Imagine another soldier in the same situation; with him fear seems uppermost.  His knees shake and his legs want to carry him in the wrong direction, but he still goes forward.  And he goes forward, not so much because there is no other possibility as because, in the circumstances, he really wants to.  All his life, and especially during his military training, he has been filled with ideals of loyalty and courage.  More than he fears the guns of the enemy or of his firing-squad does he fear the loss of his own self-respect and the respect of his comrades.  Greater than his “will to live” is his desire to play the man.  There is conflict, and the desire which seems at the moment weaker is given the victory because it is reinforced by that other permanent desire to be a worthy man, brave, and dependable in a crisis.  He goes forward, because in the circumstances, he really wants to, but in this case we say that he had to use his will.

Is it not apparent that will itself is choice,—­the selection by the whole personality of the emotion and the action which best fit into its ideals?  Will is choice by the part of us which has ideals.  McDougall points out that will is the reinforcement of the weaker desire by the master desire to be a certain kind of a character.[65]

[Footnote 65:  “The essential mark of volition is that the personality as a whole, or the central feature or nucleus of the personality, the man himself, is thrown upon the side of the weaker motive.”—­McDougall:  Introduction to Social Psychology, p. 240.]

Each human being as he goes through life acquires a number of moral ideals and sentiments which he adopts as his own.  They become linked with the instinct of self-assertion, which henceforth acts as the motive power behind them, and attempts to drive from the field any emotion which happens to conflict.

Men, like the lower animals, are ruled by desire, but, as G.A.  Coe says, “Men mold themselves.  They form desires not merely to have this or that object, but to be this or that kind of a man."[66]

[Footnote 66:  Coe:  Psychology of Religion.]

If a man be worthy of the name, he is not swayed by the emotion which happens for the moment to be strongest.  He has the power to reinforce and make dominant those impulses which fit into the ideal he has built for himself.  In other words, he has the power to choose between his desires, and this power depends largely upon the ideals which he has incorporated into his life by the complexes and sentiments which compose his personality.

Ideas and Ideals.  If emotion is the heart of humanity, ideas are its head.  In our emphasis on emotion, we must not forget that as emotion controls action, so ideas control emotion.  But ideas, of themselves, are not enough.  Everybody has seen weaklings who were full of pious platitudes.  Ideas do control life, but only when linked up with some strong emotion.  No moral sentiment is strong enough to withstand an intense instinctive desire.  If ideas are to be dynamic factors in a life, they must become ideals and be really desired.  They must be backed up by the impulse of self-assertion, incorporated with the sentiment of self-regard, and so made a permanent part of the central personality.