be studied without touching upon the inextricable problem of free will? The problem of free will is of this order. The problem of liberty reduces itself to the question whether one can go outside the chain of effects and causes so as to posit an absolute beginning. That power "which calls up, suspends, or banishes," as it is defined by a contemporary who has studied it profoundly, can be affirmed only on the condition of entering into metaphysics. Here we have nothing of the sort to attempt. Experience, internal and external, is our sole object; its limits are our limits. We take the volitions as facts, with their immediate causes, that is to say, the motives which produce them, without investigating whether these causes suppose other causes ad infinitum, or whether there is added to them some degree of spontaneity. The question is thus placed in a form equally acceptable to the determinists and their adversaries, and reconcilable with either hypothesis. I shall try to show at the conclusion of this study that in every voluntary act there are two entirely distinct elements: the state of consciousness, the "I will," which indicates a situation, but which has in itself no efficacy; and a very complex psycho-physiological mechanism, in which alone resides the power to act or to restrain. As this general conclusion can only be the result of partial conclusions furnished by pathology, I will avoid provisionally in this introduction any systematic view; I shall limit myself to studying the will in its double mechanism of impulse and inhibition, and in its source--the individual character--neglecting all the details which do not concern our subject. We will see that from the lowest reflex to the highest will, the transition is insensible, and that it is impossible to say exactly at what moment there commences the volition proper, that is to say, the personal reaction. From one extreme of the series to the other, the difference is reduced to two points: on one hand, an extreme simplicity; on the other, an extreme complexity; on one hand, a reaction always the same in all the individuals of the same species; on the other, a reaction which varies according to the individual, that is to say, according to a particular organism limited in time and space. Simplicity and permanence, complexity and mutation, go together. It is clear that, from the point of view of evolution, all reactions have been in their origin individual. They have become organic, specific, by numberless repetitions in the individual and the race. The origin of will is in the property which living matter has of reacting, its end is in the property which living matter has of acquiring habits; and it is that involuntary activity forever fixed which serves as support and instrument to the individual activity"--Introduction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

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