When accused of this infraction of good order, and facing sum-
mary punishment, he managed to stammer: "I tell you. Miss
Jones, I didn't whistle, it just whistled itself. " That boy, out
of the depths of his self-consciousness, had recognized a dis-
tinction which many psychologists have missed in their imper-
fect classification. There are human actions, even aside from
those called "reflex," conscious activities and involving the
use of voluntary muscles, which do not result from and are not
preceded by a choice at all. If the faculty called "Will" is
to include every psychical act not included in knowing and
feeling, we evidently need a subdivision of will to mark the

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42 STUDIES IN MORAL SCIENCE

distinction between our "whistling" school boy and the one
of whom we would say "he did it willfully." Dr. James seems
to feel this necessity, for he speaks of choices "with and with-
out deliberation," the former term being used for what we be-
lieve to be choice properly so called. But deliberation, though
generally present, is not the characteristic which sets off choices
in a class by themselves. The one essential mark of a choice,
that which distinguishes it from every other act and state of the
soul, is the presence of a self-determining activity. A popular
lecturer, recently holding up to ridicule certain religious teach-
ing, told of a little boy, who in an altercation with a playmate,
had spit in her face. Appropriate punishment was administered
at the time, and in the evening, when the boy was about to
say his prayers, his mother took occasion to paint in darkest
hue the conduct of the day, charging all malicious and evil
propensities on that "old serpent the Devil." But the little
fellow retorted: "Well, now, mamma, I don't know much
about what the Devil does, but that spitting I tell you I did
it my own self." That child recognized the existence in him
of a power of self-determination, and that the possession of
this power was the ground of responsibility.
