The end of the 19th century, which declared progress and the technical and scientific mastering of life as guiding maxims, saw a human capacity moving into prominence - the force of will. In the spectrum between the literature of early modernism and the philosophical and scientific conjunctures of the concept, this study reconstructs the auto-interpretations of modern culture which provide the empowerments and exhaustions of the will. In this, naturalism in particular emerges as a determining factor in the process of literary modernisation around and after 1900.