3. The action was one in regard to the doing or not doing of which
conscience might be a sufficient motive.
These three things are necessary, but it does not follow that they
are sufficient. It is very commonly said that the action must be a
voluntary one. It will be found, I think, that this is contained in my
third condition, and also that the form of statement I have adopted
exhibits more clearly the reason why the condition is necessary. We
may say that an action is involuntary either when it is instinctive,
or when one motive is so strong that there is no voluntary choice
between motives. An involuntary cough produced by irritation of
the glottis is no proper subject for blame or praise. A man is not
responsible for it, because it is done by a part of his body without
consulting him. What is meant by him in this case will require further
investigation. Again, when a dipsomaniac has so great and overmastering
an inclination to drink that we cannot conceive of conscience being
strong enough to conquer it, he is not responsible for that act, though
he may be responsible for having got himself into the state. But if
it is conceivable that a very strong conscience fully brought to bear
might succeed in conquering the inclination, we may take a lenient
view of the fall and say there was a very strong temptation, but we
shall still regard it as a fall, and say that the man is responsible
and a wrong has been done.
But since it is just in this distinction between voluntary and
involuntary action that the whole crux of the matter lies, let
us examine more closely into it. I say that when I cough or sneeze
involuntarily, it is really not I that cough or sneeze, but a part of
my body which acts without consulting me. This action is determined
for me by the circumstances, and is not part of the choice that
is left to me, so that I am not responsible for it. The question
comes then to determining how much is to be called circumstances,
and how much is to be called me. Now I want to describe what happens
when I voluntarily do anything, and there are two courses open to
me. I may describe the things in themselves, my feelings and the
general course of my consciousness, trusting to the analogy between
my consciousness and yours to make me understood; or I may describe
these things as nature describes them to your senses, namely in terms
of the phenomena of my nervous system, appealing to your memory of
phenomena and your knowledge of physical action. I shall do both,
because in some respects our knowledge is more complete from the
one source, and in some respects from the other. When I look back
and reflect upon a voluntary action, I seem to find that it differs
from an involuntary action in the fact that a certain portion of my
character has been consulted. There is always a suggestion of some
sort, either the end of a train of thought or a new sensation; and
there is an action ensuing, either the movement of a muscle or set
of muscles, or the fixing of attention upon something. But between
these two there is a consultation, as it were, of my past history. The
suggestion is viewed in the light of everything bearing on it that I
think of at the time, and in virtue of this light it moves me to act in
one or more ways. Let us first suppose that no hesitation is involved,
that only one way of acting is suggested, and I yield to this impulse
and act in the particular way. This is the simplest kind of voluntary
action. It differs from involuntary or instinctive action in the fact
that with the latter there is no such conscious consultation of past
history. If we describe these facts in terms of the phenomena which
picture them to other minds, we shall say that in involuntary action a
message passes straight through from the sensory to the motor center,
and so on to the muscles, without consulting the cerebrum; while
involuntary action the message is passed on from the sensory center
to the cerebrum, there translated into appropriate motor stimuli,
carried down to the motor center, and so on to the muscles. There
may be other differences, but at least there is this difference. Now
on the physical side that which determines, what groups of cerebral
fibers shall be set at work by the given message, and what groups of
motor stimuli shall be set at work by these, is the mechanism of my
brain at the time; and on the mental side that which determines what
memories shall be called up by the given sensation, and what motives
these memories shall bring into action, is my mental character. We
may say, then, in this simplest case of voluntary action, that when
the suggestion is given it is the character of me which determines
the character of the ensuing action; and consequently that I am
responsible for choosing that particular course out of those which
were left open to me by the external circumstances.
This is when I yield to the impulse. But suppose I do not; suppose
that the original suggestion, viewed in the light of memory, sets
various motives in action, each motive belonging to a certain class
of things which I remember. Then I choose which of these motives
shall prevail. Those who carefully watch themselves find out that a
particular motive is made to prevail by the fixing of the attention
upon that class of remembered things which calls up the motive. The
physical side of this is the sending of blood to a certain set of
nerves--namely, those whose action corresponds to the memories which
are to be attended to. The sending of blood is accomplished by the
pinching of arteries; and there are special nerves, called vaso-motor
nerves, whose business it is to carry messages to the walls of the
arteries and get them pinched. Now this act of directing the attention
may be voluntary or involuntary just like any other act. When the
transformed and re-enforced nerve-message gets to the vaso-motor
center, some part of it may be so predominant that a message goes
straight off to the arteries, and sends a quantity of blood to the
nerves supplying that part; or the call for blood may be sent back
for revision by the cerebrum, which is thus again consulted. To say
the same thing in terms of my feelings, a particular class of memories
roused by the original suggestion may seize upon my attention before I
have time to choose what I will attend to; or the appeal may be carried
to a deeper part of my character dealing with wider and more abstract
conceptions, which views the conflicting motives in the light of a
past experience of motives, and by that light is drawn to one or the
other of them.
We thus get to a sort of motive of the second order or motive of
motives. Is there any reason why we should not go on to a motive of
the third order, and the fourth, and so on? None whatever that I know
of, except that no one has ever observed such a thing. There seems
plenty of room for the requisite mechanism on the physical side;
and no one can say, on the mental side, how complex is the working
of his consciousness. But we must carefully distinguish between the
intellectual deliberation about motives, which applies to the future
and the past, and the practical choice of motives in the moment of
will. The former may be a train of any length and complexity: we have
no reason to believe that the latter is more than engine and tender.
We are now in a position to classify actions in respect of the kind
of responsibility which belongs to them; namely we have--