Option

“ The most hopeful method of dealing with it appears to lie in extending the principle of option;—to give fairly equal encouragement to a considerable number of studies, and to allow a limited choice to be made amongst them. ”

“ Upon such considerations he has to make his choice—a choice which is far more than the adoption of any intellectual opinion, which is one of the ruling decisions of his life, to which, when once made, he is bound to adhere. ”

“ If the proof which has been presented for or against the proposition shows that the proposed measure is necessary the conclusion should make necessity the basis of the plea. 122Necessity is a strong basis for an argument. If a thing is a necessity, all reasonable persons will agree that it should be adopted, providing there is no predominating circumstance which makes its adoption inadvisable. ”

“ This decision is our preference, our choice. Our minds, as we say, are made up what to do, what course to pursue. When the time comes, we shall act. Something may prevent our having our way; opportunity may not offer, or we may see fit, subsequently to reconsider and revoke our decision. Otherwise, our choice is carried out in action. ”

“ There would then be an obvious reason for the selection of one path, and no one would hesitate to say that here was an illustration of the exercise of choice. Choice, then, is a phenomenon of consciousness, and it implies a recognition of alternatives. But a recognition of alternatives does not by any means imply that either of two are equally eligible. It is merely a consciousness of the fact that they exist, and that either might be selected were circumstances favourable to its selection. ”

“ It were of no use that there should be different courses of conduct—different ends, or different means of attaining an end—proposed to our understanding, if it were not in our power to select which we pleased, if we were not free to go which way we will. Choice always implies that different actions and volitions are possible, and are, as such, submitted to our decision and preference. There can be no volition without choice, and no choice without liberty to choose. ”

“ Choice is a mental process that involves the presence of plans for the satisfaction of desires, a foreknowledge of relatively objective ends that constitute the conscious aims of these desires, a more or less reasonable estimate of the value of these aims, and then some process which involves the survival of some, the subordination, or perhaps the suppression, of other desires.
So much for the second element of the human will. For some writers, choice has seemed the essential element of the will. ”

“ Choice being the unition of the mind’s sensitivity and the object,—that is, being an affection of the sensitivity, by reason of its perfect agreement and correlation with the object, and of course of the perfect agreement and correlation of the object with the sensitivity, in determining the cause of choice, we must necessarily look both to the mind and the object. ”

“ Choice alone should take, and choice alone should surrender. There was a time, indeed, when I had not retired thus early, Languidly thus, from pursuit of a purpose I once had adopted, But it is all over, all that! ”

“ One of these respects the power of contrary choice. Have we any such power? Is the freedom, which, as we have seen, belongs to the very nature of the will, such a freedom as allows of our choosing, under given circumstances, any otherwise than we do? When I put forth a volition, all other things being as they are, can I, at that moment, in place of that volition, put forth a different one in its stead? ”

“ And this is a choice not of one day or one set of people, not a tumultuary and giddy choice; it is a deliberate election of ages and of generations; it is a constitution, made by what is ten thousand times better than choice; it is made by the peculiar circumstances, occasions, tempers, dispositions, and moral, civil, and social habitudes of the people, which, disclose themselves only in a long space of time. ”

“ One way of approach is set beside another for choice, and a third contrived for better choice. Still the puzzle persists, all because the one precisely right way might seem—shall we say intense, high keyed, clamorous? Yet if one way is the only right way, why pause? ”

“ I want to begin by saying that choice isn't so easy and so necessary as it seems. We think we are going to choose presently, and in the end we may never choose at all. Choice needs perhaps more energy than we think. ”

“ It may be true that we can act as we choose, but can we choose? Is not our choice determined for us? We cannot determine from the fact, because we always have chosen as soon as we act, and we cannot replace the conditions in such a way as to discover whether we could have chosen anything else. ”

“ But occasions present themselves when it is necessary to choose, when we must let one thing go in order to take another. This establishes an order of preference, a greater and less, better and worse. Things judged or passed upon have to be estimated in relation to some third thing, some further end. ”

“ At other times we use the terms choice and choosing in application to the will—when it is applied to that power, it expresses the mere act of the will, and nothing more, with the exception, as in the other case, that more than one object of volition was present, in view of the mind, before the putting forth of the voluntary act. ”

“ You only said the words of your excellent decision after the excellent decision had surged and pulsated and battled and muscled its way through your system to the tip of your tongue. Taking a decision is like taking a train: in reality the train takes you. ”

“ But, on the other hand, when you will, you turn possibility into actuality by dwelling upon one or another various already known and abstractly conceivable possibilities. The essence of the will is here not inventiveness, but attention. Choice is explicitly an attentive selection of one conceived possibility as that upon which you dwell, as against opposing possibilities. Even Desire, in its least rational forms, involves this element of attentive favouring of one conscious content as against a more or less dimly recognised background of other contents. ”

“ You are driven in your choice by two facts—first, that you have to choose, regardless of whether you want to or not; and second, that upon your choice depend infinite possibilities of happiness or of misery. ”

“ In the sacred fact of obligation you touch the immutable, and lay hold, as it were, on the eternities. At the very centre of your being, there is a fixed element, and that of a kind or degree essentially sovereign. A standard is set up in your very thought, by which a great part of your questions are determined, and about which your otherwise random thoughts may settle into order and law. ”

“ In the conditionals, both statement and question can be done all through. I can give orders to my imaginary, though not to my actual self. I cannot say (as a command) I shall do it; but I can say, as a conditional command, I should do it.
I shall and we shall are accordingly the superfluous forms of the present shall in the pure system.
Again, with will, I will meaning it is my will, it is obvious that we can generally state this only of ourselves; we do not know the inside of other people's minds, but we can ask about it. The present runs, then,
I will. Will you? Will he? We will. ”

“ At other times, without such a distinct "act of will", and without any observable change in the attractiveness of either alternative, we simply find, after awhile, that a decision has emerged, and that we now know what we are going to do. ”

“ The distinction between suggestion and choice is not, I think, a sharp opposition between separable or radically different things, but rather a way of indicating the lower and higher stages of a series. What we call choice or will appears to be an ill-defined area of more strenuous mental activity within a much wider field of activity similar in kind but less intense. ”

“ And it is, as far as I have been able to learn, the practice of all countries.' The same will, the same positive action, the same purpose, and, it may be added, the same predicament or position of the actors, must exist in each class of cases. There must be intent and act, prompted by, and tending to, a practicable, or at least a probable result, and not mere endurance or submission to uncontrollable necessity in either case. ”

“ And the same reason ought to determine us to make a choice even among the senses, and to give the precedence, not to the noblest, or most useful, but to the simplest, and that whose objects are least in danger of being mistaken for other things. ”

“ Upon the whole, those parties whom the decision may concern, will please to decide on which side the force of Reason and Truth shall appear the greatest; and so deciding, it is, in fact, in their own favor, and in one of their most capital concerns, that they will decide. ”

“ Our volitional habits depend, then, first, on what the stock of ideas is which we have; and, second, on the habitual coupling of the several ideas with action or inaction respectively. How is it when an alternative is presented to you for choice, and you are uncertain what you ought to do? ”

“ Whenever you are in doubt as to the wisdom of a decision between two courses—put them to the test of which, if you follow it, will enable you to respect your own soul. Never do that which the inward You despises. ”

“ Still this is part of its meaning; if we regard an event as determined by a variety of circumstances, a man’s choice being among them, we say that he is responsible for just that choice which is left him by the other circumstances. ”

“ But though the decision of the one question decides the other; yet that we may the more easily discover the principles of human nature, from whence the decision arises, we shall carry along with us this distinction, and shall consider, whether it be the senses, reason, or the imagination, that produces the opinion of a continued or of a distinct existence. ”

“ In the mean time, though the suggestion, for the present, may not be a practical one, it will serve to mark what is best in principle, and enable us to judge of the eligibility of any indirect means, either existing or capable of being adopted, which may promote in a less perfect manner the same end. ”

“ Meanwhile, until we can make the system better, our appreciation of "What is" affects our sense of "What should be." And the more so, as we are sensible. For "What should be" is pre-eminently an affair of relativity. ”

“ Among the multitude of plans proposed and opinions held, with reference to our cause and condition, we shall try to have a mind of our own, harmonizing with all as far as we can, and differing from any and all where we must, but always discriminating between men and measures. ”

“ But because in the 'either—or' of the re-direction we hesitate, the determinist abstracts this little element of discontinuity from the superabundant continuities of the experience, and cancels in its behalf all the connective characters with which the latter is filled. Choice, for him, means henceforward DISconnection pure and simple, something undetermined in advance IN ANY RESPECT WHATEVER, and a life of choices must be a raving chaos, at no two moments of which could we be treated as one and the same man. ”

“ The ends to be accomplished by volition are as numerous as the infinite variety of human purposes and actions, and, of course, admit of no complete enumeration or classification. We confine our further attention, then, to these elements—the motive, the choice, the executive volition—and proceed to their more careful investigation as phenomena of the will. ”

“ We have, as yet, no way of determining definitely and quickly whether the individual with whom we are dealing will respond best to that treatment which secures his decision upon minor points, or that which permits him to make his own decision guided only by indirect suggestions, or that which makes the decision for him, or that which compliments him upon his decisiveness, or any one of many other methods of closing. ”

“ Or this freedom of choice in man may otherwise be described and thought of as a decision of the understanding, which compares together two different volitions, carefully weighs the conflicting grounds in favor of each, and, at last, in its final judgment, recognizes the preference to one or the other. Consequently, this free will and choice, so peculiar to man, depends intimately and essentially upon that controversy between understanding and will, which, if not inborn, has become, at least, a second nature to him. ”

“ In the arrangement of the order of preference we were guided mainly by two principles, namely: (i) as between two groups of unequal definition, the one which is more clearly defined and which, therefore, leaves less play for personal equation is to be preferred; (2) as between two groups of equal definition, the one which possesses the greater pathological significance is to be preferred. In accordance with these principles we have adopted the order of preference shown in Table III., placing every reaction under the highest heading on the list under which it may be properly classed. ”

“ No matter that each individually may be almost incredible: they ought all to be massed together and thrown into the scale against the proffered solution, when the only question asked is, Are we to accept this solution? ”

“ Now such rules of conduct comprise rules for choosing, enduring, staying, and distributing; so that if a man does some things by intelligent choice, some things with fortitude, some things by way of just distribution, and some steadily, he is at once wise, courageous, just, and temperate. ”

“ It cannot indeed be otherwise; every thought and action springs from some cause, in many cases referable to events which took place in lives outside of and anterior to our own. In any case in which a man seems to enjoy the faculty of choice, [68] his choice is in reality determined by a number of previous causes ”