=Action versus Result.=--As already noted, however, most of our movements soon develop into fixed habits. For this reason our bodily acts are usually performed more or less unconsciously, that is, without any deliberation as to the mere act itself. For this reason, we find that when bodily movements are held in check, or inhibited, in order to allow time for deliberation, attention usually fixes itself, not upon the acts themselves, but rather upon the results of these acts. For instance, a person having an axe and a saw may wish to divide a small board into two parts. Although the axe may be in his hand, he is thinking, not how he is to use the axe, but how it will result if he uses this to accomplish the end. In the same way he considers, not how to use the saw, but the result of using the saw. By inhibiting the motor impulses which would lead to the use of either of these, the individual is able to note, say, that to use the axe is a quick, but inaccurate, way of gaining the end; to use the saw, a slow, but accurate, way. The present need being interpreted as one where only an approximate division is necessary, attention is thereupon given wholly to the images tending to promote this action; resistance is thus overcome in these centres, and the necessary motor discharges for using the axe are given free play. Here, however, the mind evidently does not deliberate on how the hands are to use the axe or the saw, but rather upon the results following the use of these.
=Nature of Will.=--When voluntary attention is fixed, as above, upon the results of conflicting lines of action, the mind is said to experience a conflict of desires, or motives. So long as this conflict lasts, physical expression is inhibited, the mind deliberating upon and comparing the conflicting motives. For instance, a pupil on his way to school may be thrown into a conflict of motives. On the one side is a desire to remain under the trees near the bank of the stream; on the other a desire to obey his parents, and go to school. So long as these desires each press themselves upon the attention, there results an inhibiting of the nervous motor discharge with an accompanying mental state of conflict, or indecision. This prevents, for the time being, any action, and the youth deliberates between the two possible lines of conduct. As he weighs the various elements of pleasure on the one hand and of duty on the other, the one desire will finally appear the stronger. This constitutes the person's choice, or decision, and a line of action follows in accordance with the end, or motive, chosen. This mental choice, or decision, is usually termed an act of will.