68. If I see that a donkey has wandered into my garden, the motive which determines me to take a stick and with it drive the donkey away is a cerebral rehearsal of the effects which will follow my act. The sight of the donkey has roused disagreeable feelings, and these suggest possible means of alleviation; out of these possibilities--reproductions of former experiences--I choose one. But if I seize the stick with which some one is threatening me, I do not pause to choose, I snatch automatically without hesitation. Yet this unreflecting automatic act is itself as truly volitional as my seizing the stick to drive away the donkey--it is the motor which has been organized in me by previous experiences--it is the consequence of an emotion, not of a deliberation; and it has not been determined by any clear prevision of consequences. Feeling inspires, and feeling guides my movements, so that if my snatch has missed the stick, I snatch again, or duck under. This is the kind of Volition we ascribe to animals. It is a great part of our own. By insensible degrees, acts which originally were prompted by motives sink into the automatic class prompted by motors. When an angry man snatches up a knife, doffs bystanders aside, and rushes on his enemy to stab him, he does not distinctly prefigure the final result, he only obeys each motor, and is conscious of each step; but had he planned the murder he would have foreseen the end, and this prevision would have been the motive. The angry man is struck with horror at the sight of the bleeding corpse, and passionately declares he did not _mean_ to kill. Nor did he will the consequences of his act, yet he certainly willed each separate step--he recognized the knife, saw the bystanders, knew they would interfere with him, willed to push them aside. He may be right in declaring that the act was involuntary; but assuredly it was not purely mechanical.