is,--any one, i.e., who cares to
take the time to repeat these experiments, and to try a sufficient
number of subjects until the right ones be found--who are capable of
affecting the balance in the manner described.

Such a fact--if fact it be--is of the utmost importance to science and
to philosophy; even more important and more far-reaching in its
implications than may at first sight appear. Not only is the fact itself
of extraordinary interest, but the very origin and structure of our
universe is called into question--and shown to be capable of an
interpretation very different from that usually offered by modern
science. And, further, if it be true that the human will is a physical
energy, we have here the discovery of a _new force_--a force just as
new to science as magnetism or electricity--and vastly more interesting,
since it is intimately associated with all of us, and subject to our
direction, guidance, and command--a force for us to wield and
manipulate--for weal or woe!

It may be thought, by some, that this is no new discovery; that the
human will is a physical energy is a fact of common observation; and
that we all feel the liberation of this energy whenever an act of
volition is performed. I may reply at once to such critics that (common
sense as it may appear) this is not at all the attitude of modern
psychology; and that, by _savants_ the will is not considered an energy
at all, but rather a choice of actions or an effort of attention. It is
a state of consciousness merely, possessing intrinsically no more energy
than any other state of the kind. This may, perhaps, be made clear by
the following brief quotation from James' _Psychology_:

"We can now see that attention with effort is all that any case of
volition implies. The essential achievement of the will, in short,
when it is most "voluntary" is to attend to a difficult object and
hold it fast before the mind. The so doing _is_ the _fiat_; and it
is a mere physiological incident that when the object is thus
attended to, immediate motor consequences should ensue. Effort of
attention is thus the immediate phenomenon of will." (p. 450.)

This, then, is the attitude of psychology. It contends that the will is
by no means an energy, in the sense in which physicists use that term;
but rather that it is a mere state of mind, or of consciousness. As
such it is, of course, helpless; a mere witness of the drama of life,
i