possible to
distinguish which among such movements are reflex and which voluntary.
Nevertheless, there certainly is a distinction. When we decide in the
morning that it is time to get up, our consequent movement is voluntary.
The beating of the heart, on the other hand, is involuntary: we can
neither cause it nor prevent it by any decision of our own, except
indirectly, as e.g. by drugs. Breathing is intermediate between the two:
we normally breathe without the help of the will, but we can alter or
stop our breathing if we choose.

James ("Psychology," chap. xxvi) maintains that the only distinctive
characteristic of a voluntary act is that it involves an idea of the
movement to be performed, made up of memory-images of the kinaesthetic
sensations which we had when the same movement occurred on some former
occasion. He points out that, on this view, no movement can be made
voluntarily unless it has previously occurred involuntarily.*

* "Psychology," Vol. ii, pp. 492-3.

I see no reason to doubt the correctness of this view. We shall say,
then, that movements which are accompanied by kinaesthetic sensations
tend to be caused by the images of those sensations, and when so caused
are called VOLUNTARY.

Volition, in the emphatic sense, involves something more than
voluntary movement. The sort of case I am thinking of is decision after
deliberation. Voluntary movements are a part of this, but not the whole.
There is, in addition to them, a judgment: "This is what I shall
do"; there is also a sensation of tension during doubt, followed by a
different sensation at the moment of deciding. I see no reason whatever
to suppose that there is any specifically new ingredient; sensations and
images, with their relations and causal laws, yield all that seems to
be wanted for the analysis of the will, together with the fact that
kinaesthetic images tend to cause the movements with which they are
connected. Conflict of desires is of course essential in the causation
of the emphatic kind of will: there will be for a time kinaesthetic
images of incompatible movements, followed by the exclusive image of
the movement which is said to be willed. Thus will seems to add no new
irreducible ingredient to the analysis of the mind.

LECTURE XV. CHARACTERISTICS OF MENTAL PHENOMENA

At the end of our journey it is time to return to the question from
which we set out, namely: What is it that characterizes mind as opposed
to matter?