VOLITION • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Volition

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/voʊlˈɪʃən/ Listen

noun

Volition n.

The act of willing or choosing; the act of forming a purpose; the exercise of the will. "Volition is the actual exercise of the power the mind has to order the consideration of any idea, or the forbearing to consider it." "Volition is an act of the mind, knowingly exerting that dominion it takes itself to have over any part of the man, by employing it in, or withholding it from, any particular action."

The result of an act or exercise of choosing or willing; a state of choice.

The power of willing or determining; will.

Synonyms: Will; choice; preference; determination; purpose. Volition, Choice. Choice is the familiar, and volition the scientific, term for the same state of the will; viz., an "elective preference." When we have "made up our minds" (as we say) to a thing, i. e., have a settled state of choice respecting it, that state is called an immanent volition; when we put forth any particular act of choice, that act is called an emanent, or executive, or imperative, volition. When an immanent, or settled state of, choice, is one which controls or governs a series of actions, we call that state a predominant volition; while we give the name of subordinate volitions to those particular acts of choice which carry into effect the object sought for by the governing or "predominant volition." See Will.

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Etymology of 'Volition'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Volition" Quotes from Famous Books

... opposite side to where I stood, and calmly crossed over whilst I went round. At last, by long and patient waiting, he, too, allowed me to come near and present my seductive food to his notice—the wiry proboscis was uncoiled and felt about for the honey; once plunged into that, all volition seemed to cease, he allowed me to coax him upon my finger, and he, too, was safely caged; but he behaved very differently from "fair Cynthia." The moment his repast was ended he flapped with desperate force against the bars, and in ...

— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen

... side and then on the other, and weighs them until the two sides hang in equipoise, with no prepondering motive to enable him to decide. He is in stable equilibrium, and so does not move at all of his own volition, but moves very easily at ...

— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... can lie to our supposing potential or elementary volition and consciousness to exist in atoms, on the score that their action would be less regular or uniform if they had free will than if they had not. By giving them free will we do no more than those who make them bound to obey fixed laws. They will be as certain to use their freedom of will only in ...

— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... the people.[-12-] Caesar declared that with him he was angry, because Cato had grudged him the distinction attaching to the preservation of such a man, but released his son and most of the rest, as was his custom: for some came over to him immediately of their own volition, and others later, so as to approach him after time should have somewhat blurred his memory. So these escaped, but Afranius and Faustus would not come to him of their own free will, for they felt sure of destruction. They fled to Mauritania, where they were captured by Sittius. Caesar put them ...

— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio

... live there. That region of burnt and fissured rock is tunneled and inhabited. The unlikely serrations and ridges with the smoke moving over them are porous, and a fluid life ranges beneath unseen. It is the beginning of Dockland. That the life is in upright beings, each with independent volition and a soul; that it is not an amorphous movement, flowing in bulk through buried pipes, incapable of the idea of height, of rising, it is difficult to believe. It has not been believed. If life, you protest, is really there, has any purpose which is better than that of extending worm-like through ...

— London River • H. M. Tomlinson

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