rom the thought of it. It twinkles and goes
out the moment it appears in the margin of our consciousness; and we
need a resolute effort of voluntary attention to drag it into the focus
of the field, and to keep it there long enough for its associative and
motor effects to be exerted. Every one knows only too well how the mind
flinches from looking at considerations hostile to the reigning mood of
feeling.

Once brought, however, in this way to the centre of the field of
consciousness, and held there, the reasonable idea will exert these
effects inevitably; for the laws of connection between our consciousness
and our nervous system provide for the action then taking place. Our
moral effort, properly so called, terminates in our holding fast to the
appropriate idea.

If, then, you are asked, "_In what does a moral act consist_ when
reduced to its simplest and most elementary form?" you can make only
one reply. You can say that _it consists in the effort of attention by
which we hold fast to an idea_ which but for that effort of attention
would be driven out of the mind by the other psychological tendencies
that are there. _To think_, in short, is the secret of will, just as it
is the secret of memory.

This comes out very clearly in the kind of excuse which we most
frequently hear from persons who find themselves confronted by the
sinfulness or harmfulness of some part of their behavior. "I never
_thought_," they say. "I never _thought_ how mean the action was, I
never _thought_ of these abominable consequences." And what do we retort
when they say this? We say: "Why _didn't_ you think? What were you there
for but to think?" And we read them a moral lecture on their
irreflectiveness.

The hackneyed example of moral deliberation is the case of an habitual
drunkard under temptation. He has made a resolve to reform, but he is
now solicited again by the bottle. His moral triumph or failure
literally consists in his finding the right _name_ for the case. If he
says that it is a case of not wasting good liquor already poured out, or
a case of not being churlish and unsociable when in the midst of
friends, or a case of learning something at last about a brand of
whiskey which he never met before, or a case of celebrating a public
holiday, or a case of stimulating himself to a more energetic resolve in
favor of abstinence than any he has ever yet made, then he is lost. His
choice of the wrong name seals his doom. But if, in