Page:Essays on the Principles of Human Action (1835).djvu/29

 I have not in those of others. But actual pleasure and pain are not the objects of voluntary action. It can be to no purpose, it is downright nonsense to will that which actually exists, which is impressed on my senses to exist, or not to exist, since it will exist neither more nor less for my willing it, or not willing it. Our shrinking from that which gives us pain could not in any respect be considered as an act of volition, or reason, if we did not know that the same object which gives us pain will continue to give us pain while we remain in contact with it. The mere mechanical movement which generally accompanies much pain does not appear to me to have any thing more to do with self-love properly so called than the convulsive motions or distortions of the muscles caused by bodily disease.—In other words the object of volition is never the cause of volition. The motive, or internal impression impelling me to the pursuit of any object is by the supposition incompatible with any such interest as belongs to the actual enjoyment of any good, or to the idea of possession. The real object of any particular volition is always a mere physical consequence of that volition, since it is willed for that very reason that otherwise it would not exist at all, and since the effect which the mind desires to produce by any voluntary action must be subsequent to that action. It cannot therefore exert any power over my present volitions, and actions, unless we suppose it to act before it exists, which is absurd. For there is no faculty in the mind by which future impressions can excite in it a presentiment of themselves in the same way that past impressions act upon it by means of memory. When we say that future objects act upon the mind by means of the imagination, it is not meant that such objects exercise a real power over the imagination, but merely that it is by means of this faculty