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CHAPTER III. - EXECUTIVE VOLITION.
Lesson 94 - 1. Executive volitions - p.391
1. We are to distinguish executive from primary volition. Primary volition is frequently termed choice, and there is no objection to the word, if we carefully exclude from it the intellectual weighing of reasons, the balancing of inducements, which often accompany it. The volition is not in these, but in the act which brings them to a conclusion. A choice initiates a series of acts in reference to an object to be reached by them; an executive volition regards the performance of these acts thus determined on.
The primary volition is the true seat of freedom, since subsequent acts flow necessarily from it. This choice may indeed be reconsidered, but so long as it remains in force, so long as it is a purpose of the soul, the acts included under it flow directly from it, fixed thereby in their character. An alternative is presented to the first volition, not to those later volitions by which it is completed. These may be looked upon simply as the prolonged force of the first, as much so as the repeated shocks of the ricochetting cannonball are the results of an impulse received at once and in the distance.
Executive volitions are successive points from which fresh executive impulse is given to a series of actions whose existence and purpose have already been determined. Some have striven to separate widely between volition and choice. The division is a secondary one, covered by this distinction between executive and primary volition. These
