(a) THE steps by which the conception of the real will is
reached by Dr. Bosanquet are contained in the passage
quoted in the last lecture, and may be summarized
thus. What we will from moment to moment is called
our actual will. This actual will is always incomplete
and often contradictory and inharmonious. To get at
a full statement of what we will it would have to be
corrected by (a) what we want at all other moments, and
(b) by what others want. If this correction were carried
far enough, our "own will would return to us in a shape
in which we should not know it again." Yet the whole
process would only have been a logical series of inferences
from the whole of the wishes and resolutions which we
actually cherish. And if, going further than this, we
suppose criticism carried to a point at which it would
achieve a life ideally without contradiction, then the
will to such a life "would appear to us quite remote
from anything which we know." Remote as it is, this
is what Dr. Bosanquet seems to mean by the real will.
We are then left with the paradox that our real will may
be something which we never really will because we do
not even know it and could not recognize it if it were
set before us.

What is the explanation of this paradox? How does
Bosanquet arrive at it? (1) The justification appears
to be that the objects which we set before us, at
which we consciously aim, are not always what we
really want. They do not really satisfy us. This is a

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