Will (philosophy)

“ The whole of philosophy is contained in that phrase: ‘May the will of God be done!’ He has realized that all the woes of humanity are the outcome of the exercise of human will as distinct from the will divine. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Rather do we freely acknowledge that what remains after the entire abolition of will is for all those who are still full of will certainly nothing; but, conversely, to [304] those in whom the will has turned and has denied itself, this our world, which is so real, with all it's suns and milky-ways—is nothing. ”

“ It is evident that will must be affirmed of God; for [Pg 320] we cannot deny the infinite being that internal, spontaneous activity which is called to will, and the nature of which involves no imperfection. ”

“ Neither physiology nor psychology, neither a sane science nor a sound philosophy, knows anything of, or can find use for, an autonomous "will." "Will" as the final term of a discoverable series may be admitted; "will" as a self-directing force, deciding whether particular desires shall or shall not{35} prevail, answers to nothing conformable to our knowledge of man, and is plainly but the ghost of the wills and souls of our savage ancestors. ”

“ The act of will is followed at once and inevitably by the movement of the body willed, nay, the two are one and the same, only given in different ways: will is the body seen from within, body the will seen from without, the will become visible, objectified. ”

“ It is well that children should know that while the turbulent person is not ruled by will at all but by impulse, the movement of his passions or desires, yet it is possible to have a constant will with unworthy or evil ends, or, even to have a steady will towards a good end and to compass [133] that end by unworthy means. The simple rectified will, what our Lord calls ‘the single eye,’ would appear to be the one thing needful for straight living and serviceableness. ”

“ What interest, zest, or excitement can there be in achieving the right way, unless we are enabled to feel that the wrong way is also a possible and a natural way,—nay, more, a menacing and an imminent way? And what sense can there be in condemning ourselves for taking the wrong way, unless we need have done nothing of the sort, unless the right way was open to us as well? I cannot understand the willingness to act, no matter how we feel, without the belief that acts are really good and bad. ”

“ In truths dependent on our personal action, then, faith based on desire is certainly a lawful and possibly an indispensable thing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But will, as each is conscious of it, presupposes a motive—a prompting desire of some kind: absolute indifference excludes the conception of will. Moreover, will, as implying a prompting desire, connotes some end contemplated as one to be achieved, and ceases with the achievement of it: some other will, referring so some other end, taking its place. That is to say, will, like emotion, necessarily supposes a series of states of consciousness. ”

“ Yea, I know very well that the idea of an act, of a special act of consciousness, applies only to me but not to thee, the Infinite. Thou willest, because thou willest, that my free obedience shall have consequences in all eternity. The act of thy will I cannot comprehend; I only know that it is not like to mine. Thou doest, and thy will itself is deed. But thy method of action is directly contrary to that of which, alone, I can form a conception. Thou livest and art, for thou knowest, and willest, and workest, omnipresent to finite Reason. ”

“ Away from those fabulous songs did I lead you when I taught you: "The Will is a creator."
All "It was" is a fragment, a riddle, a fearful chance- until the creating Will says thereto: "But thus would I have it."-
Until the creating Will says thereto: "But thus do I will it! Thus shall I will it!"
But did it ever speak thus? And when does this take place? has the Will been unharnessed from its own folly?
Has the Will become its own deliverer and joy-bringer? has it unlearned the spirit of revenge and all teeth-gnashing? ”

“ Will, then, is the essence of man. Now what if it is also the essence of life in all its forms, and even of "inanimate" matter? What if Will is the long-sought-for, the long-despaired-of, "the thing-in-itself"—the ultimate inner reality and secret essence of all things? ”

“ 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! ”

“ Will, as the thing-in-itself, is the foundation of all being; it is part and parcel of every creature, and the permanent element in everything. Will, then, is that which we possess in common with all men, nay, with all animals, and even with lower forms of existence ”

“ But will is a force, a power, only in so far as it is a particular form of the manifestation of the thought forces; for it is by what we call the "will" that thought is focused and given a particular direction, and in the degree that thought is thus focused and given direction, is it effective in the work it is sent out to accomplish.
In a sense there are two kinds of will,—the human and the divine. The human will is the will of what, for convenience' sake, we may term the lower self. It is the will that finds its life merely in the realm of the mental and the physical,—the sense will. ”

“ It has been recognized that will is the natural outcome of desire, and that without desire there would be no will at all. It has even been maintained that will is desire, the desire "with which the self identifies itself." ”

“ 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? ”

“ But do not let any difficulty deaden to you the clear voice of your own consciousness. If I cannot trust my sense that I can do this thing or not do it, as I choose, there is nothing that I can trust. Will is the power of determining which of two roads I shall go, and, strange as it is, incapable of statement in any more general terms than the reiteration of the fact; yet here stands the fact, that God, the infinite Will, has given to men, whom He made in His own image, this inexplicable and awful power of coinciding with or opposing His purposes and His voice. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Third and last comes the case in which the habitual act of will in the individual instance, is not in contradiction to the general intention prevailing at other times, but in fulfilment of it; as in the case of the person of confirmed virtue, and of all who pursue deliberately and consistently any determinate end. The distinction between will and desire thus understood, is an authentic and highly important psychological fact ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ Firmness of purpose and the Will to do and dare, will accomplish, I may say, almost anything. The Will is the key that opens the [383] door to every path, whether it be of Science or of Nature, and every one has it in his power to choose the road for himself. ”

“ But I think that the proper wisdom is to will what the gods will without, perhaps, being certain what their will is—or even if they have a will of their own. And in this matter of life and art it is not the Why that matters so much to our happiness as the How. ”

“ Surely, if any being above our grade is to be conceived as having Will, we must not expect to find his will as confused an affair as is our own, and we must know why we attribute to him any such attribute at all. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The will itself is the capacity of being affected by objects with emotion, passion, and desire,—and with that form of passion which we call the sense of the most agreeable or choice, and which is connected with effects or consequents as their stated antecedent. ”

“ And since what the will wills is always life, just because life is nothing but the representation of that willing for the idea, it is all one and a mere pleonism if, instead of simply saying “the will,” we say “the will to live.” ”

“ Your Will gives infinite clearness, infinite strength, infinite ideals, infinite aspirations, for infinite realities. Your Will tells you that if there is anything to-day that seems to you too good to be true, believe it, endeavor toward it, reach forth to receive it, and tomorrow it will be true. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To develop the true will, the first essential is to realize that there is but one will, and that we will with the one will just as we live the one life and think with the one mind, though in our thinking, living and willing, we do not, as a rule, do justice to that part of the whole which it is our privilege to use. ”

“ The will feels itself—or rather consciousness feels the will to be—at once free and limited. The soul does not feel it is free to do anything it pleases. That at least is certain. For without some limitation, without something resistant to exert itself upon, the will could not be known. An absolutely free will is unthinkable. The very nature of the will implies a struggle with some sort of resistance. ”