not be resisted. If
not, we call the activity immanent, as when a body moves in empty space
by its momentum, or our thoughts wander at their own sweet will. If
resistance is met, _its_ agent complicates the situation. If now, in
spite of resistance, the original tendency continues, effort makes its
appearance, and along with effort, strain or squeeze. Will, in the
narrower sense of the word, then comes upon the scene, whenever, along
with the tendency, the strain and squeeze are sustained. But the
resistance may be great enough to check the tendency, or even to reverse
its path. In that case, we (if 'we' were the original agents or subjects
of the tendency) are overpowered. The phenomenon turns into one of
tension simply, or of necessity succumbed-to, according as the opposing
power is only equal, or is superior to ourselves.

Whosoever describes an experience in such terms as these describes an
experience _of_ activity. If the word have any meaning, it must denote
what there is found. _There_ is complete activity in its original and
first intention. What it is 'known-as' is what there appears. The
experiencer of such a situation possesses all that the idea contains. He
feels the tendency, the obstacle, the will, the strain, the triumph, or
the passive giving up, just as he feels the time, the space, the
swiftness or intensity, the movement, the weight and color, the pain and
pleasure, the complexity, or whatever remaining characters the situation
may involve. He goes through all that ever can be imagined where
activity is supposed. If we suppose activities to go on outside of our
experience, it is in forms like these that we must suppose them, or else
give them some other name; for the word 'activity' has no imaginable
content whatever save these experiences of process, obstruction,
striving, strain, or release, ultimate _qualia_ as they are of the life
given us to be known.

Were this the end of the matter, one might think that whenever we had
successfully lived through an activity-situation we should have to be
permitted, without provoking contradiction, to say that we had been
really active, that we had met real resistance and had really prevailed.
Lotze somewhere says that to be an entity all that is necessary is to
_gelten_ as an entity, to operate, or be felt, experienced, recognized,
or in any way realized, as such.[97] In our activity-experiences the
activity assuredly fulfils Lotze's demand. It makes itself