Humanity’s First Exam1850–1940 ⇄ now

1892 · English · United States

Psychology (Briefer Course)

William James

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Passage selected for Humanity's First Exam
Riderless cavalry-horses, at many a battle, have been seen to come together and go through their customary evolutions at the sound of the bugle- call. Most domestic beasts seem machines almost pure and simple, undoubtingly, unhesitatingly doing from minute to minute the duties they have been taught, and giving no sign that the possibility of an alternative ever suggests itself to their mind. Men grown old in prison have asked to be readmitted after being once set free. In a railroad accident a menagerie-tiger, whose cage had broken open, is said to have emerged, but presently crept back again, as if too much bewildered by his new responsibilities, so that he was without difficulty secured. Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor.

Habit · p. 143 · line 50554

2 selected passages and classifications

Passage 1

And yet our consciousness is there, and has in all probability been evolved, like all other functions, for a use — it is to the highest degree improbable a priori that it should have no use. Its use seems to be that of selection; but to select, it must be efficacious. States of consciousness which feel right are held fast to; those which feel wrong are checked. If the ‘holding’ and the ‘checking’ of the conscious states severally mean also the efficacious reinforcing or inhibiting of the correlated neural processes, then it would seem as if the presence of the states of mind might help to steer the nervous system and keep it in the path which to the consciousness seemed best. Now on the average what seems best to consciousness is really best for the creature.
Cognition, attention, and judgmentFree will and automatismselection and judgment · advancesautomatism · rejectsNature and evolutionScientific or empirical evidenceEnlarges autonomyIndividualMind and body

The Briefer Course makes selection consciousness’s evolutionary function: holding and checking mental states are proposed as causally steering neural activity.

Chapter VIII, “The Functions of the Brain,” pp. 103–04

Passage 2

Volitional effort is effort of attention. We thus find that we reach the heart of our inquiry into volition when we ask by what process it is that the thought of any given action comes to prevail stably in the mind. Where thoughts prevail without effort, we have sufficiently studied in the several chapters on Sensation, Association, and Attention, the laws of their advent before consciousness and of their stay. We shall not go over that ground again, for we know that interest and association are the words, let their worth be what they may, on which our explanations must perforce rely. Where, on the other hand, the prevalence of the thought is accompanied by the phenomenon of effort, the case is much less clear. Already in the chapter on Attention we postponed the final consideration of voluntary attention with effort to a later place. We have now brought things to a point at which we see that attention with effort is all that any case of volition implies. The essential achievement of the will, in short, when it is most ‘voluntary,’ is to attend to a difficult object and hold it fast before the mind.
Habit and self-commandFree will and automatismCognition, attention, and judgmenteffective will · advancesselection and judgment · advancescultivate capacities · advancesMeaning, experience, and interpretationScientific or empirical evidenceEnlarges autonomyIndividualMind and body

James identifies the will with the disciplined effort to keep a difficult idea present, making attention the practical site of agency.

Chapter XXVI, “Will,” pp. 450–52

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