70. By the Will, then, we must understand the abstract generalized expression of the impulses which determine actions, when those impulses have an ideal origin; by Volition the still more generalized expression of all impulses which determine actions. The one class is that of _motives_ with ideal elements; the other that of _motors_ with sensational or emotional elements. But both are mental states, both are neural processes in a sentient organism; neither is mechanical, except in so far as all actions are expressible in mechanical terms. For convenience we class actions as reflex, automatic, involuntary, unconscious, voluntary, and conscious. If we separate the reflex from the voluntary, we need not therefore dissociate the former from Sensibility; and the reason why we ought not to separate it is that we know it to be sense-guided from first to last, although the sensations may escape discrimination. The feeling of Effort, which was formerly felt when an action was performed, may have become so minimized that it is too faint for more than a momentary consciousness, too evanescent for the memory to retain it; yet the feeling must always be operant when its mechanism is in action. The ease with which the mechanism works does not change the adjustment of its elements, nor alter its character. The facile unobtrusive performance of a vital function does not change it from a vital to a mechanical act. Mr. Spencer seems to me to express himself ambiguously when he says: “Just as any set of psychical changes originally displaying Memory, Reason, and Feeling cease to be conscious, rational, and emotional as fast as they by repetition grow closely organized, so do they at the same time pass beyond the sphere of Volition. Memory, Reason, Feeling, and Will disappear in proportion as psychical changes become automatic”[219]--for while it is perfectly true that we only call those psychical changes “automatic” which have lost the special qualities called “conscious, rational, and emotional,” it is not less true that they remain from first to last _psychical_ changes, and are thereby distinguished from _physical_ changes. To suppose that they pass from the psychical to the physical by frequent repetition would lead to the monstrous conclusion that when a naturalist has by laborious study become so familiarized with the specific marks of an animal or plant that he can recognize at a glance a particular species, or recognize from a single character the nature of the rest, the rapidity and certainty of this judgment proves it to be a mechanical, not a mental act. The intuition with which a mathematician sees the solution of a problem would then be a mechanical process, while the slow and bungling hesitation of the tyro in presence of the same problem would be a mental process: the perfection of the organism would thus result in its degradation to the level of a machine!