The   choice    with    effort    is    not,    of    necessity,    preceded


230  A   Firs  I  Book  in   Psychology

by  longer  or  more  painful  deliberation  (that  is,  vacillating
consciousness)  than  the  efifortless  choice.  The  essential  dif-
ference is  simply  this,  that  the  choice  is  made  with  full
consciousness  of  the  neglected  alternative.  "  Both  alter-
natives," James  says,  "are  steadily  held  in  view,  and  in  the
very  act  of  murdering  the  vanished  possibilit}-,  the  chooser
realizes  how  much  he  is  making  himself  lose."  George
Eliot  has  suggested  this  experience  in  the  story  of  Romola's
meeting  with  Sa^'onarola,  as  she  sought  to  escape  from  Tito
and  from  Florence.  "She  foresaw  thai  she  should  obey
Savonarola  and  go  back.  His  arresting  \oice  had  brought  a
new  condition  to  her  life,  which  made  it  seem  impossible  to
her  that  she  could  go  on  her  way  as  if  she  had  not  heard  it;
yet  she  shrank  as  one  who  sees  the  path  she  must  take,  but
sees,  too,  that  the  hot  lava  lies  there ^  *

The  most  strenuous  deliberations  of  all  these  types  are
those  of  the  moral  life:  the  fluctuations  between  good  and
evil,  right  and  wrong,  desire  and  obedience.  Lifelike  de-
scriptions of  deliberation  are,  for  this  reason,  almost  always
accounts  of  moral  choices.  Of  this  fact  the  dramatists  and
the  novelists  give  abundant  illustration;  and  even  on  the
pages  of  the  moralists  one  may  find  vivid  suggestions  of  the
warring  of  personal  tendencies  in  dehberation.  "I  see  an-
other law  in  my  members,"  St.  Paul  exclaims,  "warring
against  the  law  of  my  mind."  "Clearly  there  is,"  says
Aristotle,  "besides  Reason,  some  other  natural  principle
which   fights   with    and   strains   against   it."

*  Italics  mine.
