Willingness

“ And before you ask for more, satisfy yourself that what you ask for is desirable and necessary. Those who have given so much are entitled to credit for willingness to give us all that it is good for us to have. ”

“ Starting with nothing but a willingness to work and an ability to think and having faith enough in himself and his ideas to hold to his purpose through all set-backs and discouragements, he is reasonably sure to reach the top. ”

“ And if their character has ever stood higher for willingness to contribute to the wants of others at any one time than at another, it stands the highest, from whatever cause it may happen, at the present day. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of others I have but two servants, whom thou wilt see; and the one is a strange creature, who should scare thee or scathe thee with a good will, but of a good will shall serve nought save me; the other is a woman, a thrall, of little avail, save that, being compelled, she will work woman’s service for me, but whom none else shall compel. ... Yea, but what is all this to thee; or to me that I should tell it to thee? I will not drive thee away; but if thine entertainment please thee not, make no plaint thereof to me, but depart at thy will. ”

“ Our concern with life is to be fit, and according to our fitness come our occasions and the uses we shall be put to.
Unlike every other power in the kingdom of Mansoul, the will is able to do what it likes, is a free agent, and the one thing the will has to do is to prefer. “Choose ye this day,” is the command that comes to each of us in every affair and on every day of our lives, and the business of the will is to choose. But, choice, the effort [134] of decision, is a heavy labour, whether it be between two lovers or two gowns. ”

“ We are told again that ‘the Will is the man’; and yet most men go through life without a single definite act of willing. Habit, convention, the customs of the world have done so much for us that we get up, dress, breakfast, follow our morning’s occupations, our later relaxations, without an act of choice. For this much at any rate we know about the will. Its function is to choose, to decide, and there seems to be no doubt that the greater becomes [129] the effort of decision the weaker grows the general will. ”

“ 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 the power to choose, the power to act, and the consciousness that choice and action are to be dominated by something that answers to the instinct of loyalty to God, to self-respect, to the ideals of honor and righteousness—that is what makes life worth living, and any conceivable thing worth seeking or doing. Now, the moment that the question of our mutual relations enters we have to be concerned with the way in which they will act on this power, quality, characteristic—call it what you will—that makes manhood. ”

“ We believe that, in spite of the fact that certain persons desire to imbue you with such an idea, you are assured of our good will and deed in all matters affecting you, which are such as love, duty, and reason demand. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is understood that in accepting your life you agree to the conditions, and this understanding will be as binding on you to do us no harm—if, as I say, you get the chance—as though you had put hand and seal to a bond. ”

“ The Way of the Will--Incentives.--His thoughts are wandering on forbidden pleasure, to the hindrance of his work; he pulls himself up, and deliberately fixes his attention on those incentives which have most power to make him work, the leisure and pleasure which follow honest labour, the duty which binds him to the fulfilling of his task. His thoughts run in the groove he wills them to run in, and work is no longer an effort. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But suppose A. feels anxious for your warm regard for his prosperity in his lawful understandings, here the desire reaches to nothing unjust, to no disorder in society, or beyond your power, and clearly within his power to reciprocate; he is then bound by the rule to feel a warm desire for your prosperity in all your lawful undertakings. And who does not perceive that if one desires your good wishes, he must of necessity feel good wishes for you. Whether the desire imply merely a mental or physical action, similar examples will illustrate. ”

“ When we come to the chapter on the Will, we shall see that the whole drama of the voluntary life hinges on the amount of attention, slightly more or slightly less, which rival motor ideas may receive. But the whole feeling of reality, the whole sting and excitement of our voluntary life, depends on our sense that in it things are really being decided from one moment to another, and that it is not the dull rattling off of a chain that was forged innumerable ages ago. ”

“ The will of the people is interpreted, is put into action, is brought to fruition, by those individuals of the people who come out from among the people with the fearless and invincible determination—"My will be done!" ”

“ You commence by getting a little will of your own, and in the end you will be quite firm, and when your will is firm and strong you will get strong yourself. Now promise me that you will cultivate a little will, like a frail hothouse plant that requires much care and attention. ”

“ A habit of willing is commonly called a purpose; and among the causes of our volitions, and of the actions which flow from them, must be reckoned not only likings and aversions, but also purposes. It is only when our purposes have become independent of the feelings of pain or pleasure from which they originally took their rise, that we are said to have a confirmed character. ”

“ And our sole duty and responsibility lies in trusting in Him and in saying, not with surtendered will alone, but with deep confidence and vivid hope, "Thy will be done ! For Thy will shall ever work our weal, our joy! ”

“ 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. ”

“ At any rate, because we choose is the reason that the concept of will has arisen in the minds of both philosopher and the man in the street, and much of our feeling of worth, individuality and power—mental factors of huge importance in character—arises from the power to choose. Choice is influenced by—or it is a net result of—the praise and blame of others, conscience, memory, knowledge of the past, plans for the future. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I believe you to possess a large fund of good sense and discretion, and the advice I shall give you as to the conduct to pursue in future will not only be received with confidence as meant for your future good, but listened to attentively and acted upon. The world, my dear boy, and by that I mean Society in general, condemns the practices we have lately been indulging in with you. ”

“ But I perceive that the time has come when you may choose, and that your will is strong enough to make the choice and hold to it. You may be a benefactor or a beneficiary—a man, aware of manhood, or a victim of the lower senses, bound to the wheel of necessity. ”

“ Our difficulties are by no means so great as timid or interested people would represent them to be. We are to decide, it is true, for posterity; but the question presented to us is precisely that which every man has to decide in making his will,—neither greater nor less than that, nor demanding a wisdom above what that demands. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The wish to obtain a competency of worldly goods is orderly and proper, provided that in the pursuit of that wish the life be kept within the strict bounds of honesty and uprightness, and the desire itself be held ever in subjection to the desire for higher and heavenly things, and be conjoined with trust in Divine Providence, and a submission to the Lord's will. ”

“ If you have the willing mind, that is accepted; nothing is accepted if that be wanting. God desires that. He can do all the rest. After all, He is the sole agent, for the 'willing mind' comes alone from Him. ”

“ The power to see the possibility of choice of action, to know one's self as a choosing, willing entity, able to elect and follow one among many courses of action, is a distinctive, Godlike quality. The opposition of wills is like the birth of a new personality, a new force thrown out into the world to meet and struggle and adjust itself with all other persons. ”

“ 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 ”

“ I see that you are already persuaded that success depends upon my simple wish expressing my desire on one side or the other, but I am not resolved to conduct myself according to the caprices of those people. ”

“ To acquire the strength of will for this habitual non-resistance is sometimes a matter of years of practice. We have to compel ourselves to be "willing," over and over again, at each new opportunity; sometimes the opportunities seem to throng us ”

“ 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. ”

“ Natural, no doubt, and pleasant, if we could have the desire granted; but duty is greater than desire, and circumstances may at times impel us to the performance of the one rather than favor us with the gratification of the other. ”

“ For what can hinder the satisfaction or intercept the expectations of him whose abilities are adequate to his employments, who sees with his own eyes the whole circuit of his influence, who chooses by his own knowledge all whom he trusts, and whom none are tempted to deceive by hope or fear? ”