Will. Mental phenomena are commonly arranged in the three orders or classes of Cognition, Feeling, and Will. The first includes all the ways in which facts and relations become known; the second refers to the way in which the mind is affected as regards pleasure and pain; to the third, or Will, belong all those mental states in which the mind or subject is regarded as producing changes either in the state of mind itself or in its bodily environment. The movements thus produced are called voluntary, and the mental acts producing them volitions. The term Will may thus be said to refer to the active side of mind. But to make this clear the term 'action' needs limitation. It does not refer to what we know as action in the physical world—e.g. the action of a billiard-cue on the ball: psychologically this process is for us only a certain orderly change of presentations. Further, many of our organic actions and bodily movements are not actions in the psychological sense of the word, seeing that they are not mentally initiated. Spontaneous, Reflex, and Instinctive actions, even when accompanied by a mental element—sensation or feeling—can be traced solely to certain organic conditions, and do not proceed from a mental initiative: the movement has not been preceded by an idea of the movement. In this way we reach a mark of distinction between the non-voluntary and the voluntary. In volition the movement is preceded by an idea of its ‘end;’ and this end is further so connected with the emotional nature of the subject that its attainment gives satisfaction or pleasure, and the failure to attain to it is the cause of dissatisfaction or pain. Hence also the mental changes which do not possess these characteristic marks, but are due to the occurrence of new sensations or to the mechanism of association, belong to the class of the non-voluntary.
If, however, in accordance with what has just been said, an act of will be allowed to involve both an ideal element and an element of feeling, it follows that the phenomena of will cannot be marked off as an entirely distinct class from those of cognition and feeling. Elements from these latter classes enter into and go to determine the nature of volition. The question therefore arises whether there is any ultimate volitional element, equally fundamental in consciousness, with the element of presentation in cognition, or of pleasure or pain in feeling. If there is such an element, then we may expect to find it entering into cognitive and emotional states of mind just as presentation and feeling enter into volition. Various attempts have been made by psychologists to account for the phenomena of volition without admitting any will-element as an ultimate constituent of consciousness. Sometimes these theories have been mainly physiological in nature; but as such they go no further than to trace the development of the organic processes which accompany volition. These organic processes themselves, in so far as they enter consciousness at all, only enter it as motor presentations. A psychological account of volition which denies its ultimate character must therefore trace it either to presentation, or to feeling, or to their combination. On the other hand, those psychologists who contend for the ultimate character of the will-element in consciousness need not be satisfied with pointing out the difficulties which opposed theories fall into. They may contend that the will-element is assumed by them at starting along with their conception of presentation and of a complex of presentations. The question is thus apt to fall back upon the still more fundamental question as to whether a presentation per se is intelligible. If we may assume that a presentation which is presented to no one, or is the object of no subject, is an impossible beginning for mental development, then with presentations we must assume a subject to which they are presented. It is with the recognition of this assumption of a Subject that we seem to reach the crucial point in the doctrine of will. It is admitted that such cognitive processes as reasoning and perception are also active processes—i.e. that they involve will; and it is contended by some that even in presentation the subject is not to be regarded as entirely passive, but is to be looked upon as reacting upon the presentation in attending to it. Hence those psychologists who hold to the view that there is a will-element in consciousness equally ultimate with the cognitive element and the feeling-element, also frequently look upon Attention as the expression of that element, and upon the ‘movements’ of attention, or its continuous redistribution over the content of consciousness, as the fundamental act of will. And in this connection it may become apparent that the psychological question runs into and involves a philosophical view of the subjective activity to which simple presentation as well as rational choice is due. From this point of view also we see how will has come to be specially identified with the self or person, so as to admit of its being said that the will is the man.
The disputed questions concerning the mode of voluntary action have been generally discussed either as a part of, or in more or less express connection with, the time-honoured controversy concerning the Freedom of the Will. This controversy arose out of ethical and, still more, theological discussions, rather than from purely psychological analysis. The way for the question was opened by Aristotle’s investigation of the opposition between the voluntary and involuntary, and by his criticism of the older Socratic position that good only is voluntary and evil involuntary. By the application subsequently of the Stoical doctrine of a universal necessity or fate to the question of human volition a further step was taken towards opening up the controversy which has to so great an extent dominated modern psychology and ethics. Christian theology introduced alongside of the traditional philosophy of Greece a new conception of the relation between God and man, with the attendant conceptions of sin and grace. And from this new conception there soon emerged a twofold drift of thought, according as emphasis was laid on the holiness or on the power of God. From the former point of view it was necessary to free the conception of God from the stain of the evil in the world, and especially in human conduct; and accordingly a certain independence, a power of disobeying the divine law or of sinning, was attributed to the human will. In this way the ‘freedom of the will’ came to be defended by early Christian writers (e.g. Justin Martyr, Tertullian) against the fatalism which traced both good and evil to God. On the other hand, the conception of the divine omnipotence dominated the Christian philosophy of St Augustine. The Christian doctrine of salvation was made to hinge not on the individual will, but on the divine grace which freely elects to salvation and leads the wills of the elect from sin to repentance, faith, and holiness. This theory of predestination was afterwards more strictly formulated by Calvin, and through his influence became the creed of the Reformed churches. It is noticeable, however, that St Augustine, if not Calvin also, seeks to defend the justice of God by ascribing free-will to Adam, who, as progenitor and representative of the human race, is represented as having lost the power to will the good, and—for himself and his descendants—come under the sway of evil until drawn from it by irresistible grace. The arguments drawn from the theory of predestination for the most part hold with equal force against free-will before or after the fall, and in one of the ablest treatises against the common notion of the Freedom of the Will, that by Jonathan Edwards, the arguments adduced are quite general in their application. The Free-will controversy, as discussed between Augustine and Pelagius, has revived with each new discussion of dogmatic theology; and from theology the metaphysical and psychological questions involved have passed into the schools of philosophy. Thus from Descartes to Lotze there is hardly a great thinker who has not attempted on one side or the other, or by way of compromise, to solve the question. The psychology of the question has been discussed with great fullness by the English and Scottish psychologists. While Reid, Stewart, Hamilton, and H. L. Mansel maintain the doctrine of Free-will, the theory of Necessity—or, as they mostly prefer to call it, Determinism, emphasising thus the observed invariable sequence of act upon motive rather than any necessary connection between them—is supported by Hobbes, Hume, Priestley, James Mill, J. S. Mill, and Bain. The view of Locke, as expressed in his subtle but intricate chapter on 'Power' in the Essay, is that the will, or rather the man, is moved to act by the most pressing uneasiness; and his theory would therefore be called determinist did he not subsequently assert that, in order to prevent precipitate determination, 'we have a power to suspend the prosecution of this or that desire,' and that 'in this seems to consist that which is (as I think, improperly) called free-will.'
The clearest view of the whole controversy may perhaps be obtained by passing shortly in review J. S. Mill's discussion of the subject in his Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy. The meaning of his doctrine is first explained. To begin with, he argues that Determinism does not imply materialism; man may be a spiritual being, but yet subject to the law of causation, 'his volitions not being self-caused, but determined by spiritual antecedents (e.g. desires, association of ideas, &c., all of which are spiritual if the mind is spiritual) in such sort that when the antecedents are the same the volitions will always be the same.' Further, he contends that Determinism does not mean fatalism: neither the pure or Asiatic form of fatalism which holds that our actions do not depend on our desires, but are overruled by a superior power, nor the modified form of fatalism which 'holds that our actions are determined by our will, our will by our desires, and our desires by the joint influence of the motives presented to us and of our individual character, but that, our character having been made for us and not by us, we are not responsible for it, nor for the actions it leads to, and should in vain attempt to alter them.' The 'true doctrine of the causation of human actions' rejects this conclusion, and maintains 'that not only our conduct but our character is in part amenable to our will,' and 'that we can by employing the proper means improve our character.' The 'necessity' involved in human action simply comes to this, that any one who 'knew perfectly our character and our circumstances' could predict our actions.
The arguments for this theory of Determinism may be reduced to two: that from the universality of the connection between cause and effect, and that from the constant presence of motives in volition. The theory of determinism inferred, by Mill and most English psychologists, from these considerations, is that the action is the outcome of motives, the weight or strength of motives being further determined by their pleasure-value—that is to say, from the point of view of feeling alone. It is noticeable, however, that a very different, though still determinist, theory of volition has been elaborated by Herbert. His psychology, in spite of the widely different philosophical principles from which it starts, has many points of similarity with that of the English Associationists; but his treatment of volition differs from theirs by attributing the motive-force which governs action not to pleasure and pain but to presentations themselves, from the interaction of which volition is held to be a special development. Whereas Mill looks upon will as issuing from desire, and desire as a conscious tendency towards pleasure—a view expressed by the old dictum, nihil appetimus nisi sub specie boni—the Herbertian psychologists put forward a view of will which disconnects it from the representation of an object as pleasurable.
On the other hand, the arguments for the theory of free-will may also be reduced to two: the argument from the consciousness of freedom, and the moral argument. Regarding the argument from consciousness Mill says that 'to be conscious of free-will must mean to be conscious before I have decided that I am able to decide either way.' And this power he denies on the ground that 'consciousness is not prophetic; 'consciousness tells me what I do or feel. But what I am able to do is not a subject of consciousness.' We may have a conviction afterwards that we could or should have chosen the other course, but only by supposing 'a difference in the antecedents. We picture ourselves as having known something which we did not know, which is a difference in the external inducements, or as having desired something or disliked something more or less than we did, which is a difference in the internal inducements.' The moral argument, so far as it refers to the connection between freedom and responsibility, is also dealt with by Mill. Moral responsibility, he contends, does not imply freedom, for 'responsibility means punishment.' Punishment is a motive to action, and 'proceeds on the assumption that the will is governed by motives.' The consciousness of 'deserving punishment' which is, he adds, bound up with the feeling of responsibility, 'is nothing else than our knowledge that punishment will be just'—i.e. fitted to prevent us from infringing the rights of others. It is on these latter points that Mill's views may most probably seem insufficient. With regard to the consciousness of freedom, so careful an observer as Sidgwick gives a different interpretation of the facts. 'In the case of actions,' he says, 'in which I have a distinct consciousness of choosing between alternatives of conduct, one of which I conceive as right or reasonable, I find it impossible not to think that I can now choose to do what I so conceive, however strong may be my inclination to act unreasonably, and however uniformly I may have yielded to such inclinations in the past. This belief seems to me bound up with the belief that I ought, in the strictest sense, to choose any course.' And Mill's explanation of responsibility, and of the connected notion of moral obligation, is not so much a justification of these notions as the construction of a new meaning for the old words which may serve all social requirements. The ordinary notion of moral responsibility seems to involve the recognition of a law as binding on conduct, or of an ideal which ought to be realised in it: even apart from consideration of the punishment which may follow a breach of the law or disregard of the ideal.
The ethical aspect of the question of free-will thus becomes apparent. It is most pronounced in the system of Kant, in which the free will comes to be identified with the moral law itself. On the other hand, Sidgwick maintains that, while the ordinary notions of moral obligation and moral responsibility imply the conception of free-will, the content of morality is independent of it, that no decision on the question is required before deciding what it is right or reasonable to do in any circumstances, and that the freedom of the will is therefore not a necessary postulate of ethical theory. Some idea of the different ways in which the question of free-will enters into a philosophical construction of things, and of the different solutions of which it is capable, may be given by indicating very briefly the way in which it was dealt with by three philosophers who may be selected as typical of different modes of thought—Spinoza, Kant, and Lotze. Spinoza decides the question from the point of view of a monistic conception of things—i.e. he conceives the universe as one and manifesting a single necessary law in its various modes. There is therefore no such thing as contingency either in man or nature. Belief in free-will is simply a result of ignorance. Men think themselves free because conscious of their actions but ignorant of the causes of these actions. Kant's treatment of the question is an attempt to reconcile determinism with freedom. The causality of nature which binds effect to cause in unbroken chain must be recognised to hold not only of the physical world, but also of the mental sequence of motive, desire, and act. But while this conception rules our experience, it is still possible to look upon the whole series of sense-phenomena—i.e. the whole causality of nature—as itself an effect of the causality of freedom. This idea is indeed only a regulative idea giving method and plan to our knowledge, and not entering into knowledge. Further importance is given to it, however, when we enter upon ethical considerations. The moral law, which requires absolute obedience, implies (unless our nature contradict itself) that such obedience can be rendered. Free-will thus implied by the moral law would conflict with the causality of nature if conceived of as operating in time. It is only thinkable as the law of an intelligible world (from which the sensible world may be said to proceed), and as thus at once reason, law, and will. Will is therefore free not only because above the causality of nature, but because it is autonomous or a law to itself. The weakness of this theory, however, lies in the opposition between the intelligible and sensible worlds. Kant has no means of showing how intelligible freedom may manifest itself in the development of actual character. He asserts at once the constancy of causal connection and the ethical worth of free-will; but no real harmony between the two is brought about. To hold fast the conception of law in mental phenomena—which recent psychology has made increasingly manifest—and at the same time to assert and harmonise with it the rational conviction that a place must remain for freedom, is the endeavour of Lotze. Volition, he contends, contains a peculiar element of mental activity not derived from presentation or feeling, though dependent upon them for its appearance. 'Will can have no content other than that supplied by the involuntary flow of ideas and feelings,' but 'we are convinced that we meet with an act of will only where the impulses urging to action are apprehended in distinct consciousness, and where the decision whether they shall be followed or not is deliberated upon and is left to be determined by free choice of the mind.'
Full treatment of the subject of Will is given in most of the psychological treatises quoted in the article PSYCHOLOGY, to which must now be added Sully, The Human Mind (2 vols. 1892), which gives a very complete and discriminating account of the whole subject. Amongst recent works of physiological psychology may be mentioned G. H. Schneider, Der tierische Wille (1880), Der menschliche Wille (1882); Th. Ribot, Les Maladies de la Volonté (1882); H. Münsterberg, Die Willenshandlung (1888). To the Hegelian influence is due the work of W. Vatke, Die menschliche Freiheit in ihrem Verhältniss zur Sünde und zur göttlichen Gnade (1841). Lotze's view is worked out and defended by H. Sommer, Ueber das Wesen und die Bedeutung der menschlichen Freiheit (1882). A useful outline of different views, and references to literature, are given by O. Külpe, Die Lehren vom Willen in der neueren Psychologie in Wundt's Philosophische Studien (vol. v. 1889). Historical accounts of the free-will controversy are given in Bain's Mental and Moral Science, pp. 406-428, and Volkman's Lehrbuch der Psychologie, sect. 151. See also the controversy between W. G. Ward, A. Bain, and S. H. Hodgson in Mind, vols. v. and vi., and the articles therein referred to, and Hodgson in Mind, vol. xvi. pp. 161 ff. For Schopenhauer's view of will as the ultimate principle of things, see SCHOPENHAUER.