mind moves, or to use a less abstract expression, the mass of power by
which man can reproduce, outside himself, the actions constituting his
external life. Volition--a word due to Locke--expressed the act by
which a man exerts his will. The word Mind, or Thought, which he
regarded as the quintessential product of the Will, also represented
the medium in which the ideas originate to which thought gives
substance. The Idea, a name common to every creation of the brain,
constituted the act by which man uses his mind. Thus the Will and the
Mind were the two generating forces; the Volition and the Idea were
the two products. Volition, he thought, was the Idea evolved from the
abstract state to a concrete state, from its generative fluid to a
solid expression, so to speak, if such words may be taken to formulate
notions so difficult of definition. According to him, the Mind and
Ideas are the motion and the outcome of our inner organization, just
as the Will and Volition are of our external activity.

He gave the Will precedence over the Mind.

"You must will before you can think," he said. "Many beings live in a
condition of Willing without ever attaining to the condition of
Thinking. In the North, life is long; in the South, it is shorter; but
in the North we see torpor, in the South a constant excitability of
the Will, up to the point where from an excess of cold or of heat the
organs are almost nullified."

The use of the word "medium" was suggested to him by an observation he
had made in his childhood, though, to be sure, he had no suspicion
then of its importance, but its singularity naturally struck his
delicately alert imagination. His mother, a fragile, nervous woman,
all sensitiveness and affection, was one of those beings created to