First published in The Journal of Philosophy, 38, April 10, 1941, pp. 207-216; anthologized in American Philosophers at Work: The Philosophic Scene in the United
States, Sidney Hook, ed., New York: Criterion Books, 1956, 183-193.
Blanshard, Brand (1941) The Nature of Mind. The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 38, No. 8, pp. 207-216
By “mind” most people mean consciousness. As examples of the mental, they would take pleasures and pains, loves and hates, purposes, memories, and desires.
And conscious-ness––what is that? They would be unable to say; but they would be untroubled by this, and rightly enough, for there are plenty of things whose meaning is clear and familiar that we cannot define. And whether we can define consciousness or not, we can readily convey what we mean by it to another; for example, it is what makes the difference between being awake and sound asleep. And the natural first question to ask is whether consciousness is what we mean by mind.
I do not think it is. I agree that all consciousness is mental; what is doubtful is whether all that is mental is conscious. Take a case in point. Some time ago I was discussing with a discriminating friend the achievements of the so-called unconscious self. He told me that, being puzzled once as to the demonstration of some theorem in geometry, he went to bed with the problem unsolved. The next morning he found the demonstration written out on the table at his bedside. His memory was clear that he had left the problem unsolved the night be-fore; the writing was unmistakably his own; and there was only one plausible explanation: he had got up in his sleep and written the solution down. This kind of performance, though not perhaps common, has been made familiar to us through Professor D.
Lowes’ researches on Coleridge, and through such extended inquiries as those of
Morton Prince and Freud. Not that in all cases the performance in unconscious; sometimes it occurs in a dream that can be re-called on waking; sometimes there is a process of co-consciousness that is to be recovered, if at all, by technical methods only. But the process does appear on occasion to be genuinely unconscious, Freud thought very frequently so. If and where it is, what are we to say about its being mental? Are we to say of the elaborating of a conclusion or the composing of a lyric that it is not a mental process at all? Of course we can make the word “mental” mean what we wish. But the issue is more than verbal. If we call some processes mental and some not, it is because between them we find a chasm placed by nature.
Such activities as inference and artistic invention seem to belong to mind so clearly, whether verifiable as conscious or not, that I prefer to place them there at the outset and make the definition of mind conform, rather than to define mind independently and force our natural classification into line.
If we are willing to start from this natural classification, our question becomes

this: Is there any characteristic which is always present, and which alone is always present, where mind is recognized? Take some cases at random in which people would generally agree that in some measure or other mind was present and active. A philosopher is philosophizing; a householder is making a budget; a sculptor is carving a clock; a poet, asleep or awake, is contriving a poem; an infant is crying for the moon; a dog is sniffing at a hole; a bee is hunting, or apparently hunting, nectar. We should be less sure in the last cases than in the first that mind was at work; but I do not think we should regard any of these cases or levels as simply and totally mindless. Regarding any such series we must ask: Is there anything universally and exclusively present that we can fix on as the common and essential feature of mind?
My own answer is Yes: wherever mind is present, there the pursuit of ends is present . Wherever that pursuit is wholly absent, mind is absent. And when mind is present, it is present precisely in the degree to which ends are in control.
Let us revert to our cases. I should say that in all of them ends are being pursued, but not in the same sense or the same way. Ordinarily when we speak of anyone as engaging in such pursuit, we imply that he takes thought of what he wants and deliberately appoints his means with reference to it. The householder who arranges his budget is aiming at a target in full view, namely, the bringing of his expenses within a limit that is clearly defined. The poet who is writing a sonnet has in mind a poem of a certain length and structure, and the character of this whole presides over his selection of words and images. It is such behavior that we commonly mean when we speak of purposive process––behavior, that is, in which the controlling purpose is definite and explicit.
Now we find this kind of behavior, not on the lower levels only, but at every level in the scale of mind. Mental activity is the sort of activity everywhere whose reach exceeds its grasp.
So far as is now known, human beings top the scale; but when a man makes a choice––say of one action rather than another as the right one––can he give any adequate account of why he chooses it? Quite possibly he could take a step or two ahead; he wanted to better his business or home or income.
But if pressed as to why he wanted this, and why he wanted the further end that this in turn subserved, he would soon falter. This does not imply that his choice is unwise, or even that it is not firmly guided; the saint who has the surest sort of practical judgment may cut a very poor figure when he philosophizes on ultimate good. But we may go much further than this. Even in our clearest cases of purposive action, there is a large element of this mysterious kind of end seeking. When a philosopher philosophizes, he is trying to solve a problem, and he is anyone should know what he is about. Does he? The Greeks had a dilemma for it: If the man who seeks after truth knows what he wants, there is no use seeking, for he has it already; and if doesn’t know what he wants, he won’t recognize it when he finds it.
Their answer to this puzzle, of course, was that he may know in general what he wants without knowing in detail, and that this general end is enough to guide his search and check it. The answer is sound so far as it goes. But need even this general end be explicit? And whether it is or not, how can so vague and end exert a control so firm and precise over the course of its realization?
Reflection on such problems would carry us deep, I think, into the nature of mind. To be sure, there may seem at first to be no problem at all. When we are given

the premises of a syllogism and required to draw the conclusion, it may be said that we know quite well what the form of the syllogism is, and that with this form or pattern before us, we simply hew to the line. But half the time this is false to fact.
Introspection shows that the form or pattern is often absent, and that we hew to the line without it. We see afterward that our thought did conform to the pattern, but the pattern is a later abstraction from the process, not the chart which guided its course. It may be said that such thought is not a case of control by ends at all, but a following of the track of habit. But thought is never mere habit, even on the level of syllogism; and it is obviously more when it breaks new ground.
From the lowest level to the highest, then, in the scale of mind, we find teleology, not the kind of teleology that is found in explicit purpose, but something more generic. Can we say what this is? If we can, we shall have caught the common and distinguishing feature of mental process. We must see what we can do.
The irreducible facts we must start with are, first, that there is a great range of processes whose course is determined with reference to, and in some sense by, an end, and second, that this end is not consciously there to exert control . These facts force us on, I think, to the notion of an immanent end, an implicit end , an end that can lay compulsion on conscious processes without being conscious itself .
Philosophers commonly shy away from this notion. Behavior that is expressly purposive they recognize and in a measure understand; behavior that is mechanical they often think they understand better; but behavior that is purposive without purpose sounds so monstrous that they avert their eyes and withdraw . The psychologist, however, do not. Whether from moral courage or from metaphysical innocence, they dash in with abandon where the philosophers fear to tread, and are soon talking in accents heard by all, except perhaps the philosophers, about unconscious fears, desires, and memories . If a philosopher here or there does take notice, he probably remarks that these things are meaningless. To which the psychologist replies, “It is no more our business to say what these things really are than it is of the physicist to say what a photon is; if he finds that there are x’s that behave in a certain way, he has done his job; and so of us. People in fact behave as if unconscious ends controlled them; for us that is enough ; whether it makes speculative sense is for you to say, and instead of facing the issue, you avert your eyes and look pained.” There is force in this rejoinder (answer, reply) . If induction compels us, as I think it does, to say that mind is teleological process of the type described, in which there is control by implicit ends, the it is clearly of the utmost importance to make philosophical sense of it.
Now I think that if we are going to make sense of it we must return to a conception of Aristotle which he represents in the De Anima as essential to the understanding of mind, and which he stresses again in the Metaphysics. We must regard mind as a process in which the potential realizes or actualizes itself . It is the sort of process in which that which is to be determined, in part, the course of its coming to be. Mind acts as it does because pressing in and through the present is a world that clamors to be born. Is it replied that only the actual can act, and that the notion that what is not yet existent can influence what is, is nonsense?
I answer that this reply rests on a notion of the existent and actual that will not stand. I agree that so far as the actual does act, it does so in virtue of its character. But what is the

character possessed at any given moment by a truly developing thing? A shoot appears above the earth, and you ask what sort of plant it is. The answer comes, it is the shoot of a cornstalk or an elm tree. Would you reply that this introduces irrelevance, since the shoot is not yet an elm tree, but only the possibility of one?
But so to conceive it is still to conceive it with reference to what it is becoming . Strip off that reference, conceive it not as an incipient elm, but simply as a pattern of cells whose changes are without directive impulse, and would you have a better idea or a worse of what the thing now is? You would have a worse, because, present in the thing that now is, making it what it is, controlling the course of its change, is a special impulsion or drive that cannot be conceived except as a drive toward a special end .
This is suggested in our speech; we say, that is an elm tree shoot, identifying what it is through what it is becoming, and suggesting that if we are to understand its present nature, we must grasp that nature as the imperfectly realized form of something else. This is true always of what develops, and true only of this. A ball of putty (kitt) can be conceived without reference to anything that, in course of molding, it may become. What develops cannot be conceived except as the partial realization of that which as fully actual, is yet to be.
Now mind, at all of its levels and in all of its manifestations, is a process of this kind [i.e. a drive toward a special end].
And since this is what I mean by conative process, I can agree with Mr. W. H. Sheldon that mind is essentially conative 1 . May one go further with him and say that mind is secondarily cognitive ? Yes, if this means that knowing [in its classical sense of human knowing!] is a less fundamental, because less universal, mental process than conation is. No, if it implies that cognition and conation are fundamentally different. For in my view mind is conation; all mental processes reduce to it.
This obviously needs defense. But it needs defense far more in respect to some processes than to others. Regarding volition, affection, and emotion, one may argue with some plausibility that they are aspects of conation, but to say that cognition in all its forms is a conatus toward an end appears less credible. Since I hold that cognition is just this from first to last, it may be well take some central cognitive process and show that it is unintelligible unless taken as the realizing of an immanent end.
I should be willing to rest my case on any process that is clearly cognitive, but let us take one that will not be challenged on that ground and is of great interest in itself, the process of inference.
Suppose a crime has occurred and a detective is called in to solve it. What does he do? Normally he begins by gathering evidence through observation and inquiry; on the basis of this evidence he forms one or more hypotheses; these hypotheses he then tests till one of them proves satisfactory. Now none of these steps can be understood unless the movement of thought is taken as under control by an end.
The first two steps are those of what James described as sagacity (wisdom, knowledge, intelligence) and inference proper. Sagacity consists in seeing what evidence bears on the case, what is evidence in the case. If the expert consulted
1 Conation is a term that stems from the Latin conatus , meaning any natural tendency, impulse, striving, or directed effort.
[1] Conative is one of three parts of the mind, along with the affective and cognitive . In short, the cognitive part of the brain measures intelligence, the affective deals with emotions and the conative drives how one acts on those thoughts and feelings. (Wiki)

happens to be Watson, he will make a laborious and largely irrelevant catalogue of details; if it is the great Sherlock himself, his selection will be at once narrower and broader, narrower because much of Watson’s detail will be for him superfluous baggage, broader because details offer themselves as relevant which Watson would never have noticed. Why is it that Holmes selects the right things for notice, while
Watson does not?
It is more than a matter of past experience, for a wealth of this without sagacity may fail, while a very little of it with sagacity may succeed. We can only say that working in and through the better observation is a more exacting ideal of relevance . In some instances this is perfectly clear. Perhaps the main contribution of Aristotle to induction was the insight that where, in observation, nous or intellect was really active, there was no need for it to wait to pile up instance in order, by association and dissociation, to bare the nerve of a connection; it could seize the connection directly, as when the schoolboy sees that straightness of line in the triangle before him bears on its geometrical properties, while redness and largeness do not. The norm or relevance that is at work in his mind he is no doubt unable to define; it may work less effectively in some minds than in others; in even the best minds it works variably, as when Aristotle thought he saw the same sort of connection between humanity and mortality that he saw between two fives and a ten. But this leaves the result still standing that the selective observation, which is normally the base of inference, is under the control and guidance of an immanent ideal of relevance.
Now when a certain amount of evidence has been collected, thought leaps to a hypothesis ; this is the second step in the process; and it constitutes inference proper. What determines the direction of this leap ? According to James’s famous chapter, it is similar association; the effective reasoner is the man who is prodigal of analogies , good, bad, and indifferent, between which, once they are laid out before him, he goes on to choose. But surely this is just how a mind in command of its matter does not work. If the suggestions turned up by analogy are really random, thought is at sea with no rudder; there is no reasoning at all. If the analogies are in point, the connection that is being sought is present in all of them , and it is more natural to suppose that the presence of this connection within them had something to do with their arising than that, once arisen, they all disclosed it by sheer chance.
The working of analogy itself rests on the working of an implicit logic . Hence in favorable cases James’s paraphernalia of similars can be dispensed with, and we can go to our result directly. When the conditions of a problem are precisely set out before a mathematician, he does not always need to go groping about for his result through a forest of metaphors; if he can keep hold of the leading-string of logical implication, he may go straight from conditions to conclusion. Nor does this occur only in regions of high abstractness. When an intelligent detective leaps from the evidence given him to the solution of a crime, the movement of inference is as truly under the control of an implicit logic as the thought that deals with numbers or triangles.
It may be replied that logic is a set of timeless relations among concepts timeless themselves , and that it never descends into the flux of events to control or divert the current. It is eternal, and what is eternal does not act. I accept the first statement and reject the second. Just as the form of a sonnet which, abstractly taken, is eternal does, when present in a poet’s mind, preside over the work of

composition, so logical implication may groove the channel for thought. To me there is something absurd in saying that when you present a man with the premises of a syllogism and his thought leaps on to the conclusion, the fact that the premises implied the conclusion had nothing to do with its appearance. The conclusion appeared precisely because he had succeeded in so surrendering his thought to logic that implication took control. Indeed it is only when we succeed in doing this that true inference occurs.
Both in the selection of evidence, then, and in the leap of inference by which that evidence is completed, there is at work an immanent logical end. It is at work even more clearly in the third step, by which the inferred suggestion is tested. To test anything is to measure it by a standard. Without such a standard, testing would be meaningless . When do we take a problem as solved ? When the relation between the solution we offer and the relevant evidence answers to our ideal of proof.
Present in the mind of the geometer, whether defined or not, is an ideal of demonstration which forbids rest in any theorem till it is connected systematically with the postulates of his system. Present in the mind of the detective is a standard, which tells him when the ring of evidence has snapped shut, which warns him that to stop earlier would be to fail, and that to continue afterward would, for the purpose in hand, be pointless. I say “ for the purpose in hand ,” because it would be untrue to say that when we have satisfied our practical end, or the interest of the law, we have reached the goal of thought. When the law has got its man, there remain a hundred points at which thought, seeking to understand, could still ask Why? And when would thought as such be satisfied? Only when it understood fully. And when would it understand fully? Only when no loose ends were left anywhere in the case––only, that is, when this occurrence, and that, and what led to each, and what led to that, were made intelligible, which means satisfactory to reason, which means in turn logically necessary. When would the end of all this be reached? If I may be allowed to put without argument what elsewhere I have argued at length, only when there are no loose ends anywhere, when all things existent or possible are caught in one web of necessity .
By taking inference as an example of cognitive process and showing that it is under the control of a secret ideal, I have been showing what I conceive mind to be on its intellectual side. A teleological process, I said, must be apprehended through its end. It now appears that mind on the cognitive side is a process of realizing the kind of system in which nothing is omitted and nothing is arbitrary. What has been exhibited of inference, namely, the pressure in and through it of unrealized system, could be shown of any other cognitive process––perception, for example, or the entertaining of an idea, or the passing of a judgment. To think in any form is to have put one’s foot on a rung of the ladder that leads to this far-off end; and mind is present precisely in the degree to which such system is embodied. What the end is in detail we cannot see. But at every level of thought we can feel its impulse, and our knowledge of what it is and what it asks of us grows clearer with every step of our approach.
But mind is not merely cognition . Besides the pursuit of truth––if we may take a division that is useful, though neither exclusive nor exhaustive–– there is the pursuit of beauty and the pursuit of the moral ideal . These are not ways of knowing . But I should deal with them and with any other mental activity in the way I have just dealt

with thinking. They cannot be explained by psychology, if this means a natural science of mind , for there is and can be no such science . We have seen that thinking is a teleological process laid under constraint by a logical end, and of the working of this end descriptive psychology knows nothing. If we examined such aesthetic activities as painting, or carving, or composing in notes or verses, we should likewise find that they are intelligible only by apprehending what Professor Wolfgang Köhler calls “ the place of value in a world of facts .” So also of practical activity I mean, not mere play of arms and legs, but the direction and control of such play. This direction is shown most typically in the act of choice. And what is choice? To see it as one competing pull wining out in a tug of war, or as the resolution of a pencil of forces, is to look at it through distorting similes. Choice is the election of a prospective course because it is conceived to embody an ideal of good more fully than alternative course. Not that the ideal is clearly defined; that, as we have repeatedly seen, is needless. But choice is meaningless unless the ideal is there. The act thus conforms to our pattern. It evinces mind because it evinces the kind of teleology in which an unexplicit end dominates the course of its own realization.
Mind, then, is not a single process, but a set of processes, a quiver full of arrows of desire. Do the arrows have one target or many?
The end of the theoretic impulse does not seem to be the same as that of the aesthetic, or either the same as the moral, or any of these the same as the hedonic. It may be that there is no one goal of mind, that achievement of the moral end might leave the theoretic and aesthetic impulses unsatisfied, that the pursuits might even conflict and that the black and white horses of the soul, to use Plato’s figure, might break with each other and tear limb from limb their unhappy charioteer. Mind has a tragic future if this is true.
Whether it is true can be found only by following the loadstones of the spirit where they lead, and seeing whether, as functions develop, they will diverge or will support each other. I incline to believe the latter. In the minds of the thinker, poet, and saint, it is not mind in three different senses that that is coming to be; it is mind in the same sense, but with emphases temporarily different . If you ask what is the end of mind as such, as distinct from any function within it, I should give an answer which seems to me as inevitable in principle as it is unsatisfactory in its lack of detail; the end is an experience in which the implicit demands of the different sides of our nature are all realized so far as consistency will allow.
To sum up: mind is a set of processes distinguished from others through their control by an immanent end . At its lowest levels and its highest its character is veiled from us. At one extreme it dwindles into mere life, which is incipient (embryonic, emerging) mind . At the other extreme it vanishes in the clouds; it does not yet appear what we shall be . Mind as it exists in ourselves is on an intermediate level . It has achieved consciousness, but this consciousness is restlessly transforming itself under the spell of a secret end. What is this end?
Our best clue is gained from studying that function which of all our mental functions has gone farthest toward its goal, the intellectual. To follow that clue is to learn that mind is really mind to the extent that it achieves an experience at once comprehensive and ordered.
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http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/conation/conation.html
Source: Huitt, W. (1999). Conation as an important factor of mind. Educational Psychology
Interactive. Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University. Retrieved [date], from http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/conation/conation.html
Return to: | Conative Domain | Educational Psychology Interactive | more in-depth paper |
Psychology has traditionally identified and studied three components of mind : cognition , affect , and conation ( Huitt , 1996; Tallon, 1997). Cognition refers to the process of coming to know and understand ; the process of encoding, storing, processing, and retrieving information . It is generally associated with the question of " what " (e.g., what happened, what is going on now, what is the meaning of that information.)
Affect refers to the emotional interpretation of perceptions , information, or knowledge . It is generally associated with one’s attachment (positive or negative) to people, objects, ideas, etc. and asks the question " How do I feel about this knowledge or information?"
Conation refers to the connection of knowledge and affect to behavior and is associated with the issue of " why ." It is the personal, intentional, planful, deliberate, goal-oriented, or striving component of motivation, the proactive (as opposed to reactive or habitual) aspect of behavior (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven & Tice, 1998; Emmons, 1986). It is closely associated with the concept of volition, defined as the use of will, or the freedom to make choices about what to do (Kane, 1985; Mischel, 1996). It is absolutely critical if an individual is to successfully engage in self-direction and self-regulation.
Some of the conative issues one faces daily are:
• what are my intentions and goals;
• what am I going to do;
• what are my plans and commitments?
Bagozzi (1992) proposes that conation is necessary to explain how knowledge and emotion are translated into behavior in human beings. He suggests one reason why researchers studying the factors of thinking/intentions and values/attitudes have not demonstrated a strong ability to predict behavior is because the construct of conation has been omitted . At the beginning of modern psychology, both emotion and conation were considered central to the field; however, interest in these topics declined as overt behavior and cognition received more attention (Amsel, 1992; Ford, 1987). While goals associated with these latter paradigms are deeply enmeshed in schools today (e.g., basic skills, critical thinking), Barell
(1995) proposes that helping students develop the conative attitudes and skills associated with self-direction and personal efficacy is one of the most critical tasks presently facing parents and educators.

The purpose of this presentation is to briefly review some of the research in the area of conation and volition , giving examples of how these issues can be addressed in the learning process.
Overview
Conation refers to the intentional and personal motivation of behavior (e.g., the proactive direction, energizing, and persistence of behavior .) Many researchers believe volition or will or freedom of choice is an essential element of voluntary human behavior and that human behavior cannot be explained fully without it (e.g., Bandura, 1997; Campbell, 1999;
Donagan, 1987; Hershberger, 1988). Miller (1991) concurs, suggesting that conation is especially important when addressing issues of human learning.
The study of intentionality is common to the behavior of both animals and human beings.
However, Frankfurt (1982) proposes that human intentionality is different from animal intentionality in that human beings can desire to contravene (disregard) their conditioning .
Bandura (1997) believes this is possible because of the singularly human ability of selfreflective evaluation . More recent literature has focused on the concept of self-regulation as an aspect of conation (e.g., Bandura, 1991; Schunk & Zimmerman, 1994), adding an additional dimension to the study of self (e.g., self-concept, self-esteem, self-reflection, selfdetermination).
One reason that the study of conation has lagged behind the study of cognition, emotion, and behavior is that it is intertwined with the study of these other domains and often difficult to separate (Snow, 1989). For example, conative components are often considered when measuring cognition or emotion . The Wechsler scales of intelligence include a conative component (Cooper, 1997; Gregory, 1998); Goleman’s (1995) construct of emotional intelligence includes both affective (e.g., empathy, optimism, managing emotions) and conative (e.g., setting goals, self-regulation) components. Likewise, conation has cognitive and affective, as well as volitional, components (e.g., Gollwitzer, 1990; Snow &
Swanson, 1992).
Kolbe (1990) suggests that human beings have a conative style or a preferred method of putting thought into action or interacting with the environment. This might be compared to differences of temperament or personality type (e.g., Huitt , 1988; Keirsey , 1998; Myers,
1980) that purports to identify general approaches to thinking, feeling, and behavior or to learning style (e.g., McFarland , 1997) that identifies general approaches to encoding and processing information. Kolbe identifies four action or conative modes:
1.
Fact Finder (instincts to probe, refine and simplify);
2.
Follow Thru (instincts to organize, reform and adapt);
3.
Quick Start (instincts to improvise, revise and stabilize); and
4.
Implementor (instincts to construct, renovate and envision).
In Kolbe’s formulation, it is the combination of the striving instinct, reason, and targeted goals that results in different levels of commitment and action.
The following discussion presents research findings on conation and volition related to each of the three aspects of motivation: direction, energizing, and persistence.

Direction
There are at least five separate aspects of the direction subcomponent of conation that are identified in the research: becoming aware of human needs, visions and dreams of possibilities, making choices, setting goals, and making plans.
One of the first aspects of successful self-direction is to become aware of our human needs
(Franken, 1997). Maslow's (1954) hierarchy of human needs is probably one of the most well-known approaches, although other human needs such as the need for optimal arousal
(flow, Csikszentimihali, 1991), the need for achievement (McClelland, 1992), the need for cognitive balance (Festinger, 1957), and the need to find meaning in life (Frankl, 1997,
1998), the need for power (Murray, 1938), and the need for social affiliation (Sullivan, 1968) have also been suggested. It would appear that exercises designed to help the individual identify what is important to him or her would be one of the first steps in the development of conation.
A second aspect is to become aware of the "possible self." Markus & Nurius (1986) suggest that this possible self provides the bridge to action; without something being considered as possible for the individual, goals will not be set and plans will not be made. Levenson (1978) suggests that dreams and visions expand and define the possible self. However, the longterm, vague statements represented by dreams and visions must be turned into goals
(short-term, specific, personal statements) if they are to impact immediate behavior
(Markus & Nurius). Additionally, Epstein (1990) states that dreams and goals must have visual and emotional components in order to be effective.
A third aspect is the exercise of volition or the freedom to choose and control one’s thoughts and behavior (Kivinen, 1997). While volition is important it cannot be studied independently of cognitive and affective factors. Volition has two subcomponents:
1) Covert -- referring to the controlling of one’s own actions and 
 2) Overt -- referring to the controlling of the environment that impacts one’s actions (Corno, 1986, 1993).
A variety of researchers (e.g., Ford, 1987; Hershberger, 1987; Howard & Conway, 1987) believe that volition ought to be the cornerstone of the psychological study of human behavior. Their rationale is that while animals are controlled mainly by instincts and reflexes, these processes are greatly reduced in human beings. Learning and choice replace these biological processes, allowing human beings to be both greater than and less than animals in their behavior. This situation elevates the importance of volition, especially in an increasingly chaotic social and cultural milieu ( Huitt , 1995/1999). Lacking the restraints of widely accepted social mores, individual choice becomes the chief protection against social and cultural degradation.
A fourth aspect of the direction component of conation is the setting of goals for the directions that have been chosen. Dweck (1991) differentiates two types of goals:
1) Mastery goals that focus on developing competence or on the process of learning, and
2) Performance goals that focus on the outcome, winning, or attaining credentials.
Urdan and Maehr (1995) suggest a third alternative:

3) Social goals that focus on performance of the group or the individual fitting in with others.
Prawat (1985) demonstrates that in elementary classrooms affective goals are also important.
Ames (1988, 1992) showed that in school settings students with mastery goals outperform students with performance goals. However, it must be considered that in the highlystructured school setting, goals are largely chosen by the system. It is the individual’s adoption of the importance of those goals that is reflected in a mastery orientation. In the less structured environment outside the school, it is likely that one must focus on both process (mastery) and outcome (performance) goals if one is to be successful. Additionally, because of the importance in working in groups in the modern era (e.g., Bridges, 1994;
Toffler & Toffler, 1995), the ability to set and achieve social goals becomes increasingly important. Likewise, Goleman (1995) cites an extensive literature that the ability to manage one’s emotions is as important, or perhaps even more important, than one’s cognitive ability to acquire and process information quickly.
There are several important issues to consider when setting goals. First, goals must be difficult, but attainable (Franken, 1997). Following the Yerkes-Dodson law (Yerkes & Dodson,
1908), moderate amounts of difficulty lead to optimal performance. Setting goals that are perceived as too easy or too difficult does not increase behavior. Second, the emotional state of an individual can influence the setting of goals. Higher goals are set when the individual is emotionally aroused (Lazarus, 1991) and lower goals are set when the individual is depressed (Beck, 1967). Likewise, individuals with increased levels of optimism (which grow out of a person’s explanatory style) set higher goals (Seligman, 1990). Finally, individuals with increased levels of self-efficacy set higher goals (Franken, 1997). When the goals are met it leads to even higher levels of self-efficacy. Like the setting of goals, selfefficacy can be impacted by mood (Kavanaugh & Bower, 1985).
A fifth aspect of successful self-direction is to develop plans that can turn visions and goals into reality (Herman, 1990). Plans must be written and specific, starting with a clear description of desired outcomes. Two processes can be employed: backwards planning and task analysis (see Huitt , 1992). In backwards planning, one starts with the desired end results and then identifies the most immediate state and required procedures to meet that result
(i.e., if I am here and do this, then these results will be obtained.) To be successful, backwards planning must be accompanied by a task analysis that will identify the skills and knowledge required to learn or perform a specific task. By systematically completing a task analysis as one works backwards from the desired end results, one arrives at the starting point with a clearly delineated plan for obtaining them.
Energizing
Emotions are an essential element of the energizing component of conation. Our minds and bodies have a natural tendency towards equilibrium or homeostasis. This process has been studied as it applies to emotion (e.g., Solomon, 1980) as well as to a variety of other conditions (e.g., cognitive consistency, Festinger, 1957; the development of intelligence,
Piaget, 1972; and eating, Spitzer & Rodin, 1981). In general, the potential for pleasure resulting from striving and obtaining dreams, desires, and goals must outweigh the discomfort of change or fear of failure if action is to be taken. Goals that are in one’s self

interest (e.g., Sansone & Harackiewicz, 1996) or ones that are congruent with self-identified personal convictions (e.g., Brunstein & Gollwitzer, 1996) will have the strongest impact because these are most integral to a definition of self.
McCombs and Whisler (1989) propose another factor in energizing behavior: a natural need for self-development and self-determination. This need can be enhanced or thwarted by one’s self-concept and self-esteem, or as Markus & Nurius (1986) describe it, one’s possible self. It is therefore important to consider developmental and environmental factors that can enhance, or at least not inhibit, this natural predisposition.
Persistence
Persistence is increasingly recognized as an important component of success. For example,
Goodyear (1997), in a review of literature regarding the success of professional psychologists, found that while there are "threshold levels" of intellectual and interpersonal skills, motivation and persistence were even more important in predicting levels of expertise in professional psychology.
While it is true that certain student characteristics such as level of achievement motivation
(McClelland, 1985), expectations for success (Atkinson & Birch, 1978; Hayamizu & Weiner,
1991), and level of self-esteem (Tafarodi & Vu, 1997) as well as environmental factors such as amount of failure experiences (Miller & Hom, 1990), being praised for effort rather than ability (Mueller & Dweck, 1998), the public display of summative, but not formative, assessments (Seijts, Meertens & Kok, 1997), and the use of variable reinforcement schedules
(Plaud, Plaud & von Duvillard, 1999) can impact task persistence, the student’s use of selfregulation processes can mediate these influences when the learner is not in a conducive environment (Bandura, 1991; Koonce, 1996). For example, learners who matched goals to enduring interests and values (Sheldon & Elliott, 1999) or who perceived tasks to be important (Seijts, Meertens & Kok, 1997) persisted longer. Miller, Greene, Montalvo,
Ravindran and Nichols (1996) reported that student who had learning goals, desires to obtain future consequences, and wanted to please the teacher persisted longer in academic work. Students who were able to produce well-elaborated, specific, vivid pictures of possible future selves persisted more and had higher levels of achievement than those who did not
(Leondari, Syngollitou & Kiosseoglou, 1998).
Impacting Conation
Specific cognitive, affective, and volitional components of goal-oriented motivation have developmental aspects and can be impacted via the social environment (Heckhausen &
Dweck, 1998). It is important that parents, educators, and other individuals concerned with the development of children and youth work towards developing the conative components of mind that enhance self-direction, self-determination, and self-regulation. Specifically, young people need to imagine possibilities in their lives, set attainable goals, plan routes to those goals, systematically and consistently put goals and plans into actions, practice selfobservation, reflect on results, and manage emotions. These need to be addressed in a spiraled curriculum because of the developmental aspects of their successful utilization.
Bandura's (1986, 1997) theory of social cognition suggests that helping students to be successful is one of the best ways to assist the learner. These mastery experiences are the most profound influence on self-efficacy, which subsequently predicts future success in that

domain. Parents and educators can also use social persuasion, being careful to praise the effort and striving, not the learner’s ability (see Mueller & Dweck, 1998). Providing opportunities for learners to experience success vicariously through the success of others is also important, as it can impact a learner’s perceptions of what is possible.
Covey, Merrill & Merrill (1994) suggest that everyone needs to develop a mission statement as one way to help think about one's priorities. This statement provides an opportunity for the individual to explicitly consider and state important values and beliefs. In addition,
Waitley (1996) advises imagining what your life would be like if time and money were not a limiting factor in your life. That is, what would you do this week, this month, next month, if you had all the money and time you needed and were secure that both would be available again next year. Developing vivid, specific images of these and then relating them back to the important values in one’s mission statement can impact one’s commitment and persistence toward those desired end results.
Seligman (1995) suggests that we teach children to "capture" their automatic thoughts, which are often negative, evaluate them for accuracy, and replace them with more positive and optimistic thoughts (similar to Cognitive Therapy, e.g., Alford & Beck, 1998). Ziglar
(1994) and Helmstetter (1995) propose we adopt a more proactive approach and teach the use of self-talk techniques. In this approach, statements are developed specifically for an individual and/or situation and the learner recites the self-talk statement at regular intervals.
Shapiro (1997) provides additional ideas regarding activities and games that parents can use to improve their children’s emotional, conative, and social skills; Corno (1992) provides additional recommendations for teachers.
Baumeister, et al. (1998) suggest that we need to be careful regarding how much volition we require individuals to use—expending energy for volitional activities depletes the resources necessary to make those decisions. For example, resisting the temptation to eat a piece of chocolate reduces the energy available to make similar decisions. Considering this research, it may be important to balance constructive and direct instruction activities during the learning process.
Summary and Conclusions
In today’s unstructured and chaotic environment, children and youth will need the conative skills discussed in this presentation if they are to be successful as adults. Recognizing that there is limited time in the school day, educators must stack activities that can develop these attitudes and skills into an already crowded curriculum. While this may be a Herculean task, to not attempt to do so is to send our youth into the 21 st century woefully ill-prepared.
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from success to significance. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers. ON CONATION http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/stapledon/olaf/ethics/chapter9.html#chapter9.1

Chapter 9
Psychical Conflict
A. The Objective Sources of Conation
SINCE we cannot admit that the acquired social tendencies of human beings are simply reducible to the inherited tendencies of social organisms, we must try to formulate another theory of conation to take the place of the instinct theory. Such a theory I have already frequently advocated. In the present chapter I shall seek to bring together and render as precise as possible all that has already been said on this subject; but my chief aim will be to formulate and solve a problem, consequent on this particular view of the nature of conation, which has not hitherto been faced. Any objective tendency, I have said, may in principle be conatively espoused for its own sake. How comes it, then, that in practice very few objective tendencies are espoused, and that those which are espoused are nearly always tendencies of the individual organism itself?
In the case of the simple organic tendencies I have argued that when the subject becomes aware of any momentary organic impulse he has at least an incipient conation of that tendency. Further, I suggested that when the subject comes to know or erroneously believe some more enduring organic tendency, he again has at least an incipient conation of that tendency. The very nature of conation seems to involve the true or erroneous cognition of some tendency objective to the act of conation itself. In the cases which we examined first the tendency was a tendency simply of the organism; but as cognition advances, (doubtless primarily in the service of the already established modes of conation), new objective regions begin to influence conation.
The awareness of an organic impulse is not different in kind from the awareness of any other objective tendency. The psychical impulse to sneeze and the psychical impulse to defend the state are alike in that in each case a tendency of a certain object within the mental content suggests a conation, simply in being cognized. In the one case the body is discovered tending to sneeze, and in the other the state is discovered tending to preserve itself. Of course, there are important differences in the two objects and tendencies in respect of complexity, and in the processes by which they are cognized. Awareness of organic impulses is immediate knowledge by acquaintance. And even a foreseeing desire for the fulfilment of an organic impulse, though it entails inference from past experience, is based upon immediate acquaintance with a present impulse. Awareness of all other kinds of objective tendencies, on the other hand, is mediated. But in each of these cases what happens is that an objective tendency is cognized and ‘lived through’ as a conation. I am suggesting, then, that the essential basis of conation is not that some tendency of the organism, or of a simple inherited mental structure, is the source (direct or indirect) of every conative act, but that every cognition of tendency may give rise to a conative act.
Every tendency which is an element in the mental content suggests a conation, and is the ground of an at least incipient conation. If the tendency does not conflict with other and well-established conative ends, its fulfilment will be desired.
Of course, there are very many tendencies which are cognized as members of the mental content, yet their fulfilment is not willed . I may, for instance, be trying to drive a pig through a gate, and I may be well aware that the pig is persistently tending to go in the opposite direction. Clearly, I do not will the fulfilment of this recalcitrant tendency of the pig, although I am aware of it. The pig’s tendency, after all, is only a minor element in my mental content, and it conflicts with other more weighty and more intimate tendencies. By ‘weighty’ and ‘intimate’ I mean that for some reason or other, yet to be discussed, these tendencies do as a matter of fact bulk more largely in my mental content. But though I do not will the fulfilment of the pig’s tendency, I may yet perform an abortive or incipient conation of

the tendency, a conation which, for other reasons, I do not complete in overt action. Were I to know the pig’s tendency in isolation from its consequences, I should definitely desire its fulfilment. Not, indeed, that there is any logical necessity why I should do so, but that observably this is the primary kind of relation between cognition and conation.
Thus, anyone watching a salmon persistently trying to jump a waterfall cannot but wish success to the enterprise. Anyone watching the incoming tide, as it extends its searching fingers along the mud channels, can scarcely help wishing that the runnel which he is regarding may circumvent or overwhelm all opposition. On the other hand, if he is attending rather to the land, and imagines a tendency on its part to resist invasion, he will find himself desiring that the resistance may be victorious. In fact, whenever we perceive, or think of, or image, any existent as tending to act in a certain way, and pressing against opposition, we inevitably incline to espouse the tendency to conate it.
Of course, in so far as we apprehend the tendency in relation with other tendencies of our mental content, we pass a final judgment upon it, and may will either its success or its failure. But in the mere act of apprehending it , we desire its fulfilment. If, for instance, we temporarily forget everything else, and regard it alone, we may find ourselves entering, for the time, whole-heartedly into it and actually willing its fulfilment. Indeed, any vividly or constantly observed tendency may sometimes exercise a hypnotic fascination over us, and draw all our attention upon itself till all else is shut out of our mental content, and we will only the fulfilment of the one obsessive tendency.
The objectivity of the source of conation is particularly well illustrated in certain abnormal states. Janet cites a young man who, when he passed a hat shop, became so exclusively aware of it as an opportunity for hat-buying that he forthwith had to enter and buy a hat of which he had no personal need. On another occasion, he passed a railway station, recognized it as a place where one goes in ‘to take a trip’, entered, saw the name ‘Marseilles’ on a time-table, took a ticket to that city, and embarked on the journey. Only after he had travelled some distance did he realize the absurdity of his behaviour, and leave the train.
82 Such acts are, after all, only striking instances of a very common type of behaviour. The boy with a knife craves to cut something; the man with a gun craves to shoot something. Similarly, the man with a business under his control craves to make money. The woman who knows herself fascinating craves to make conquests. The theorist with a theory craves to apply it as widely as possible. The artist who has discovered a new beauty must express it in a thousand forms.
Indeed, this principle, which might be called ‘the principle of the new toy’, is of very great importance.
It is true, of course, that we are sometimes ‘contra-suggestive’, inclining toward resistance rather than fulfilment of a cognized tendency. But this is a rare and complex reaction which is to be explained in terms of an acquired modification of self-assertiveness. When it occurs, we resist because we cognize the tendency as opposed to our personal activity. Resistance is ever consequent on a prior espousal of some active substance or other. Again we may indeed come to desire the resistance of an objective tendency or of an individual, simply as an end in itself; but such ‘disinterested hate’ is none the less causally derived from the hated individual’s antagonistic relation to something within our content which is itself cherished. This antagonism itself may be forgotten, while the habit of disinterested hate persists.
We must, of course, distinguish between the conation which is derived from an existent tendency in some object, and a conation which is derived from an imagined tendency, or, again, from a potentiality of some object. Of the former kind is our sympathy with the leaping salmon or with the nation striving for liberty, and even our sympathy with the incoming tide. Of the latter kind is the boy’s itch to use his knife, the woman’s itch to use her charms, and the striving of the theorist and the artist. In the case of the woman we must distinguish between two sources of her ‘will to conquer’, namely on the one hand her cognized organic sexual tendency and her personal self-assertive tendency, and on the other the cognized possibility of exercising her charms. In the boy also we must distinguish between the tendency of his own person, whether manipulative or sadistic, prior to his intercourse with the knife, and on the other hand the cognized possibilities of the knife itself. Similarly, in every case, we must distinguish between sources in present cognized objects and sources prior to these.
Of course, a quite different explanation is usually given for these experiences. It is generally said that, when we thus sympathetically regard the efforts of the salmon or the activity of the tide, we desire their fulfilment not for their own sakes at all, but just because they are stimuli to our own tendencies. We project ourselves into the object (so it is said) and feel resistance to the object’s tendencies as though it

were resistance to our own tendencies. The only tendencies that we ever accept as conations for their own sakes are ‘our own’ tendencies. And our own tendencies are said to be all of them reducible to certain fundamental biological tendencies, such as self-maintenance, development, and procreation. All these fundamental tendencies are said to reside in the ‘psycho-physical nature’ of the organism itself. A theory which claims that all tendencies are possible sources of conation is ridiculous, we shall be told; for conation is essentially the outcome of, or expression of, the needs of the organism itself, and other tendencies are entirely foreign to the organism and the self of the organism; they can only give rise to conations in so far as they are taken as symbolical of, or have become associated with, needs of the organism.
To this objection we can only reply by insisting that, as a matter of fact, the more complex tendencies of selves have characteristics which are not logically reducible to primitive needs, whether of the physical organism or of an inherited ‘mental structure’; and that, since this is so, some other explanation is necessary. To say that our more complex conations are expressions not of a primitive but of a developed ‘self’ is doubtless true, but irrelevant. The question is, how does the primitive ‘self’ expand into the developed self. And the answer is that the most important way of expanding is by the cognition of a wider field of objective tendencies and the conative espousal of those tendencies.
B. The Problem of Irrational Choice
We are now in a position to face the problem of irrational choice. There are three kinds of mental conflict. In the first place, there is often a conflict between momentary impulse and the enduring tendency of which it purports to be a phase. Thus the impulse to eat a certain admittedly indigestible food conflicts with the enduring nutritive tendency of which it is a phase, and probably with other tendencies also. Secondly, there may be conflict between tendencies or impulses of equal rank. The impulse to eat now may conflict with the impulse to fly now from danger. Or the enduring tendency to preserve the organism may conflict with the enduring tendency to keep possession of a sexual partner.
Thirdly, there may be a conflict between emergent social tendencies and the innate tendencies of the individual. Thus the tendency of the community to preserve itself may enter the mind of the individual, and give rise to a conation, which may conflict with conation of his innate tendency to feed when his stomach is empty.
The first kind of conflict, between impulse and enduring tendency, perhaps never occurs in the animal mind. For while momentary tendencies may often be known by direct acquaintance, enduring tendencies have to be inferred. The typical animal, at any rate, acts on impulse and knows nothing of enduring tendency. In man, however, both impulse and enduring tendency may give rise to conations.
The toper may both desire to get drunk now, and desire to assert himself against this temptation. And he may either succumb or successfully resist the temptation. If he resists, what he wills is the greater rather than the lesser fulfilment, the fulfilment of enduring tendencies rather than the fulfilment of a momentary symptom of one of those tendencies, a symptom which, moreover, is (so to speak) a distorted or dislocated appearance,of an enduring tendency. What he wills, then, is greater in that it is something which will endure, not something evanescent; and, further, it is greater in that self-regarding or self-conscious activity is qualitatively richer, more complex, than the momentary satisfaction of an impulse; finally, it is instrumental to a more complete fulfilment of the whole field of tendencies within his mental content, and will entail less unfulfilment.
But what is it that happens when, instead of resisting temptation, he succumbs? Apparently he chooses the lesser rather than the greater fulfilment. His case is not that of the animal who knows nothing of enduring tendencies. He chooses with open eyes, and, as we say, against his better judgment. We cannot, then, simply say that a man always chooses the course from which he expects the greater fulfilment. It may be true that every tendency, which he knows or believes, gives rise to some degree of conation; but in conflict he does not always prefer the greater fulfilment.
Similarly, in the case of conflict between tendencies of equal rank, whether between organic tendencies or between emergent social tendencies, a man may choose that which he believes will afford the greater fulfilment, or he may not. Such conflicts may be reduced to the previous type. For the choice that he has to make is not simply a choice between disconnected tendencies. The one choice will (he knows) favour the general fulfilment of tendencies within his mental field, while the other will fulfil only an isolated tendency, and hinder the general fulfilment. Thus, in the individual sphere, the choice

between the tendency to preserve his own organism and the tendency to keep possession of his sexual partner may involve the choice between merely a sexless spell on the one hand and sudden death on the other. The man mayor may not choose the former and more prudent course. Similarly, in the sphere of emergent social tendencies, the choice may be between an aggressive policy for his group and a pacific policy. He does not always choose that which he genuinely believes will give greatest fulfilment to his group, though he probably persuades himself that he is doing so. His choice may, of course, be biassed by private tendencies; but quite apart from this, it may also be biassed by genuinely social considerations which he knows must conflict with the goal of fulfilment. He may, for instance, choose a ‘glorious’ and hopeless war rather than prolonged development, just because of a habit of oversensitiveness to points of group honour. And he may be thus over-sensitive to group honour even though in respect of his own private prestige as a person among others he is not over-sensitive at all.
Finally, in the case of conflict between emergent social tendencies and the innate tendencies of the individual it is very clear that a man may knowingly choose the course which will lead to the objectively lesser fulfilment. He may sacrifice another person to his own sexual craving, or his society’s fulfilment to his own craving for self-advancement. And he may do so, knowing that he is choosing the lesser fulfilment of tendencies in the total object of his cognition. In the first case, he may knowingly choose momentary gratification for himself even at the price of crippling another for life. In the second case, he may knowingly choose the fulfilment of one individual (himself) rather than the fulfilment of many, and of the social whole which is an emergent character of those many.
Here a word of caution is necessary. The will of an individual may sometimes embody the need of the social whole more correctly than the will of the majority with which he disagrees. For instance the tendency of his contemporaries may be to persecute and destroy an original thinker whose own tendency is to revolutionize and enrich the life and thought of the community. He, then, and not the majority, voices the real need of society. His mental content is richer than that of his fellows. He has known a wider field of tendencies and has evaluated them more accurately. His ideal constitutes a greater objective fulfilmnent than is desired by his persecutors. The first man who protested against ordeal by battle doubtless found himself in conflict with his fellows. But though they were legion and he was one, his mental horizon was the wider. His desire to abolish this practice was the expression of an objectively richer field of social needs than the contrary desire of his fellows.
But to return to our subject, in all types of conflict we do often choose that course which we believe will lead to the lesser fulfilment. We may, indeed, ‘make excuses’ for our choice, or persuade ourselves that what we are choosing really is the more prudent or more moral course, or that the fulfilment that we have chosen is, after all, the greatest fulfilment, in spite of appearances to the contrary. But, in the case to which I refer, the excuses are not the cause of our choosing; they are consequences of it. We do not choose thus because of the alleged reason; we look for a reason to support the choice that we have already made.
How, then, is this kind of behaviour to be understood? Hitherto, I have argued that conation presupposes an objective tendency as its source, and that an act of will is determined by those tendencies which ‘bulk most largely’ in the mental content at the time. But now it seems that there are very many cases in which the choice favours fulfilments which are not cognized as objectively the greatest possible fulfilments. Must we conclude that our theory of conation is false?
Let us state our problem more precisely. In every case in which a lesser fulfilment is deliberately chosen, that which is chosen is at least the fulfilment of some tendency which is cognized as a member of the objective mental content. Further, it is always either a fulfilment which has been frequently chosen in the past, or a fulfilment which has frequently presented itself for choice in the past, even though it has been rejected. Conation is not simply the outcome of present experienced tendencies. We have formed behaviour-habits in the past, and these bias our present choice. Certain tendencies, which in past mental contents were cognized as dominant, may still be favoured, even when, in the present mental content, they are cognized as in fact subordinate to other, more recently discovered, tendencies.
Thus, one who has contracted a habit of exclusively local patriotism may continue to favour the interests of his locality even after he has come to recognize the importance of the interests of a wider community. On the other hand, certain tendencies, although they have been even habitually cognized as actually minor, and therefore have never been willed, may yet have forced themselves so frequently into the mental content, that they have played a greater part in the history of the individual than those

other less familiar tendencies to which they have been judged subordinate. In such circumstances, choice may come to favour that which dominates by familiarity rather than that which is judged objectively dominant. Thus, in a ‘full-blooded’ nature the demands of the body, though habitually repressed because judged to be subordinate to the demands of a wider world, may, if ever circumstances accentuate them, triumph in spite of the considered judgment.
A special and striking type of the ‘irrational’ choice which we are considering is seen in abnormal compulsive actions. A person suffering from kleptomania may be well aware that the tendency which his choice favours is in fact a minor and abnormal tendency; yet he chooses its fulfilment, and therewith he chooses the thwarting of the actually major tendencies. The tendency which he favours is perhaps emergent from a combination of his own organism, traumatic events of his own past history, and certain present objects, which he compulsively steals. The events of his past history are probably not now available to his consciousness, but they are an essential element in the whole situation from which the compulsive tendency emerges. And in spite of the fact that the sources of the tendency are in part forgotten past events, the tendency to which they have contributed is now a present cognized behaviour-tendency of the organism-in-a-certain-environment. Our problem consists in the fact that the patient’s choice favours this tendency rather than tendencies which he himself believes to be far more broadly based, such as the needs of the society in which he lives.
Evidently, we may summarize our problem in the following question. If it is true that conation is always derived from awareness of objective tendency, and that choice, in principle, favours the greatest possible fulfilment of objective tendency, how comes it that choice ever favours tendencies which, though they have played a very large part in the person’s own experience, are yet cognized as in fact subordinate to other, less familiar tendencies? Choice is, in these cases, apparently determined, not in relation to the judgment as to the greatest possible fulfilment of present objective tendencies, but in relation to either the mere frequency ox: the insistence of the tendency in the total past and present experience of the individual. Moreover, this kind of behaviour is not exceptional but very common; it is as common, in fact, as imprudence and immorality when they are committed knowingly. We may cite as a dramatic instance of this behaviour the case of a man who, having a chronic disease, deliberately chooses a course which will alleviate his suffering rather than an alternative course which he believes would greatly favour the fulfilment of his society or of mankind. His will is apparently prevented, by insistent private tendencies, from accepting those social tendencies which he himself does definitely judge to be objectively far greater needs than any needs of his own body. How, on our theory, does conation ever thus fail to develop up to the full span of cognition?
It is tempting to say that when the major objective tendency is rejected it simply is not really cognized, and that always the agent chooses what does actually seem to him the greatest objective fulfilment at the moment of choice, though sometimes in that moment he is prevented from ‘really’ cognizing the major tendency by the compulsive power of the familiar minor tendency. Were he to be able to hold the major tendency clearly in view, he would inevitably (it might be said) will its fulfilment. But such an account is simply not true to the facts of experience, and would be obviously an invention to prop up our theory. We all know quite well that we do often deliberately choose courses which we ourselves at the time admit to be imprudent or immoral, or in general to be unfavourable to the greatest possible fulfilment of known tendencies. It is true, of course, that when we act thus our choice is always for the fulfilment of some tendency; but it is not for the greatest objective fulfilment believed to be possible in the circumstances. It is noteworthy, too, that on such occasions we often deliberately cease from attending to the major tendency, just because, though we cognize it as major, we do not will its fulfilment. We shun it, lest, in cognizing more fully its nature and its implications, we should finally be captured by it and will it in spite of our present will! We thus recognize that mere cognition may influence the will, but we hope to prevent it from doing so by refusing to attend to it, and by refusing to allow it to obtain any extensive influence in our total mental content.
C. Automatism and Free Choice
Such an account of the choice of the lesser fulfilment must, then, be rejected; and we must seek some other approach. What is it precisely that happens when a man sneezes in spite of his will not to sneeze?
An act which is usually serviceable is performed by certain parts of his body in spite of the cognition that, on this occasion, the act is contrary to the need of the whole organism or the person. The active tendency is a tendency of a part; and the behaviour that occurs is the act of a part uncontrolled by the

whole. Owing to their general usefulness the sneezing mechanism and impulse have become an automatic response to a certain kind of stimulus. In sneezing the physiological machinery itself usually seems to act automatically, and may successfully rebel against volition. But in special circumstances possibly there might occur a true compulsive conation of sneezing. When the subject is aware that the automatic physiological tendency conflicts with some objectively more important tendency (whether organic, personal, or social) he may succeed in controlling it; or he may not. When the minor tendency is controlled, what controls it is the conation of a major tendency. When the major conation fails to control the minor (physiological) tendency, a part of the organism is working automatically. On the other hand in certain circumstances, though the minor tendency is at first successfully inhibited, it may become so urgent that finally, not merely does it function in spite of conation, but actually it ‘overpersuades’ the subject to conate its activity. This is a schematic account of all compulsive conation.
Automatism is not confined to the strictly reflex sphere. Just as certain special expressions of general biological tendencies have become fixed as innate reflexes of the organism, so also, within the lifetime of the individual, many personal and social tendencies, which have been often active, may engender automatic behaviour and compulsive conations. When, owing to an expansion of cognition, these familiar tendencies are judged to be after all subordinate to, and in conflict with, other newly-cognized and more important tendencies, this revised value-judgment mayor may not succeed in controlling the automatism, mayor may not succeed in preventing a compulsive conation. Thus habitual behaviour that springs from a self-regarding sentiment mayor may not be mastered (through conation) by the cognition of the needs of the nation as being of objectively greater importance than the needs of the person. Or behaviour and feeling that is habitually nationalistic mayor may not be mastered by the discovery of wider needs.
On the merely reflex level the automatic behaviour may take place without facilitation by conation. But on the level of instinct and habit the automatic tendencies themselves entail volition for their functioning. Also they are themselves of greater account in the mental content than mere reflexes.
Consequently, when they resist control by the expanding cognition, they function, not simply as recalcitrant physical machinery, but as fully developed compulsive conations . The lower the rank of the rebellious tendency, the more easily does the subject regard it as something foreign, outside his
‘self’, something which he cannot master. On the other hand, the higher the rank of the rebellious tendency, the more does he feel that it is a part of himself that is in revolt, or that his will is divided against itself. But when the whole of his everyday habit of behaviour is threatened by the cognition of some supreme social tendency with which it conflicts, he is likely to identify ‘himself’ with the private rather than the social tendency, and to feel that ‘he’ is in conflict with a greater and foreign need, whose claim ‘he’ ought to admit. In fact, the subject regards as ‘himself’, or ‘his’ will, those tendencies which are in general the determinants of his behaviour. Those which are inferior in rank to his general determinants he regards as either fragmentary phases of himself or automatisms external to himself.
Those which are superior to his general determinants he also regards as foreign to himself, though they have a ‘claim’ on him. But the truth is that if by ‘him’ we mean a process of subjective activity, all his determinants are equally foreign to him in that they are equally objective to, and prior to, the conations which they arouse; yet also they are equally internal to his ‘self’ in that they are embraced within his content, and he conates them.
We can now formulate more clearly the relation between’ free rational choice of the believed greatest fulfilment of objective tendencies and compulsive irrational choice of the believed less fulfilment. Two influences bear upon every choice, of whatever level of complexity. On the one hand, there are automatic behaviour-tendencies inherent in the organism, or (if it be preferred), in the body and the self or ‘mental structure’, But, as we have already seen, it seems unnecessary to postulate a distinct psychical structure of dispositions. It is enough to postulate an organism of a certain form in which a general psychical capacity is emergent. We may then derive the established specific ‘psychical tendencies’ from this general capacity in its relation with particular organic needs and a particular environment. These already established tendencies, then, are in part due to the history of the race and in part due to the history of the individual, On the other hand, there is the present cognition of the total objective field of tendencies, in which the established tendencies of the organism are but minor members. The automatic behaviour-tendencies are, so to speak, the momentum imparted to the organism by past rational and irrational activities on the part of the individual and his ancestors, When automatic tendencies of the organism and the rest of the cognized field come into conflict, there occurs also a conflict in conation. In rational choice, the whole cognized field is taken into account; the final act of will favours the greatest objective fulfilment. In irrational choice, only the automatic tendencies

of the organism are taken into account. But there are two kinds of automatic functioning, and they are differently related to conation. If the recalcitrant tendency is purely reflex and physical, as in the case of a sneeze, there is automatic behaviour but rarely compulsive choice. But if the recalcitrant tendency is of greater complexity, such that it entails volition for its activity, it may compel the conative act without which it cannot function; in fact there will be automatic behaviour initiated by compulsive choice.
All behaviour is behaviour on the part of the organism. And the organism has in its own nature certain innate and acquired tendencies to behave in relation to organic, personal, and social ends, But in the mental content at any time there are, besides these automatic behaviour-tendencies inherent in the organism, many other tendencies external to the organism. Rationally, the will should favour the greatest objective fulfilment. Actually, it is often a compulsive acquiescence in the functioning of some automatic behaviour-tendency of one part of the total objective field, namely, the organism. But sometimes, on the other hand, the cognition of the objective ideal succeeds in mastering the automatic tendency, and even in establishing new and rational automatic tendencies.
D. Repression
One point must yet be made more precise in this account of choice of the less fulfilment. It seems that, quite apart from the impetus of familiar tendencies, the conation of simpler tendencies is sometimes intrinsically easier than the conation of the more complex tendencies. We may imagine the case of a man who, though he has habitually, over a long period, chosen social fulfilments at the expense of private or instinctive fulfilments, yet at last collapses into the more crude forms of conation. Since this failure is not to be attributed to habit, how shall we explain it? In such a case it is possible merely that the man’s cognition has deteriorated, that he has ceased to know, and therefore to conate, those more complex tendencies which do, as a matter of fact, demand high cognitive powers. But, on the other hand, we must admit that, even though his cognition remain intact, his conation itself may deteriorate.
It is not only in the cruder kind of fiction that the established saint or social enthusiast may unexpectedly succumb to the temptations (let us say) of a disastrous sexual adventure.
Such cases are sometimes explained in terms of repression. The man, it is said, has not granted his more primitive self its due fulfilment. Hence, there has been generated, under pressure, ‘psychic energy’ at high tension straining toward release. Finally, this ‘head of energy’ has broken down resistance and carried all before it. How shall we interpret these metaphorical expressions in terms of our theory? Evidently, just as over-exercise of the more primitive tendencies may set up habits capable of resisting: the appeal of the ideal, so also rigorous resistance of them may, in some sense, cause them in the end to capture the will. Evidently the higher, more impersonal, kinds of conation are only permanently possible so long as the more primitive tendencies are allowed a moderate fulfilment.
This impracticability of the higher conations while primitive tendencies are permanently repressed has been the main support of instinct psychology. For it has seemed that the higher conations were but luxuries embroidered upon the essential needs of the organism. But this argument from repression cuts both ways. Repression, when it breaks down, shows the primitive tendencies victorious; but before it breaks down it shows them mastered in open battle by the cognition of higher tendencies.
Consequently, it is no more reasonable to say that the outbreak of the primitive proves the primitive to be the real source of all conation, than to say that the control of the primitive by the higher conations proves that the primitive is but a blind approximation to the fully developed rational conation.
However this be, a sudden revolt against long-standing repression is quite intelligible on our theory of conation. We cannot, indeed, explain it in terms of the momentum of habitual choice; but we can point to the fact that, though the repressed tendencies have not been espoused (owing to their antagonism with the dominant tendencies of the mental content), yet they have all along existed. Not familiarity of choice, but the insistence of the tendency itself, finally persuades conation. The repressed tendency may be an innate tendency which has been prominent in the history of the race, and in relation to which the present individual organism is fashioned. Or it may be an acquired tendency which, though perhaps it has never been willed, has been imposed upon the nature of the organism (or the person) by circumstances, whether in infancy or at some later stage. In either case the organism itself as a physiological machine has been all along tending to act in a certain manner, and has been prevented by the cognition of major tendencies. As this repression advances, the organism gets into a more and more

unhealthy state; the resisted tendency becomes more nearly irresistible, and finally breaks into action and compels the will. All behaviour is behaviour on the part of an organism. Cognition of the objective field of tendencies cannot issue in behaviour unless it has mastered the organism’s automatisms; nor can it issue in a completely unified will.
Familiarity, then, is not the real source of compulsive conation. The essential point is that the agent is the organism itself. And the organism itself at any moment has certain behaviour tendencies of its own, due in part to its own innate form, and in part to modifications brought about in its form by the operation of its past cognition and activity. Often, then, there is conflict between these established modes of behaviour and the demands of the total cognized field. And since conation is essentially conation by the organism (in its psychical capacity), not by the external world, any advance in conation has to be achieved in opposition to the organism’s own established nature.
Another aspect of this matter may here be noted, though it must be more fully developed at a later stage. When we are tired or in ill-health the more complex mental processes are apt to give way to the simpler. Cognition which is precise, and takes into account a wide field, dwindles into vague and narrow cognition. Similarly, then, conation which takes much of the objective field into account apparently entails more ‘energy’ (physical energy, perhaps) than conation which takes into account only the primitive and central part of the objective field, namely, the established organic tendencies. It is only when we are ‘wide awake’ that we can approximate our will to ‘the good will’.
E. Summary of Discussion of Tendency in Psychology
Our whole discussion of tendency may be summarized as follows. All that can be meant by saying that an inorganic object has a tendency to behave in a certain manner is that it does in fact so behave if nothing extraneous interferes with it, or that it would so behave if it were not prevented. But, in the case of organisms, we rightly say that they have intrinsic tendencies to behave in teleological manners which entail the co-operation of a certain kind of environment; and that, if they are prevented from this natural behaviour, they will if possible behave in some manner which approximates thereto. Further, at any rate in the case of organisms, we are justified in saying that resistance of tendency involves a condition of tension or strain.
Conation presupposes awareness of a tendency objective to the conative act. Thus organic tendencies enter the mental content as impulses, or are known as enduring tendencies, and thus afford motives for conation. Beyond the strictly organic tendencies there emerges from the psychical activities of the organism a more complex class of needs which may be called needs of the person, or the psychical needs of the organism itself. From the cognition of society yet another class of tendencies enters the individual’s mental content and may determine his will. And cosmic tendencies may in principle do so also. It is mistaken to derive the more complex conations wholly from an innate set of primitive tendencies. Any objective tendency may enter the mental content and influence the will in its own right.
Such in brief is the theory of the objectivity of need which I have sought to work out in the three preceding chapters. This theory is strongly suggested by the experience of the objectivity of moral obligation. But, apart from that, it seems to be involved in combining the assumption of epistemological realism with a critical acceptance of the hormic principle in psychology, according to which all conscious striving presupposes some teleological activity prior to the consciousness of it. My aim has been to criticize and elucidate the hormic theory. It is a disputable theory; so is epistemological realism. But my claim is that when hormic psychology is purged of an animism which is wholly unnecessary to it, what is left is the theory of objective teleological tendencies. Thus though it would be rash to assert of plants that they are conscious, we cannot avoid regarding their behaviour as teleological. Whether they are conscious or not, there is an important sense in which they may be said to need light, air, and so on. Similarly in our own bodies teleological activity does seem to occur independently of our consciousness. Moreover, conscious desire in its simplest form is introspected as conscious ‘espousal’ of some organic process which, to be espoused, must first be cognized. And even in the case of more complex and mental activities careful observation seems to show that the same principle applies.

Having worked out in some detail the theory of the objectivity of need, I went on to consider, in terms of the theory, the problem of mental conflict and irrational choice. My conclusions on this subject may be summarized as follows. Within the mental content there is conflict of objective tendencies. In principle choice favours the greatest possible objective fulfilment. But behaviour is behaviour of the organism, and conation is conation by the organism. And the established behaviour-tendencies of the organism may resist control. Either they may function independently, as in an uncontrollable reflex, or they may cause irrational conation, as in imprudent or immoral conduct.
82 P. Janet, Principles of Psychotherapy , p. 125