General will

“ If now every action of my body is the manifestation of an act of will in which my will itself in general, and as a whole, thus my character, expresses itself under given motives, manifestation of the will must be the inevitable condition and presupposition of every action. ”

“ For will, taken in a psychological and not in a moral sense, is simply the general name for the sum total of tendencies, inherited and acquired, that determine our actions; and we distinguish different types of will, according as these tendencies to action manifest themselves, characteristically, in different ways. ”

“ In regard to the first alternative, the control which the mind has over its own train of thought has been definitely pointed out and described in the articles on attention and on the will. It appears that the will is the regulating principle, which governs all mental operations by selecting the modes of happiness which the intellect shall be employed in securing. Whatever mode of present or of general happiness is selected, immediately all conceptions which the judgment discerns as having a fitness for accomplishing this object become vivid and distinct, and recall their associate conceptions. ”

“ I ought'--we have within us a moral judge, to whom we feel ourselves subject, and who points out and requires of us our duty. 'I can'--we are conscious of power to do that which we perceive we ought to do. 'I will'--we determine to exercise that power with a volition which is in itself a step in the execution of that which we will. Here is a beautiful and perfect chain, and the wonder is that, so exquisitely constituted as he is for right-doing, error should be even possible to man. ”

“ And here is the line which divides the effective from the non-effective people, the great from the small, the good from the well-intentioned and respectable; it is in proportion as a man has self-controlling, self-compelling power that he his able to do, even of his own pleasure; that he can depend upon himself, and be sure of his own action in emergencies.
How the Will operates.--Now, how does this autocrat of the bosom behave? Is it with a stern 'Thou shalt,' 'Thou shalt not,' that the subject man is coerced into obedience? ”

“ It is the point in which personality is summed up in free and responsible selfhood, and where the great reality of responsibility is pivoted. The will, as another name for the soul's power of choosing, sustains the decisive relation between all the motives that precede and the actions which follow the volitions. The action contemplated may be right or wrong, the motive may be good or bad, but when the question is brought by the conscience into the presence of the will, the place of supreme and final responsibility for virtue or sin is reached. ”

“ Reasonable Use of so effective an Instrument.--And, once more, only the man of cultivated reason is capable of being ruled by a well-directed will. If his understanding does not show good cause why he should do some solid reading every day, why he should cling to the faith of his fathers, why he should take up his duties as a citizen,--the movement of his will will be feeble and fluctuating, and very barren of results. And, indeed, worse may happen: he may take up some wrong-headed, or even vicious, notion and work a great deal of mischief by what he feels to be a virtuous effort of will. ”

“ The divine authority of Genius is given in this descent and superiority to will. That which in me I must obey, that also above me all men must obey. Will is the centre of the practical man, of all force, not moral, but brute or natural, and is identified in the common thought with myself, as I am a natural cause. Will is the sum of physical forces necessary for self-preservation, is reagency against the formidable rivalry of every other organization. ”

“ The right to make the will confers the privilege coveted by both men and women to speak into the universal ear ‘the last word.’ The sum of man’s moral sense, and his exact ethical tone, is not infrequently concentrated in his last will. ”

“ Once the power of willing, as such, shall have been, — regardless of the worthiness of its object, — brought back to active life, it will be feasible to give the Will to Might a direction towards objects of the highest moral grandeur. ”

“ And the shock of having to transvalue all the accepted values, of having, in a world organized on the basis of fear, to conceive of a world organized on the basis of good will, made him a thinker in his own right. ”

“ All before the will is of necessity. Thus men see the right and perceive obligation. At this point all the responsibility of character is thrown upon the will. If contemplated action appear right or wrong, as action that ought or ought not to be done, the will must decide whether it shall be done. If good or bad motives plead for rulership, the will must say which shall prevail. If feelings are out of harmony with duty and right in the relations of life, with respect to God or man, it is to be remembered that the feelings cannot choose, and the will alone can guide them in virtuous action. ”

“ Few things show the human character in a more ridiculous light than the circumstance of will-making. It is the latest opportunity we have of exercising the natural perversity of the disposition, and we take care to make a good use of it. ”

“ Thus the primacy of the will is safe-guarded. It stands, or should stand, at the door; selecting from among the countless dynamic suggestions, good and bad, which life pours in on us, those which serve the best interests of the self. ”

“ By any one, any thing, any thought, with which can go the word required by—anything that carries right in its demand. If a man does not do the thing which the very notion of a free will requires, what in earth, heaven, or hell, would be the use of his knowing all about the will? ”

“ We are all subjected to certain temptations. The Will decides whether we will be just, or unjust; pure of thought; charitable in opinion; forbearing in overlooking other's shortcomings; whether we live up to our highest standard. Since these are all controlled by the Will, we should find time for plenty of exercises for training of the will in our daily life. ”

“ It all depends on the way in which we use ‘will.’ If by ‘will’ we mean ‘choice,’ ‘volition,’ the conscious realizing of myself in the object of one desire (in the widest sense) , which has been separated from and put before the mind, as a possibility not yet real—then the will can not be forced. For, supposing you could produce a state of mind, which certainly would issue in such and such a volition, yet the result, when produced, comes from the self. ”

“ An attempt may perhaps be made from another side to defend the primacy of will. It may be urged that all principles and axioms in the end must be practical, and must accordingly be called the expression of will. ”

“ And therefore isn’t it better to me, instead of persisting in following my own will and the will of other people, which are opposite to these supreme properties and leading me to disasters, to recognize once and for all that the goal of my life is the fulfillment of the will of the One Who sent me, in everything and always, in spite of any other considerations, and to follow only those instructions of reason and love that He put into me for the fulfillment of His will? ”

“ So far is this true, that there are people who live through their lives without an act of deliberate will: amiable, easy-going people, on the one hand, hedged in by favouring circumstances; and poor souls, on the other, whom circumstances have not saved, who have drifted from their moorings, and are hardly to be named by those to whom they belong. Great intellectual powers by no means imply a controlling will. ”

“ C. When the free will is the substantial will, made actual in the subject and conformable to its concept and rendered a totality of necessity,—it is the ethics of actual life in family, civil society, and state. ”

“ It is not the less true that will, in the beginning, is entirely produced by desire; including in that term the repelling influence of pain as well as the attractive one of pleasure. Let us take into consideration, no longer the person who has a confirmed will to do right, but him in whom that virtuous will is still feeble, conquerable by temptation, and not to be fully relied on; by what means can it be strengthened? How can the will to be virtuous, where it does not exist in sufficient force, be implanted or awakened? ”

“ The words a man desires to have read when he lies dumb, the gifts he leaves, the grace with which he gives, all these lay bare the spirit, the heart of disposition, as few other things can. For a will is that which is to live after one, and it is written knowing that no wound inflicted can be remedied, no neglect repaired. How egotism, or miserliness, or conceit, or self-satisfaction can shine out in a will! ”

“ We speak not of external acts; and hence we lay aside the whole scheme of natural necessity. We speak of the acts of the will; and we ask, if these be not free from the dominion of moral necessity, from necessitating causes over which we have no control, can we be accountable for them? Can we be to praise or to blame for them? Can they be our virtue or our vice? ”

“ We see that certain means must be used, in order to gratify the passion, desire, affection, or feeling, which we intend to gratify; and we act accordingly. In all this, we form our designs or intentions free from all influence whatever: nothing acts upon the will: we fix upon the end, and we choose the means to accomplish it. ”

“ There is no absolute constraint upon our volitions, and we feel and know that we are not bound, as by a spell, with reference to our actions. It would paralyze all desire of excellence were we to think otherwise. The entire business and conduct of life, with its domestic rules, its social arrangements, and its public institutions, proceed upon the practical conviction that the will is free. ”

“ The will, the power of willing, may be created, but the willing is begotten. Because God wills first, man wills also.
When my being is consciously and willedly in the hands of him who called it to live and think and suffer and be glad—given back to him by a perfect obedience—I thenceforward breathe the breath, share the life of God himself. ”

“ For he says, “I have chosen rather to express myself thus, that the will always is as the greatest apparent good, or as what appears most agreeable, than to say the will is determined by the greatest apparent good, or by what seems most agreeable; because an appearing most agreeable to the mind, and the mind's preferring, seem scarcely distinct.” We have taken the liberty to emphasize his words. ”

“ VI. Remember that your eye is of all the senses most subject to the will, and therefore there is the more of duty or sin in it; for voluntariness is the requisite to morality, both good and evil. Your will cannot so easily command your feeling, tasting, hearing, or smelling, as it can your sight; so easily can it open or shut the eye in a moment, that you are the more unexcusable if it be not governed; for all its faults will be proved the more voluntary. ”

“ Seize every opportunity to act in the direction of the desired habit, and permit no emotional prompting in its behalf to escape you. 'Hell is paved with good intentions,' hence to have good desires, thoughts, intentions without actually working them out weakens and destroys the moral fibre. 'Character is a completely fashioned will,' says J.S. Mill, and a will in this sense is an aggregate of tendencies which act in a firm, prompt, and definite way in every emergency of life. ”

“ Hight’s treatise is quite in line with the present trend of philosophy. This, reversing the long-prevalent and still popular conception of will as the instrument of reason, recognizes will as the master and intellect as its servant, both in the individual and in the universe.... By will is broadly meant the self-active principle manifested in all loving, hating, seeking, shunning, striving.”—Outlook.
Ath. 1906, 1: 731. Je. 16. 230w. “The book was written throughout in an attractive and readable style; to this is added the merit of brevity, unusual in philosophic works of this sort. ”

“ In the ought the self is commanded, and that self is the sensuous self in me, which is ordered, and which, if I obey, is forced by the non-sensuous formal will which stands above the empirical element, and, equally with that, is myself. The ought is the command of the formal will, and duty is the obedience, or, more properly, the compulsion of the lower self by that will, or the realization of the form in and against the recalcitrant matter of the desires. ”

“ We know the law of human nature: acts produce habits, habits breed dispositions, dispositions form the will, and the rightly-formed will is character. ”

“ The end is the ideal willed by me, the willing of the ideal in and by my will, and hence an ideal will. And my will as realizing the ideal is the good will. A will which obeys no law is not moral, a law which is not willed is nothing for morality. Acts, so far as they spring from the good will, are good, and a temper and habits and character are good so far as they are a present good will, result from it and embody it ”

“ Unfortunately, few of those who champion the freedom of the will think it worth while to trouble their readers with a clear definition of what they mean by it. The orthodox definition of the will as "a faculty of the soul" tells us nothing. ”

“ Yet, even in this case, might we not humbly presume that the Lord would take the will for the deed? for if there be first a willing mind, we are told, "it is accepted according to what a man hath, and not according to what he hath not." ”