Page:Ethical Studies (reprint 1911).djvu/248

 before the mind; that is the object of desire, and it would be the motive, if it were the indirect object: for motive means an ulterior end. The felt stimulus of pleasure in the idea against pain in the reality is what moves, i.e. is the immediate psychical prius of the putting forth of energy: and this, as we have seen, can never be the motive or the object, because a feeling which is an object is so far not a feeling.

Or take the instance of a lump of sugar. That means to me mainly, or here at least, the sweet-tasting thing; and I do not want it. In comes a child; to him it means also, as it did to me, the sweet-tasting thing, but he cries [sic] for it. ‘Yes,’ we shall be told, ‘in one case there is the idea of a pleasure, in the other not.’ Supposing we have in the child simple appetite, I deny the statement. In both cases there is the idea of a sweet taste, and, if that idea is felt to be pleasant, it moves because it creates want, i.e. a state of contradiction, where the absence of sweet taste becomes uneasiness or pain; such a state as I can produce in myself perhaps by eating something sour. But it is a mistake to say that I want the sweet thing because, so to speak, I discount for myself the promised pleasure to be got from eating it. Whether the pleasure create the uneasiness, or the uneasiness suggest the pleasure, in any case the essence of desire is feeling. The child does not cry for the sugar on Tuesday, because he remembers he had a pleasure on Monday, and thinks he should like another to-day; but because the feeling of sweet taste, now transferred as an idea to the sugar and made objective in it, is recalled in idea by its perception, and, being recalled, excites a feeling which, against the felt absence of sweet taste, is felt as want, and accordingly moves.

An object of simple appetite (using appetite as desire for recognized objects, not as a name for the lowest form of want) is this or that thing or process, with the perception or image of which are connected (directly or through the idea of activities) certain feelings, which, against the feeling of privation, are pleasant. Whether in any case now want precedes the pleasure, or the pleasure excites the want, makes no difference. Whether the original satisfaction first came unneeded, or was preceded by and followed on the feeling of privation, at the present stage again makes no difference.