Page:Ethical Studies (reprint 1911).djvu/241

Rh other the mental representation of a state, either general or particular, of our feeling self. And hence we may agree that pleasure attends the idea which moves to action, that it is a necessary concomitant of desire for an object; we may agree, I say, (with the necessary qualifications) to hold this doctrine as substantially true, and yet we need not admit that the motive is always the idea of a pleasure as such.

Surely it is plain that a thought may excite pleasure in us, and yet that such pleasure is not and can not be the thought itself, nor included in the thought. Surely it is plain that when we think of pleasure to be had, and are pleased, the pleasure that we have is not the pleasure we think of. We think of the pleasure we are to have in doing this or that; the pleasure we think of is our motive; it is to get it that we act. The getting of it is our idea, and the having that idea pleases us. It is a pleasant thought, and so excites desire (how does not here concern us) exactly as another thought, which is not the idea of pleasure as such, also pleases us and so excites desire. But the pleasure we feel is not the motive; it is not what we want and have not got. When the idea of the feeling of satisfaction is the motive, it is the thought of an absent pleasure which produces present pleasure and consequent desire; but once again that present pleasure is not the motive. Action, if it were, would be inexplicable; for we should act to get what we have. If my motive were the present pleasure, by action I must lose the motive and hence the pleasure, or at best get instead a pleasure which was not my motive. Motive is that which we want, and which so far we are without. Suppose a motive to be a feeling we have, then so far as we have it, so far as it is a motive, we do not want it, and can not wish for it. We fear we have been, and still may be, wearisome, but we fear still more to leave this point in uncertainty.

The motive, in the ordinary sense of the word ‘motive,’ is always the object of desire, is never the feeling of desire. And the motive, as the object of desire, is never the immediate psychical