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the will. Choice, as an act of will, does not include the deliberation and the play of feeling from which it proceeds; but only that final act by which they are brought to a close, and the powers of the mind made to unite in a line of effort. Executive volitions are the secondary impulses of will, by which its primary impulses are completed; they are the prolongations of that power which is born of choice. The ball is driven in a given line, but receives accessions of force, and changes of direction, as the exigencies require.
Lesson 12 - 6. The relation of consciousness to our faculties - p.33
6. The relation of consciousness to the three forms of mental action is the same. Sir William Hamilton seems to have regarded its connection with knowing as somewhat peculiar. While he speaks of it as the condition of all mental phenomena, he says, "Those of the first class, the phenomena of knowledge, are indeed nothing but consciousness in various relations." The complete and expansive statement is rather that consciousness is the condition, and equally the condition, of all mental acts and states. It is merely through a deficiency, or peculiar use of language, that it seems to be more intimately connected with knowing than with feeling. To know a thing, and to be conscious of it, are used as interchangeable expressions; and, hence, we have come to regard consciousness as a kind of knowing, or as an act of knowing, and not merely and purely the condition of such an act, that which permits knowing to be knowing. It is not strange, that a constant condition of an act should, in language, take the place of the act itself. Through this interplay of the words conscious and know, we are able to say, " We know that we feel," "We know that we will; " though we can with only, doubtful propriety say, "We feel that we know," "We feel that we will;'' and cannot at all say, "We will that we know," "We will that we feel," This use arises through a peculiar connection in the language employed of consciousness
