The Diseases of the Will

It has seemed to me that there would be some profit in treating these questions in the same spirit, but under another form, that of dissolution. I propose, then, in this work to attempt for the will what I have formerly done for the memory; to study its anomalies, and to draw from this study conclusions regarding its normal state. In very many respects the question is less easy ;the term will designates something more vague than the term memory. Whether one considers memory as a function, a property, or a faculty, it remains none the less a stable mode of being, a psychic disposition, regarding which all the world can come to an agreement. The will, on the contrary, resolves itself into volitions, each one of which is an element, an unstable form of activity, a resultant varying according to the causes that produce it. Beyond this first difficulty there is another which may appear greater still, but of which we will not hesitate to summarily disembarrass ourselves.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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