Different conceptions of volition accompanied divergent views about the identity of psychology as science. Volition was both a topic in its own right and a test bed for making clear relations between physiological, philosophical and psychological knowledge. Cutting across this was the question of the freedom of the will, though it was not self-evident what kind of question it was. There was marked variety of belief. All the same, whatever the differences, a shared way of life, an elite, educated culture and common moral expectations bound protagonists together more than theory divided them.

In this chapter, I outline different conceptions of volition and relate them to long-running argument about free will. For reasons which the previous discussion has made clear, there was no straightforward division between psychological and philosophical questions, though by 1910 or so many philosophers and psychologists were in recognizably distinct occupations. As I shall argue, the most constructive late Victorian arguments conceptualized the inherent activity of mind. This was certainly a contribution to psychology, but equally certainly it contributed to philosophical critique of the form of knowledge found in the natural sciences. These contributions came from asking whether natural science knowledge could do justice to subjective experience and, in particular, subjective awareness of agency.