Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Inclination

The truth is, such a man understands by his will, and believes a thing true or false merely as it agrees or disagrees with a violent inclination; and therefore, whilst that inclination lasts in its strength, he discovers nothing of the different degrees of evidence.

Strong minds will be strongly bent, and usually labour under a strong bias; but there is no mind so weak and powerless as not to have its inclinations, and none so guarded as to be without its prepossessions.

Almost every one has a predominant inclination, to which his other desires and affections submit, and which governs him, though perhaps with some intervals, through the whole course of his life.

From the very first instances of perception some things are grateful and others unwelcome to them; some things that they incline to, and others that they fly.

To attempt the putting another genius upon him will be labour in vain; and what is plaistered on will have always hanging to it the ungracefulness of constraint.

A mere inclination to a thing is not properly a willing of that thing; and yet in matters of duty men frequently reckon it for such: for otherwise how should they so often plead and rest in the honest and well-inclined dispositions of their minds, when they are justly charged with an actual non-performance of the law?

Inclination is another word with which will is frequently confounded. Thus, when the apothecary says, in Romeo and Juliet,—

the word will is plainly used as synonymous with inclination; not in the strict logical sense, as the immediate antecedent of action. It is with the same latitude that the word is used in common conversation, when we think of doing a thing which duty prescribes, against one’s own will; or when we speak of doing a thing willingly or unwillingly.