that it may pay to dig in the
neighborhood.

{524}

Voluntary and Involuntary Action

About the first thing we strike when we start digging is the
distinction between voluntary and involuntary. A man has committed
homicide, and the question in court is whether he did it "with malice
aforethought", i.e., with full will and intention, whether he did it
in a sudden fit of anger, i.e., impulsively rather than quite
voluntarily, or whether it was an accident and so wholly unintentional
or involuntary. The court wishes to know, since a man who has
committed one sort of homicide is a very different character from one
who has committed another sort; different acts can be expected from
him in the future and different precautions need to be taken
accordingly.

It is a fact, then, that an act may be performed either with or
without foreknowledge--a remarkable fact both ways! An intentional act
is remarkable from the side of physics or chemistry or botany--which
is to say that it is very exceptional in nature at large. On the other
hand, a completely involuntary act is rather exceptional in human
behavior and perhaps in animal behavior as well, for almost always
there is some striving towards an end, some impulse. The simplest
reflexes, to be sure, are completely involuntary. The pupillary
reaction to light is not done with malice aforethought, cannot be so
done. The lid reflex, or wink of the eye, occurs many times in the
course of an hour, without foreknowledge, or after-knowledge for that
matter, though the same movement can be made voluntarily. Sneezing and
coughing are not voluntary in the full sense, but they are distinctly
impulsive, they strive towards desired relief. To sneeze voluntarily
is to sneeze when you don't want to, and to sneeze involuntarily is to
sneeze when you want to--which seems queer, since we usually think of
a voluntary act as one done to further our wishes. The solution of
this puzzle is, {525} of course, that a voluntary sneeze is desired
not because of a direct impulse but to gain some ulterior end, such as
to prove we can do it, or for histrionic purposes--in short, for some
purpose beyond the immediate satisfaction of an impulse.

Thus we may classify acts as wholly involuntary or mechanical, as
impulsive, and as distinctly voluntary or purposive. Or, we may
arrange acts in a scale from those that have no conscious end, through
those aimed directly at an immediate end, up to those done to
a