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Now, however much this conation may be analysed, it resists being decomposed into a number of elements which make it up, for any such number, except in the very manner they are united, could not produce the situation.
The cognition is indirect, the conation is indirect, only the effect is immediate. Of the three parts of the process, the stimulus comes from somewhere out of sight, the response reaches somewhere out of sight, only the emotion exists entirely within the person.
As regards the intellectual or cognitive bent of the two directions of growth, the former may be characterized as the personal standpoint, of conation, qualitative relation, status, or worth; the latter as the impersonal standpoint, of sequence, quantitative relation, mechanical efficiency, or use.
All the pairs of opposites are in some degree superficial, something that comes and goes with time, while the essential remains, itself invisible and without relation to time—a perpetual activity, an ever enduring conation as it was formerly called. The pairs of opposites have been noticed in the Hindu doctrine of salvation exactly as in alchemy.
That movement is the resultant of the spiritual potency after experiences in the form of cognition have marked out the path for conation. This conation is an inheritance; it is present in the form of dissatisfaction with the present situation; it moves in the direction of a goal which is marked out by intellect.
Volition, therefore, following McDougall, may be defined as the supporting or re-enforcing of a desire or conation by the cooperation of an impulse excited within the system of the self-regarding sentiment. The sentiment of self-control is the master sentiment for volition and especially for resolution. It is a special development of the self-regarding sentiment.
"Whatever may be the exact psychological nature of the emotions, it may be regarded," he says, "as certain that they introduce into the conscious situation elements which contribute not a little to the energy of behaviour. They are important conditions to vigorous and sustained conation."
"Desire," also, is narrower than what is intended: for example, WILL is to be included in this category, and in fact every thing that involves any kind of striving, or "conation" as it is technically called. I do not myself believe that there is any value in this threefold division of the contents of mind. As regards belief, I shall give grounds for this view in later lectures.
But the Real Thing postulated by Physics is but one aspect of the whole, and may be, must be, merged in a higher Reality of which phenomena, on the one hand, and Thought, Conation, Feeling on the other, are the appearances.
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