Note 147 — CONCLUSION

It is a postulate of contemporary physiology that all the neurones taken together cannot spontaneously, that is, of themselves, give rise to any movement—they receive from without, and expend their energy outwards. Nevertheless, between the two moments that, in reflex and instinctive actions, seem continuous, a third interposes, which, for the higher psychic acts, may be of long duration. Thus, reasonings in logical form and reflection regarding a decision to be made have a feeble tendency to become changed into acts; their motor effects are indirect, and at a long range. But this intermediate moment is par excellence the moment for psychology. It is also the moment of the personal equation: every man receives, transforms, and restores outwards according to his own organization, temperament, idiosyncrasies, character—in a word, according to his personality, of which needs, tendencies, desires, are the direct and immediate expression. So we come back, by another route, to the same definition of spontaneity.