The actions that arise out of several conflicting motives of strong feeling-tone we call voluntary acts, or if we are clearly aware of a previous conflict of opposite motives, selective or discriminative acts. According to this complication of motives, the end stage, which is especially characteristic of the volitional processes, takes different forms. With impulsive acts the whole process takes place quickly; the concluding feelings of excitation, strain, and relaxation are generally crowded together in a very short time. With voluntary and especially with selective acts, the whole process is much slower, and the feelings often fluctuate up and down. The same is often the case with those complex volitional acts, which do not show themselves outwardly in certain bodily movements, but which give rise to changes in the process of consciousness itself. Such inner volitional acts are noticed above all in the voluntary concentration of attention, in the direction of thought guided by special motives, and so on. Now if we investigate more closely these feelings of strain, excitation, and relaxation, which make up these inner volitional acts, we notice at once the great conformity of these with the processes which accompany the apperception of an impression or of an idea arising in consciousness through recollection. It is obvious that these elements, grouped together under the name of "feelings of activity," make up along with varying sensations the essential part of impulsive and voluntary acts in the one case, and of the processes of attention and apperception in the other. These processes also coincide in so far as different forms of apperception correspond to impulsive and voluntary action. If we apprehend an impression which is given to us without our assistance, the attention seems in a sense to be compelled to turn to this impression, following this single motive. We can express this by saying we apprehend it passively. The feeling of activity always follows such an impression. If on the other hand we turn to an expected impression, then these feelings of strain and excitation clearly precede the impression. We are aware that our apperception is active. These have often been called processes of involuntary and voluntary attention. But these expressions are unsuitable, since in reality volitional processes are present in both cases. They are, like impulsive and voluntary acts, merely processes of different grades. It is at once evident that, by reason of this inner conformity, apperception itself may be looked upon as a volitional process. It occurs as an essential factor in all inner and outer volitional acts, and as an ever-present one in the feelings of activity so characteristic of the will. Herein lies the chief motive for the fact that we look upon the will as our most private possession, the one that is most identical with our inner nature itself. Our ideas seem in comparison with it to be something external, upon which our will reacts