The Will



THE WILL

Victor Manuel Guzmán Villena


The will is the power that the soul has to determine, with conscience and reflection, to an act freely selected. This is precisely the art of educating the will: in knowing how to develop the faculty to direct its acts, restricting the sphere of the mechanical impulse and the empire of the whim, so that the soul is completely owner of all the energies. The human has more willpower when know how to evade the dominion of the external forces and govern vital impulses that stem from inside of their being.

A difficult thing is to find a human beings completely owner of their will. Humans generally speaking are divided into two major groups, apathetic and violent. In the apathetic group the internal impulse is almost zero, the vital forces remain buried in inaction, and their activity so weak and inadequate that almost never get in line with what is required of them by duty.this languor of spirit, discouragement into the effort is the disease of the will more universally extended and at the same time most dangerous.

In the violent ones, we all are in determined occasions under the influence of the passion, the impulse is on the contrary excessive and disorderly like an indomitable horse that does not obey to the brake.

Neither one have dominion of their will. The owner of the will is the one who during hours of apathy knows how to wake up cushioned energies, using little force to determine the advisable impulse, at the moments of disorderly excitation, is able to calm and check his/her passions, then directing the soul when is overflowed in a way of having the fecund activities.

To have dominion of the will is, then, to regulate the production and the cost of the activity, to reanimate the life when it goes out and to moderate the flame when it is intensified.

The first result of similar domain will be the manifestation and development of the personality, is possible to affirm, that barely exists one person between thousand human beings who is a person, is because, most instead of have their soul in their hands, they are being led by external influences for the blind exigencies of their sensitivity. The true dignity of the human is based on what they are and not in what they have. The mankind without willpower are not then such mankind , since neither of them are independent, nor productive, nor acquire. By the willpower people are going to get rid of his oppressors, they will become owners of themselves, recovering the freedom, consequently they are going to be moral people, rising from the state of degradation to the true greatness.

The conquest of our self demands major effort that the conquest of the others - which is showed in the history of almost all great men, the development of the personality involves the power of action and the empire of the influence on others. They will govern the world and they will own the Earth, those who have taken before possession of themselves and become owners of their acts.

Everything subdue before a firm will, even the inanimate beings and even brute force. Thanks to the perseverance at work and the tenacity in the projects, the nature disclose to the human will its secrets and their resources: therefore one has said that the genius is the undergone patience and perseverance, and is found out that the willpower does not have less importance than the talent in the most impressive discoveries and in conquerors of most adventures projects.

The intellectual value is, generally speaking result of the willpower. Two intelligences equal outcomes often get very different results, depending on the will that directs the talent in each case. The talent does not develop and invigorates but through continuous exercise. It found that in most cases, productivity in a wise person depends on the power of concentration and not having his mind divided into different things at once. put all the attention in one thing to analyze with depths thoughts give to the person more enrichment. But the constant attention is fatigues when is achieved with effort and struggle, but is the most advantageous result and perhaps the most accurate measure of willpower.

Nobody ignores that the talent depends to a large extent in the effort of the willpower; but also the organism keeps the same subordination. Therefore it cannot doubt that the will is tributary to the health, but the willpower influences as well in the health, since it regulates the organism, balances the feeding and the wearing down and tempers the excitations, which violence would be pernicious; its reach is still greater, because communicates to the organism strength, that why is justifies the therapeutic benefit indicated to the willpower.

The first condition for the exercise of the will is the functional vitality guaranteed by the hygiene, the same that has an effect of great importance that involves the conception of the moral good, accompanied of deep desire of realising it.

The moral necessity of the hygiene is not hidden to the sagacity of the old philosophy, that stereotyped this ideal in that one well-known apothegm: Mens sana in corpore sano . This element transmits the initial impression to us through nervous system, since is the conductive organ. Here the feeding plays an important role, is necessary to know how to eat in disciplined form, since on the contrary we become capricious and disorderly. The digestion badly done, the contained or insufficient breathing, the lack of corporal exercise; everything alters to the formation and the circulation of the blood; and what is worse repels in the most delicate of the organisms, the nervous system.

On the hygiene is incumbent, then, to choose and to moderate the feeding; to discard from our regime the harmful foods; to assure the good circulation of the blood and to tame muscles through exercise.

In these hygiene, in certain way, is a kind of mortification, because it does not consist of flattering the body, but in regulating it. Imposes continuous deprivations in the feeding, drink, vices and pleasures. By its nature, the austerity life recommends the hygiene and watches after the true interests of the human being.

The second condition for the exercise of the will is the creation of habits by the effort. Whereas the hygiene assures to the nervous system its functional activity; the habit is open to the currents, routes of transmission. The facility or difficulty of an act depends on the ways that it must cross from the sensible center, made an impression by the resolution, to the motor center from which the execution comes. one or another: exist direct relations between the two centers- and then the act corresponding to the impression is realised with facility or there is a completely lack of those relations , and then an arduous and complicated work prevails; effort has to do in the first an effort ti establish communications between the neurons, which until then had remained isolated, and at the same time to close with inhibition acts all avenues by which tends to escape the impulse been born from the decision.

Certain nervous joints, contracted by previous acts, must be annihilated or be neutralized by opposite impressions, in order to establish new unions by means of redoubled impulses, which by little goes through the nervous thickness, find the desired path. The suppression of old nervous joints brings the disappearance of tendencies or acquired habits, while the production of new joints, creates new habits.

Whatever form under which our activity is developed, can be distinguished three periods: the period of dispersion, in which the energy expenditure becomes without measured or order; the one of the effort, in which the movements are coordinated through a kind of a prolonged and maintained violence; and the customary one, in which the movements are executed quickly almost instantaneous and with almost unconscious facility.

The same happens in the moral order. During the period of dispersion, the will does not exist, or it is like the embryo;the desires happens with profusion and varied sum, either good, or bad follow one another profusely, but without consistency nor direction; at times violent and able to produce energetic impulses; other times weak, without force for the execution, but always without connection with a determined act; of such way, is never known which will be the effects of an impression. The beings who never leave this phase are weak, fickle and capricious; weak because they are governed by the circumstances and not by themselves; inconstant because they live at random on the external influences or the internal impressions; and capricious because they are subject to the impulses and the most contradictory actions.

In the phase of the effort is when the will is educated. The soul takes then in its hands the reins from its empire. dominates one by one the potential of its being, fixed the attention, stops the bad impulses with other good ones and reinforces the useful excitations consciously.

The third condition for the exercise of the will is the vigor of the initial impulses. How to acquire enough forces to leave victorious from this initial impulse of an action? The effort is not effective, neither open communication channels, nor creates the habit, if the sensible impression that it accompanies to the idea or desire is not quite strong enough to reach at the motor center and to put it in movement.

This observation of physiological order clarifies the distinction that establishes the psychologists, when dealing with the will, between the intellectual states and the affective ones, between the ideas and the feelings. They say the ideas: are impotent in the fight of the inclinations; the feelings, on the contrary, have a sovereign power over the will. The clear vision of the knowledge takes a little advantage of the virtue; only the favorable emotion to the good brings results in compliance.

Who does not know the weakness the pure idea? Who has not experienced the cruel disappointment of the real life, compared with the theoretical life envisioned between generous dreams?

How far from our plans of moral improvement are the incoherent picture formed by our daily actions. This is an inertia force that stops to us, or disorderly appetites those drag us. From anywhere our defeats come, we learn with pain how great is the distance that separates the image of the reality. Look at an alcoholic person; far from the temptation, cries the faults, hurts the consequences to him and it protests that will not return to prove liquor again; he trusts himself and he is considered safe; in advance counts the economic benefits of his resolution and if he is allowed to have a drink by appetizer, seems that will not be debilitated his will in this way; nevertheless, as soon as he has absorbed a few drops of liquor, awakes new appetites and crawls ashamed of himself, trampling on his projects of renovation and all plans of reform.

In order to act well, is not enough to think; we need to be moved and to be taken by the love. Only the feeling that moves the heart, communicates its impulses that prevail and overcome the apathy or wake up the favorable emotions that offset and replace the hostile emotions. How many bad actions contain the fear! How noble work is to take the love to a happy term! In this confrontation between the fear and the love, the human must incline towards the second, the love into itself and that inspires the conservation instinct, the desire for progress, the value of overcome ourselves by the effort. The love when seizes the being leads to the disinterestedness, to the sacrifice, and nothing seems to us enough to the benefit of those we loved. It is the most powerful feeling and deep like also most tenacious, the one than unites or divides humans, the one that moves more energetically the wills to the fulfillment of duty having declared by consciousness.

This feeling of action takes us to move the sensible centers and we are able to excite the motor centers and these as well the affective centers; in a word, when the currents are enough powerful to put into play all the nervous means we are at the service of the will.

In this point psychology and the physiology go in common agreement. The tactics recognized by psychologist as effective in awaking the feelings, also adopted by the physiologist to excite the motor centers. This tactics, in which resides the art of being the owners of our will, are reduced to three main means: the inner life, the outside influences and the action.

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