It begins to have the interest of a detective story. X marks the spot where the Will is to be found--and if X is something superior to Reason, all the better. But it is clearly asserted here that the Will is not the Reason; that Reason merely plays a part in bringing the Will to bear. That is, Reason guides, directs, aims the Will? No; for in such a case Reason would be the master, the mysterious Mr. X after all--which is contrary to the hypothesis. Is Reason, then, a channel of information, an open book where the Will reads the latest returns from the environment, so that there may be no action without knowledge? It looks that way for the moment. But McDougall goes on: “The X of which we are in search is always an impulse awakened within the sentiment of self-regard. It is the desire that I, the precious self ... shall realize in action the ideal of conduct which it has formulated and accepted.”[38] So X is an impulse wakened within a sentiment, which[39] he tells us is the “most general term to denote all acquired conative (i. e. striving) trends.” This makes X an impulse wakened within an acquired striving trend. And if we turn back to the definition of instinct we are reminded that a disposition to experience an impulse is an instinct, and therefore not acquired. So the impulse must have slumbered in a disposition before the sentiment within which it eventually woke had been acquired. X is also a desire belonging to an “I” which has formulated and accepted an ideal of conduct. Are we ringing the changes upon an octave of bells, or are we trying to say something? [Illustration: PROFESSOR WILLIAM MCDOUGALL Are we trying to say something?] Here we have Reason, Desire, Impulse, Instinct and Sentiment, not to mention Trend, all getting together and trying to make a Will with the help of an X and an I. We were out fishing, and just when the prospect seemed encouraging for a bite of something edible, we catch a wad of verbal flounces, beneath which if anything be concealed it looks strangely like a gudgeon in the shape of Nietzsche’s “Will to Power” rechristened as the Sentiment of Self-Regard. Or it may be the “libido” of Freud, or the “egotistic impulse” of Dr. Alfred Adler, of Vienna, which even Freud has denounced as “founded entirely upon the impulse of aggression,” leaving “no place at all for love.” It is a Will such as Dr. Watson might have made, had he been making one. But at least, you will say, it is a Will. Yet is it?