This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1859. Excerpt: ... VOLITION. I Will here premise that my reason for being more illustrative and lengthy upon the subject of will, than that of any other mode of mental action is that the world for woe or for weal has ever been governed by opinion or will, which is nothing more than the effect--forced result or sequence of opinion. And again, of all our feelings there is none so deceptive and that requires so much close thought as our feeling of liberty in the promptings and exercises of will. It is like fever, the actual existence and feeling of which every man is conscious, yet no one traces back the antecedent causes, or can, but by inference, detect the proximate or remote cause of such feeling. The cold may have been caught or measma breathed months before the sensible effects, and that in some remote region of which we are not conscious. A man in vigorous health may be conscious of his strength of muscle and boyancy of spirits, and yet unconscious of his internal and vital functions as digestion, assimilation, nutrition, and other remote but causal renewing powers The sun as it strikes our senses, is a little lamp that goes round this world to light it up, and it was once as universally believed, as free will now is, that the sun and starry heavens revolved around this' earth which has the sensible appearance of being a flat and fixed surface. Heaven-born reason, however, has dispelled many of those time-hallowed but vulgar superstitious illusions, of a sacred consciousness. This feeling or consciousness of being free to will what we will, or do what we do, is of all other feelings the most deceptive and mischievous. That we can will what we will, and do what we do, is certain, or we could not will what we will and do what we do, but it is equally certain, that we are ...