ad to the use of either of these, the individual
is able to note, say, that to use the axe is a quick, but inaccurate,
way of gaining the end; to use the saw, a slow, but accurate, way. The
present need being interpreted as one where only an approximate division
is necessary, attention is thereupon given wholly to the images tending
to promote this action; resistance is thus overcome in these centres,
and the necessary motor discharges for using the axe are given free
play. Here, however, the mind evidently does not deliberate on how the
hands are to use the axe or the saw, but rather upon the results
following the use of these.

VOLITION

=Nature of Will.=--When voluntary attention is fixed, as above, upon the
results of conflicting lines of action, the mind is said to experience a
conflict of desires, or motives. So long as this conflict lasts,
physical expression is inhibited, the mind deliberating upon and
comparing the conflicting motives. For instance, a pupil on his way to
school may be thrown into a conflict of motives. On the one side is a
desire to remain under the trees near the bank of the stream; on the
other a desire to obey his parents, and go to school. So long as these
desires each press themselves upon the attention, there results an
inhibiting of the nervous motor discharge with an accompanying mental
state of conflict, or indecision. This prevents, for the time being, any
action, and the youth deliberates between the two possible lines of
conduct. As he weighs the various elements of pleasure on the one hand
and of duty on the other, the one desire will finally appear the
stronger. This constitutes the person's choice, or decision, and a line
of action follows in accordance with the end, or motive, chosen. This
mental choice, or decision, is usually termed an act of will.

=Attention in Will.=--Such a choice between motives, however, evidently
involves an act of voluntary attention. What really goes on in
consciousness in such a conflict of motives is that voluntary attention
makes a single problem of the twofold situation--school versus play. To
this problem the attention marshals relative ideas and selects and
adjusts them to the complex problem. Finally these are built into an
organized experience which solves the problem as one, say, of going to
school. The so-called choice is, therefore, merely the mental solution
of the situation; the necessary bodily action follows in an habitual
manner,