derived from will. Of course it was. You can praise an action by saying
that it is calculated to bring pleasure or pain to discover truth or to
save the soul. But you cannot praise an action because it shows will;
for to say that is merely to say that it is an action. By this praise of
will you cannot really choose one course as better than another. And yet
choosing one course as better than another is the very definition of the
will you are praising.

The worship of will is the negation of will. To admire mere choice is to
refuse to choose. If Mr. Bernard Shaw comes up to me and says, "Will
something," that is tantamount to saying, "I do not mind what you
will," and that is tantamount to saying, "I have no will in the matter."
You cannot admire will in general, because the essence of will is that
it is particular. A brilliant anarchist like Mr. John Davidson feels an
irritation against ordinary morality, and therefore he invokes
will--will to anything. He only wants humanity to want something. But
humanity does want something. It wants ordinary morality. He rebels
against the law and tells us to will something or anything. But we have
willed something. We have willed the law against which he rebels.

All the will-worshippers, from Nietzsche to Mr. Davidson, are really
quite empty of volition. They cannot will, they can hardly wish. And if
any one wants a proof of this, it can be found quite easily. It can be
found in this fact: that they always talk of will as something that
expands and breaks out. But it is quite the opposite. Every act of will
is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation.
In that sense every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose
anything, you reject everything else. That objection, which men of this
school used to make to the act of marriage, is really an objection to
every act. Every act is an irrevocable selection and exclusion. Just as