Let me say one more final word now about the will, and therewith conclude both that important subject and these lectures.

There are two types of will.  There are also two types of inhibition.  We may call them inhibition by repression or by negation, and inhibition by substitution, respectively.  The difference between them is that, in the case of inhibition by repression, both the inhibited idea and the inhibiting idea, the impulsive idea and the idea that negates it, remain along with each other in consciousness, producing a certain inward strain or tension there:  whereas, in inhibition by substitution, the inhibiting idea supersedes altogether the idea which it inhibits, and the latter quickly vanishes from the field.

For instance, your pupils are wandering in mind, are listening to a sound outside the window, which presently grows interesting enough to claim all their attention.  You can call the latter back again by bellowing at them not to listen to those sounds, but to keep their minds on their books or on what you are saying.  And, by thus keeping them conscious that your eye is sternly on them, you may produce a good effect.  But it will be a wasteful effect and an inferior effect; for the moment you relax your supervision the attractive disturbance, always there soliciting their curiosity, will overpower them, and they will be just as they were before:  whereas, if, without saying anything about the street disturbances, you open a counter-attraction by starting some very interesting talk or demonstration yourself, they will altogether forget the distracting incident, and without any effort follow you along.  There are many interests that can never be inhibited by the way of negation.  To a man in love, for example, it is literally impossible, by any effort of will, to annul his passion.  But let ’some new planet swim into his ken,’ and the former idol will immediately cease to engross his mind.

It is clear that in general we ought, whenever we can, to employ the method of inhibition by substitution.  He whose life is based upon the word ‘no,’ who tells the truth because a lie is wicked, and who has constantly to grapple with his envious and cowardly and mean propensities, is in an inferior situation in every respect to what he would be if the love of truth and magnanimity positively possessed him from the outset, and he felt no inferior temptations.  Your born gentleman is certainly, for this world’s purposes, a more valuable being than your “Crump, with his grunting resistance to his native devils,” even though in God’s sight the latter may, as the Catholic theologians say, be rolling up great stores of ‘merit.’