" really paralyzes the will.
Mr. Bernard Shaw has not perceived the real difference between the old
utilitarian test of pleasure (clumsy, of course, and easily misstated)
and that which he propounds. The real difference between the test
of happiness and the test of will is simply that the test of
happiness is a test and the other isn't. You can discuss whether
a man's act in jumping over a cliff was directed towards happiness;
you cannot discuss whether it was derived from will. Of course
it was. You can praise an action by saying that it is calculated
to bring pleasure or pain to discover truth or to save the soul.
But you cannot praise an action because it shows will; for to say
that is merely to say that it is an action. By this praise of will
you cannot really choose one course as better than another. And yet
choosing one course as better than another is the very definition
of the will you are praising.

The worship of will is the negation of will. To admire mere
choice is to refuse to choose. If Mr. Bernard Shaw comes up to me and
says, "Will something," that is tantamount to saying, "I do not mind
what you will," and that is tantamount to saying, "I have no will in
the matter." You cannot admire will in general, because the essence
of will is that it is particular. A brilliant anarchist like Mr. John
Davidson feels an irritation against ordinary morality, and therefore
he invokes will--will to anything. He only wants humanity to want
something. But humanity does want something. It wants ordinary
morality. He rebels against the law and tells us to will something or
anything. But we have willed something. We have willed the law
against which he rebels.

All the will-worshippers, from Nietzsche to Mr. Davidson,
are really quite empty of volition. They cannot will, they can
hardly wish. And if any one wants a proof of this, it can be found
quite easily. It can be found in this fact: that they always talk
of will as something that expands and breaks out. But it is quite
the opposite. Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To
desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense every act
is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject
everything else. That objection, which men of this school used
to make to the act of marriage, is really an objection to every act.
Every act is an irrevocable selection and exclusion. Just as when
you marry one woman you give up