Rational will

“ 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. ”

“ If the Will is a first cause, the influences brought to bear upon it by its relation to other causes—and in virtue of which it is constituted, not only a cause primal, but also a cause rational and moral—these influences differ toto coelo from those which are exercised by any members in a series of secondary causes upon the next succeeding causes. ”

“ Yet will may be the higher, if it is set upon something higher than the understanding.... When the thing in which is the good is nobler than the soul itself, in which is the rational cognizance (ratio intellecta) , the will, through relation to that thing, is higher than the understanding. ”

“ I may here, in passing, and for the sake of illustration merely, express the fundamental principle of morality in the following formula: “So act that thou mayest look upon the dictate of thy will as an eternal law to thyself.”
The ultimate vocation of every finite, rational being is thus absolute unity, constant identity, perfect harmony with himself. ”

“ Now, our nature as rational beings implies the imperative claim upon us of a will which is thus real or rational. Recognised or unrecognised, it is rooted in our own wills, as the claim to be true is rooted in our assertions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Challenge the statement, and science can only repeat it oracularly, or else prove it by showing that such ascertainment and correction bring man all sorts of other goods which man’s heart in turn declares. The question of having moral beliefs at all or not having them is decided by our 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. ”

“ Does this belief in the common fancies of men really alter mankind? Or is the whole body of ideas and valuations only an expression in itself of unknown changes? Are there really such things as will, purposes, thoughts, values? Is the whole of conscious life perhaps no more than mirage? ”

“ 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. ”

“ In spite of the exaltation of the reason by the modern Enlightenment, is it not secondary to Will?
For behold! Let me look beyond myself. The revelation of the reality within myself illuminates the reality of the outer world. My Will meets resistance in other things. The everlasting striving of the Will appears in all nature. ”

“ 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? ”

“ The entire intellectual and emotional constitutions of man are subservient to the will and are largely concerned with the effort to justify the dictates of the will. Thus the mind creates elaborate systems of thought simply to prove the necessity of the thing willed. ”

“ And even thou, discerning one, art only a path and footstep of my will: verily, my Will to Power walketh even on the feet of thy Will to Truth!
He certainly did not hit the truth who shot at it the formula: ‘Will to existence’: that will—doth not exist!
For what is not, cannot will; that, however, which is in existence—how could it still strive for existence!
Only where there is life, is there also will: not, however, Will to Life, but—so teach I thee—Will to Power! ”

“ In either case, choice may be said equally to depend on motive, and in either case the will may be said equally to choose. It is true in either case that the strongest motive moves; it is true in either case that the will decides upon the act with a feeling of its own spontaneity and freedom, and guides the movement of the body in the performance of the act. That which is shown in an invariable connection of the will with pleasurable motives is a constancy which we find elsewhere in nature and which forbids us to regard will as something outside and above the rest of nature. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is this aspect of the ultimate situation which defines the world as a Whole, and which, without introducing an external cause, or a mere force, does as it were colour the whole unity of the Absolute Consciousness with a new character, namely, the character of Will. As psychology already knows, the will, even in us, is no third “power of the mind.” It is an aspect of our consciousness, pervading every fact thereof, while especially connected with and embodied in certain of the facts of our inner lives. ”

“ The appetite for immediate consistency at any cost, or what the logicians call the 'law of parsimony,'—which is nothing but the passion for conceiving the universe in the most labor-saving way,—will, if made the exclusive law of the mind, end by blighting the development of the intellect itself quite as much as that of the feelings or the will. The scientific conception of the world as an army of molecules gratifies this appetite after its fashion most exquisitely. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The general end is self-realization, the making real of the ideal self; and for morality, in particular, the ideal self is the good will, the identification of my will with the ideal as an universal will. The end for morals is a will, and my will, and an universal will, and one will. Let us briefly refer on these heads to the moral consciousness.
Nothing, we have seen, is good but a good will. The end for morals is not the mere existence of any sort of ideal indifferently, but it is the realization of an ideal will in my will. ”

“ But the essence of the will is to determine itself from itself; for practical Reason gives itself laws. But the empirical will is heteronomous, for it is determined by desires; and they belong to our nature, not to the realm of freedom. ”

“ As little is reason really anything apart from a self-conscious subject, or as other than an idea of perfection to be realised in and by such a subject. The determination of will by reason, then, which constitutes moral freedom or autonomy, must mean its determination by an object which a person willing, in virtue of his reason, presents to himself, that object consisting in the realisation of an idea of perfection in and by himself. ”

“ Is there not here, then, a belief deeper than your mere experience that your will is at any time resisted? For unless you had this principle of causation in your possession, and unless you first believed the principle to be applicable to a realm beyond your private experience, your will would be resisted in vain, so far as your power to learn about a real world would then go. ”

“ While the universal element is knowledge, the individual element is feeling, and the relation which connects them into one concrete content is will.” 364—“There is conflict of desires or motives. Deliberation is the comparison of desires; choice is the decision in favor of one. This desire is then the strongest because the whole force of the self is thrown into it.” 411—“The man determines himself by setting up either good or evil as a motive to himself, and he sets up either, as he will have himself be. There is no thought without will, for thought implies inhibition.” ”

“ He is open to great thoughts and ready for service, because that which we get in our youth we keep through our lives.
Though the will affects all our actions and all our thoughts, its direct action is confined to a very little place, to that postern at either side of which stand conscience and reason, and at which ideas must needs present themselves. Shall we take an idea in or reject it? Conscience and reason have their say, but will is supreme and the behaviour of will is determined by all the principles we have gathered, all the opinions we have formed. We accept the notion, ponder it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Knowing and willing are faculties or properties of the soul. The will is purely spiritual, and to be distinguished from sense-appetite: the will, and the will alone, is free; absolutely undetermined by any cause beyond itself. Even the intellect, that is the knowing faculty, is determined from without. Although some cognition precedes the act of willing, the will is not determined by cognition, but uses it. So the will, being free, is higher than the intellect. It is the will that constitutes man’s greatness; it raises him above nature, and liberates him from her coercions. ”

“ It is not my present purpose, then, to exhaust the theory of the sense in which will is, and is not, an active cause in the natural world. What can at present be asked from us is a general statement of the sense in which what exists expresses, on the one hand, the will of God; and, on the other hand, that individual will which you find at any moment present in a fragmentary way in your own finite consciousness. I shall maintain that both God’s will and our own finite will get consciously expressed in the world, and that no contradiction results from this statement. ”

“ The association of the thought with the pleasurable end in view, is sufficient to influence the attention, but not sufficient to command it. The will, therefore, has to be called in, to heighten the effect. But in this case, as in every case, the will is called into action by a motive. The motive, like all other motives, is a desire. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Or to apply the matter once more to yourself: if every instance of your life expresses a will that is to be found expressed in precisely this way nowhere else in all the world, and if this will is the will of which you are now conscious, then we can say that the verdict of your own consciousness when it regards your life as the expression of your individual will is in no wise refuted, but is only confirmed by our Fourth Conception of Being. ”