Impulse

“ We speak of ourselves as acting "from the impulse of the moment," from habit, or "as we always do under such circumstances." Let any one, for instance, review in his mind the events of yesterday, from the first moment of awakened consciousness until he sank into slumber at night, and remember, if he can, before how many of the ten thousand actions which constituted his daily life he paused to choose. ”

“ When, for instance, you open your lips and utter a sentence, you have not the faintest idea beforehand what word will follow another. When you move a muscle can you tell me the thought that prompts to the movement? And, wholly unable thus to account for your own simple sympathies between impulse and act, do you believe that there exists a man upon earth who can read all the riddles in the heart and brain of another? Is it not true that not one drop of water, one atom of matter, ever really touches another? ”

“ Ideas have only to do with thinking, but impulses distrain body and mind alike, and a given impulse is like an acoustic vibration which ebbs and flows in numberless vibrations, and dies away so gradually that one cannot say for certain when it has stopped. Yet an impulse may be the result of mere chance, and it is so generally. ”

“ But the pain only exists because of the impulse, and the impulse itself is directed to an act, not to escaping from the pain of restraining the impulse. The impulse itself remains without a purpose, and the purpose of escaping from pain only arises when the impulse has been momentarily restrained.
Impulse is at the basis of our activity, much more than desire. Desire has its place, but not so large a place as it is seemed to have. ”

“ There seems every reason to believe, however, that the transferring of impulses from one goal to another, is not an actual change in the nature of the impulse, but is merely a masked indulgence of the original craving. ”

“ Before passing on to consider how impulse is partly determined by the feeling-tone and the emotional attributes of the conscious situation, we may first draw attention to the important way in which the results of conative tendency afford the data through which consciousness attains its unity in the midst of diversity of experience. ”

“ Notice, first, that psychology makes a perfectly proper and important distinction between emotion and impulse. In terms of consciousness, emotion is "feeling somehow", and impulse is "wanting to do something". In behavior terms, emotion is an organic state, and impulse an adjustment of the nerve centers towards a certain reaction. An impulse is a conscious tendency. ”

“ Bertrand Russell has recently laid just emphasis upon the supremacy of impulse in determining human conduct; and has pointed out the distinction between impulses which make for life and those which make for death. ”

“ The process in the course of which a mental event may occur, a process apparently beginning in a stimulus and ending in an act, is what we have called an impulse. In actual experience single impulses of course never occur. Even the simplest human reflexes are very intricate bundles of mutually dependent impulses, and in any actual human behaviour the number of simultaneous and connected impulses occurring is beyond estimation. The simple impulse in fact is a limit, and the only impulses psychology is concerned with are complex. ”

“ All we have ascertained so far is that impulses of an originally instinctive character may exist, and yet not betray themselves by automatic fatality of conduct. But in man what impulses do exist? In the light of what has been said, it is obvious that an existing impulse may not always be superficially apparent even when its object is there. ”

“ What I call attraction may be performed by impulse or by some other means unknown to me. I use that word here to signify only in a general way any force by which bodies tend towards one another, whatever be the cause. ”

“ Now what do we find controlling the facts of our own natural life? An impulse which we may call the Will to live. We often use the word Will in a complex sense, as implying both thought and choice; but in its purest, simplest sense, as the word is used here, it means the impulse, or force, which is the cause of a phenomenon. ”

“ Equally impossible it is for throbbing hearts to resist the impulse communicated from the changing and brightening and enlivening scenes and activities around. They are drawn into the current and share its rapids and its eddies. ”

“ That single thought is enough. The impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an uncontrollable longing, and the longing (to the deep regret and mortification of the speaker, and in defiance of all consequences) is indulged. ”

“ And while I thus spoke, did there not cross your mind some thought of the physical power of words? Is not every word an impulse on the air? ”

“ Just as we have seen already that reason is not something radically different from sense, so now it appears that reason is not different from impulse, but itself the perfected form of impulse. Whenever impulse is not identical with reason—at least in a rational being—it is not truly impulse, but passion. ”

“ Impulse is, after all, the best linguist; its logic, if not conformable to Aristotle, cannot fail to be most convincing. ”

“ Impulse or appetition was the principle in the soul which impelled to action. In an unperverted state it was directed only to things in accordance with nature. The negative form of this principle or the avoidance of things as being contrary to nature, we shall call repulsion. ”

“ There is, however, another kind of action—we may call it volitional action—in which an impulse seems to come into conflict, not with another impulse, but with some idea or group of ideas that has no motor reference. ”

“ Desires may be regarded, at least from one standpoint, as developed impulses. As developed impulses, they differ in two respects from mere impulses, (a) When we act on impulse, the end that we aim at is not usually clearly present to us. In purely impulsive behaviour we are impelled in a certain direction without clearly knowing why. On the other hand, when we desire, we know the end we wish to attain, and we definitely desire something, (b) As we have seen, impulses are isolated and temporary. If an impulse be restrained, it disappears. ”

“ LESSON IV COMMON SENSE AND IMPULSE Impulsive people are those who allow themselves to be guided by their initial impressions and make resolutions or commit acts tinder the domination of a special consciousness into which perception has plunged them.
Impulse is a form of cerebral activity which, forces us to make a movement before the mind is able to decide upon it by means of reflection or reasoning. ”

“ Then an impulse is almost always accompanied by excitement; there is always something personal about it, so that if it is not at once obeyed — if anything crosses — it there arises a feeling of resentment; whereas a true intuition, though decided, is surrounded by a sense of calm strength. The impulse is a surging of the astral body; the intuition is a scrap of knowledge from the ego impressed upon the personality. ”

“ Impulse and Instinct. We have seen that instincts lead to certain types of action. The pugnacious instinct, for example, is responsible for the readiness of the normal boy to fight on the slightest provocation, or on none at all. ”

“ The active or propulsive phase of interest takes us back to the consideration of impulse and the spontaneous urgencies or tendencies of activity. There is no such thing as absolutely diffuse impartial impulse. Impulse is always differentiated along some more or less specific channel. ”

“ Each impulse has its constitutional ministry of thought and knowledge and reflection, through which possible conflicts of impulses are foreseen, and temporary impulses are controlled by the unifying impulse which may be called wisdom. ”

“ The manifestation of impulse in finite beings rises out of the relation which one finite being sustains to another. There is no impulse that does not grow out of this relation; and the impulse is according to the nature and character of that relation. In the divine order, if my body, as a physical and a finite existence, did not sustain any relation, it would be subject to no impulse ”

“ The old-fashioned psychology which, ignoring instinct and impulse, explained all action as the result of a kind of calculation of future pleasure and pain, has accustomed us to account for all fruitful human activity, whatever we call work, by a wish for some benefit or fear of some disadvantage. ”

“ Where these impulses run, and how they develop, depends entirely upon the condition of the mind, and this depends upon the impulses which have previously been active in it. It will be seen then that impulses—their direction, their strength, how they modify one another—are the essential and fundamental things in any experience. All else, whether intellectual or emotional, arises as a consequence of their activity. The thin trickle of stimulation which comes in through the eye finds an immense hierarchy of systems of tendencies poised in the most delicate stability. ”

“ The impulse in itself, and in its isolation, is uninteresting, for it is un-psychic. We sympathize with and feel the feelings after those who display them only when the impulse is raised to a passion. ”

“ Sympathetic action or propagation of similar influence by immediate impulse, is a property of all the natural forms of energy, as well as of mind. Similar actions are propagated thus in all kinds of dead substances, as well as in the living brain. ”

“ Thus the only activity which we know intuitively is that of consciousness; for we have only indeterminate ideas of corporeal activity. The words action, reaction, force, resistance, impulse, express only indeterminate relations, and represent something fixed and determinate, only in their effects. ”

“ For, as we are told by the wise men of science, every thought, every mental impulse of ours, sets in motion, in that realm of ether which it is said interfuses all coarser forms of matter, certain vibrations, corresponding in force to their cause, which have power to communicate themselves to other minds favourably conditioned to receive them, and so excite in them like thoughts and impulses. ”

“ If it knows this, it is able to reflect, in a rudimentary way, and to dismiss the impulse to explore the fire, not because it has been over-mastered by a stronger impulse, but because it has been controlled by reason. ”

“ Supply but a sufficient motive, and the energy is there; point out a course of action, and the impulse is alive and present; direct to the attainment of an object, and the question never arises, as it does in after life, whether it is worth while. ”

“ The Causality of the Ego being checked by a non-Ego is posited as Impulse—the Check of the non-Ego as a Material World, and from the positing of both a Tendency of the Ego to overcome that check is posited. ”

“ The life of volition is the life of action. Now all our actions represent a resultant of the forces of impulse and inhibition, and by constant repetition of actions this resultant may become almost habitual and unconscious. ”

“ For the moving force may be a shadowy presentiment constructed by wishful hope rather than by study of conditions; it may be an emotional indulgence rather than a solid plan built upon the rocks of actuality discovered by accurate inquiries. There is no thought without the impeding of impulse. ”

“ But in carrying out our impulse, we do more than we meant. We not only bring something into clearer consciousness that was before out of clear consciousness, but we qualitatively modify this thing in attending to it. I want to observe a series of beats, and in observing it, I make one beat in three or four seem heavier than the others, or I even alter the apparent length of one interval in three or four, by making it seem longer than the others. ”

“ Thus the violent impulsive energy which appears in our vigorous language, emphatic gestures, ultra sentiments, and threatening expressions, if it could be isolated from its psychic combination, would appear in its isolated purity as an impulse to the destruction of life and everything else that stands before us. ”

“ The instinct of pugnacity gives rise to the impulse to strike. Again, the instinct of curiosity immediately prompts the child to explore with its hands the object that excites its interest. Or the instinct will drive the child to investigate the fire, until a sharp lesson teaches it that some impulses must be restrained. In every case impulse is intimately connected with instinct. Impulsive behaviour may be defined as instinct in action. An impulse is the executive aspect of an instinct. ”

“ When he does not act according to this impulse, it is because there comes some new cause, some new motive, some new idea, which modifies his brain in a different manner, gives him a new impulse, determines his will in another way ”

“ Under [Pg 132] this heading will be found the large group of articles that answer the question why?, as for example, "Why the Quebec Bridge Collapsed," "Causes of the Strike among the Garment Workers," "Popular Opinion as Affecting Government Action," and other such subjects. In the following analysis of the relation existing between human action as result, and impulse and desire as causes, you will find such an informal presentation of material.
All human activity springs from two sources: impulse and desire. The part played by desire has always been sufficiently recognized. ”