Outlines of imperfect and disordered mental action / by Thomas C. Upham.

  • Thomas Cogswell Upham
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Outlines of imperfect and disordered mental action / by Thomas C. Upham. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    § 18. Of the Will, and its Relation to the other rowers. Of the three leading divisions of the mind, which are supposed to embrace the whole mental structure, that of the Will naturally comes last. The natural course of investigation in Mental Philosophy obvi- ously commences in the understanding, and is pros- ecuted through the sensibilities upward to the will. We shall not undertake here to go into a philosophi- cal explanation of the nature of this power, but merely indicate in a few words the relation which it sustains to the other departments. The will may be considered as occupying, in some important sense, a higher and more authori- tative position. In other words, as we have already had occasion to infimate, it sustains, as compared with the other great mental departments, the part of the controlling and executive power of the mind. Action, in some form or other, was undoubtedly the great object which was had in view in the creation of the mind ; and although it cannot be denied that the preparatives of action (we mean now, action which has an object exterior to the mind) exist in the intellect and in the sensibilities, the presiding element of action, its effective or consummating power, is unquestionably lodged in the will. What- ever other powers he might possess, if man were destitute of the power of exercising volitions, and could not realize the results involved in such an ex- ercise, he would, in the present state of existence at least, be an inefficient and useless being.