PREFACE. THIS ESSAY has had its beginnings in lectures and addresses which I have given on different occasions during the last ten years; the themes of which were Conscience and Organisation, the Physical Basis of Will, Lessons of Materialism, and the like. The design, entertained vaguely for some time, of collecting them into a book was abandoned, because it was evident that the treatment of the subject in that loose way would not be sufficiently concise and methodical, or indeed adequate. Thereupon this essay on Will in its metaphysical, physiological, and pathological relations was undertaken, in order to have unity of subject and to treat it systematically and with more pretence to completeness. The freedom of a spiritual will being the stronghold of a metaphysical psychology, there can be no accusation of evading difficulties when that is selected as test-subject of the value of the doctrines arrived at by the positive method of observation and induction. If the method fails there, its fundamental incompetence must be frankly admitted. I am not ignorant that those who are adepts in the schools of high mental philosophy may think the essay to be a weak intrusion into their high domains; for I must confess to being unable to use their language with a satisfactory sense of having clear and definite ideas beneath its terms, to having no proper faith in their methods, and to having failed to gather from their works fruits of any practical use. From |