_DESIRE_
The lowest organisms come in contact with things, have objective
relations of contact, but it is quite unlikely that the earliest psychic
life feels contacts, really touches things. From the objective commerce
with things pleasures and pains are realized, but object is unsensed and
unknown. The simplest marine forms are incessantly feeding at hazard at
the prompting of a subjective lack-pain. That the lowest life is born
into a nutritive medium and that at birth many later organisms are
incased or in direct connection with nutritive material, shows that at
the very beginning psychic life is not needed as discriminatory, but as
simple subjective pain and pleasure moving to undirected activities.
However, such perfect environment being rare and temporary, in its blind
and senseless activity the organism is often trying to assimilate the
unassimilable, or the harmful, and is often appropriating when there is
no substance present. It would obviously be of great advantage if it
could touch its food, have sensation as guide to activity. Thus
realization of a very limited world of things arises in touch achieved
during the feeding act. That which satisfies and gives pleasure is by
touch discriminated from that which does not give these results.
Discrimination of soft and hard is probably the earliest touch
impression. The soft thing is manipulated in the feeding act as edible.
But a great step is made when psychical effect of the edible is not only
comprehended through touch in direct connection with the assimilatory
act, but antecedently thereto. The animal establishes a connection
between the feeling the soft thing and pleasure experience in its
struggling activities. It touches more and more readily what it is
assimilating, and thence rejects more easily and promptly the injurious.
In appropriative effort with pleasure experience it feels the thing,
cognizes in most general way its physical quality. As sensitiveness
increases through struggle and natural selection the assimilatory
attempt will be more and more quickly met by the touch sensation, until
touch ultimately becomes precedent and actually directive to food.
Recognition, in a far more emphatic way than before, becomes added to
cognition; the thing is not merely known in its bare objectivity, but is
recognised, identified, and has a meaning. Touch must give, not only the
thing, but the thing as potent for some quality not now being
appreciated, though formerly appreciated _pari passu_ with the touching.
The interpretative act comes through the association gradually
established in past experiences, so that the edible is no longer
fortuitously hit upon, but touch precedes active effort at
appropriation, and suggests by itself edibility or non-edibility. Thus
is action greatly economized and made certain. Definite feelers,
extending from the body, and sometimes quite long, are evolved, and the
first period in the history of knowledge, the age of touch, is
inaugurated.
It is here when touch involves representation and becomes a sign of
something, _e.g._, edible thing, that desire and other simple emotions
originate. A possibility of pleasurable experience being recognised, it
is necessary, if useful action would follow, that emotion springs up as
incentive, and this emotion we term desire. Hunger drives, but desire
draws, and as reinforcement and guide to the blind hunger impulse desire
has a large function. A mere indifferent recognition, the pleasurable
foreseen but not felt about, would be entirely unserviceable. If we do
not desire the pleasurable and beneficial, we do not act for it. And
originally, at least, perception of the good always stirred desire; and
desire was awakened in no other way; for in the course of natural
evolution, knowledge and emotions have alike to be interpreted in their
origin and meaning with reference to advantageous action, this alone
being the arena of natural selection. A meaningless knowledge and a
self-contained emotion or feeling, are entirely contrary to the trend of
evolution on the basis we have assumed. Moreover, through ages of
activity the tendency to desire the good and the good only becomes so
ingrained that I think it hardly fails, even in the highest and latest
minds. The most hyper-conscious man, once convinced that something will
give him pleasant experience, _so long_ and _so far_ as this feeling is
_dominant_ in mind will have incipient desire.
On this long disputed question of the relation of desire to the good or
pleasurable, evolutionary psychology, which views mind as serving life,
as interpreting things with reference to their serviceability and so
implied pleasurability, always bases desire in its origin and growth on
pleasure. But is this general point of view borne out by the facts of
mind? A typical example of common desire is this: At a fair I observe a
toboggan chute and say to my companion, “That must be sport, how would
you like to try it?” The appeal to “sport” awakens desire in my comrade
and he says, “Let’s try it.” We test its pleasurability, and, enjoying
it, desire to go again. It is evident that desire arises not on the mere
image of actualization as such, the idea of sliding, but on conception
of its pleasure quality. Whenever by our own experience or by the
testimony of others we are assured of a good thing to be experienced we
straightway desire it.
This, it may be said, is all very true for a certain class of desires,
but the principle does not apply in the higher desires like the desire
for knowledge. But knowledge originates only as serviceable, and
primarily only serviceable knowledges are desired. We desire knowledge
only so far as it is worth having, and it may be that I esteem all
knowledge as worth something and so desirable. However, some knowledges
are worth nothing and are never desired. Who wants to know the exact
measurements of the pebbles on the road, or how many hairs are on the
mane of his neighbour’s pony, or the names of all the inhabitants of
Pekin? But if one thinks it would be any satisfaction to know such
facts, he may desire to know them. The insatiable curiosity of children
which seeks to know all such irrelevant facts hardly comes under the
category of desire, but is rather instinctive hereditary impulse. It has
no clear idea of a thing to be known and a desire to know it, but is
only a spontaneous outburst of knowing activity which is inbred and
comes from ancestral integration. There is a sensing and perceiving
activity which is very intense at the questioning age, but which hardly
implies the desire to know. The incessant “What’s this?” “What’s that?”
is merely outcome of an instinctive impulsion to interpret environment;
it is not significant of full-formed desire, there is no idea of thing
to be known, of an actualization to be accomplished.
If a man desires knowledge, not for his own sake, but for its own sake,
desire as such really ceases, it merges into love and devotion, which
are disinterested and clearly distinct as mental modes from desire.
Desire is not a sentiment; and it does not properly include all impulse
to actualization. For instance, the feeling for actualization merely as
such, for achievement of ideal _per se_, is beyond the biologic stage of
consciousness wherein desire has its chief function. The attainment of
end merely for the sake of the end must be distinguished from
actualizing an image for the pleasure of actualization, which thus has
desire element. We know that the image of realization may act as end by
compulsion, as in feeling of duty, which is thus marked off from desire
as impulsion. Thus desire is but one mode of teleological emotion. But
desire is emotion at unrealized good and not at unrealization in
general.
Spinoza’s _dictum_, followed by Volkmann, that we do not desire a thing
because we deem it good, but we deem it good because we desire it, is
not borne out by the commonest facts. A peddler shows me an apple, but I
do not desire it and then deem it good, but I examine it, and if it
seems good I may desire and buy it, but if bad, I have aversion, and
return it. My desire thus depends altogether upon whether or not I deem
the apple good, and not my deeming it good upon my desire. If I see any
one desiring anything I at once judge that he first thought it good or
he would not have desired it. All the excitation of desire is by
representation of the good. The merchant tempts you by exhibiting his
_goods_, the child with candy offers it to you crying, “good! good!” the
moralist proclaims, “do this and thou shalt live.” The cause of desire,
which for weal or woe plays such a large part in almost all psychism, is
always by imaging the good. The bait and the reward as excitants of
desire are most common; a mere suggestion of a representation without
implication of its goodliness in realization does not excite desire.
Thus some one, speaking of a totally unknown town, asks, “How would you
like to live in Perry?” and we answer, “Is it a pleasant town?” A mere
suggestion of change of abode starts desire only when there is already
displeasure with present residence, and so desire for release as a good;
but image of actualization considered solely by itself is desireless.
And if to excite desire we offer the good or pleasurable, to extinguish
desire we offer the bad and painful. I desire a fair looking apple, but
cutting it and finding it wormy and rotten, desire flees. I extinguish
the desire of a child for eating some noxious substance by assuring it
of the bad taste and nauseating effect. Both positively and negatively
then, common sense finds the basis, not of the good in desire, but of
desire in the good. The facts in both exciting and extinguishing desire
point to this conclusion.
Spinoza (_Ethics_ iii., Prop ix.) defines desire as “appetite with
consciousness thereof.” But to be aware of being hungry is but the first
step toward desire. In the midst of my daily occupations I become aware
of pain, then of uneasiness, then of hunger, whereupon I may desire
food, which desire includes as distinct elements: (1) idea of eating as
act or movement; (2) idea of the thing eaten as _food_, a something
satisfying; affording relief, and so a good; (3) thereupon the emotion
wave of longing, the essential point in desire. This is, of course,
followed by volition, I act to realize, I go to a restaurant. When
Höffding (_Psychology_, p. 323) says that the impulse in hunger “has
reference primarily to the food, not to the feeling of pleasure in its
consumption,” he forgets that “food” is a something satisfying, and only
thus is desired. Object is not desired as object, but for its value in
experience.
We must also touch upon a certain class of experiences which have been
adduced as showing a desire not based upon the idea of the pleasure.
Take the example of a man in _ennui_ who takes to playing tennis as a
relief, but with no desire of being victorious. Engaging in the game he
finds that “this desire which does not exist at first is stimulated to
considerable intensity by the competition itself; and in proportion as
it is thus stimulated both the mere contest becomes more pleasurable,
and the victory, which was originally indifferent, comes to afford a
keen enjoyment.” (Sidgwick, _Methods of Ethics_, p. 46.) But does the
desire really come from some idea of pleasure? The player volleys a ball
successfully against his opponent, and thereby receiving a thrill of
pleasure desire awakes to beat. “Wouldn’t I like to beat him? I would
enjoy nothing better.” This desire foresees the pleasure of triumph. If
he gets no pleasure from returning the ball successfully he does not
desire success; but if unanticipated pleasure comes up in beating his
opponent, as soon as he recognises this pleasure he desires to continue
and complete it. This pleasure in succeeding in competitive activity,
extremely old and integrated from all the struggle of existence, springs
up spontaneously. There may also be added pleasure from activity and
pleasure from skill which will make the game very interesting, _i.e._,
full of desire and other emotions.
Professor Sidgwick allows that pleasure may be the cause of desire, but
not its object. But surely if I cognize pleasure coming from an act, I
attach this pleasure to it in representation; if I take pleasure from
returning a tennis ball and then represent a coming opportunity to
return the ball I also represent its pleasurability. Pleasure or pain
connected with acts is connected by association with representation of
the acts, the pleasure-pain tone penetrates the representation, and only
thus does actualization of an image become object of desire. If it is
possible to conceive an activity indifferent—which may be doubted—we
should have no emotion about it. But we have already sufficiently
emphasized how the perceived experience quality of things determines
desire and all emotion.
Professor Sidgwick’s remark that the pleasurableness of the contest is
“in proportion” (_Ibid_., p. 46) to the desire, _i.e._, that the
pleasure results from the desire rather than desire from the pleasure,
also shows defective analysis. If I desire intensely to beat, and am on
the losing side, I am greatly pained, for desire is always in itself
painful. In any case desire is pleasurable only so far as it is being
satisfied, which, of course, means only so far as desire is being
extinguished. It is not the increasing desire intensity, but the
decreasing, that gives pleasure, _i.e._, desire is negatively related to
pleasure. Intense desire may act as excitement-pleasure, but this does
not bear on the nature of desire.
Another objection that has been brought up against pleasure as desire
basis is that “pleasures are diminished by repetition, whilst habits are
strengthened by it; if the intensity of desire therefore were
proportioned to the ‘pleasure value’ of its gratification, the desire
for renewed gratification should diminish as this pleasure grows less,
but if the present pain of restraint from action determines the
intensity of desire, this should increase as the action becomes
habitual.” (James Ward in _Encyclopædia Britannica_, vol. xx., p. 79.)
But pleasure and so also desire often increases with repetition. One who
tastes champagne for the first time may receive slight pleasure. The
next time he dines out he will, with image of his previous experience,
have slight desire for champagne. As experience is repeated his pleasure
and desire may increase to ecstasy and passion. But habits not obviously
pleasure-yielding, as the morning chore to the country lad, will be
desired after intermittance; the country boy homesick in the city longs
in the morning for the familiar scene and familiar task which was a
source of aversion at home. We painfully miss the customary, even the
painful customary, for thereby the conservative tendency of nature and
organic activity is broken up. Desire arises for relief from this pain,
and the habitual is so far regarded as pleasurable. Thus desire is in
proportion to the “restraint” only so far as the restraint is painful,
and thus relief appears pleasurable. Thus the desire for the habitual
has, like other desire, its basis in prospective pleasure.
That the analysis of desire as regards representation of pleasure is
still an open question certainly marks the psychology of feeling as very
backward; that here is a most common and prominent psychosis, whose
simplest analysis is not yet agreed upon, shows how far we yet are from
a standard of subjective verification. I have expressed my own opinion
that both the evolutionary standpoint and special analysis indicate a
distinct emotion at prospective good which is best denominated by the
term desire. This is a purely psychological result, and has absolutely
no reference to ethics. “Pleasure” has such an inevitable ethical tinge
that a purely scientific denotation would be useful. The “good” is a
better, but also objectionable term. That then the organism should
foresee and image the good and should have a feeling about it which
should stimulate will to its appropriation and realization is a
psychosis of utmost value, and one which is in all psychism above the
lowest an extremely common phenomenon. This does not assert that desire
in all its lower range is a seeking for pleasure, an extremely late
conception and endeavour; but it means that as perception is of things
in their experience values, so representation also, as giving the basis
of desire; but a conscious hedonism is still afar off.
The general function which desire subserves in stimulating advantageous
action is obvious. As anger and fear are primarily useful emotions in
view of potential pain and harm, so desire in view of potential pleasure
and benefit.
The function of desire in stimulating advantageous action is obvious.
Desire answers to potential pleasure and benefit just as anger does to
potential pain and harm. It is a correlative and supplement of fear, and
in general the more one fears a thing the more one desires the opposite.
When sailing I desire fair weather in proportion as I fear a squall.
Desire is the very spring of life and progress, and when desire is
extinguished the will to live ceases, and psychic life declines and
dies. Fulness of desire is fulness of life, and the largest mental life
is that in which desire, constant, multiplex, and far-reaching, is
strong and dominant. Desire seems thus to be a permanent factor, and,
though there is a pre-desire period, no post-desire age seems to be
indicated in psychic history so far.
Somewhat as to the analysis of desire has already been intimated in
touching upon its origin and function, but we are now to study its
elements more in detail. The very young infant certainly experiences
hunger pains in almost its initial consciousness; but it is only
gradually that the need felt leads up to presentation and representation
of the needed thing, and so to desire. Hunger with it, as with all
organisms, sharpens the wits, and leads to knowing things, interpreting
them, and acting definitely toward them. Through touch it first comes to
appreciate object, and object as food, a representative–inductive act.
The earliest meaning attached to object is edibility, and this, indeed,
indiscriminately to all objects, as we see that infants mouth
everything. Gradually from this, or by dint of a good deal of unpleasant
experience, objects are divided into edible and non-edible, the
primitive classification of things.
From the consideration of any such simple example as the desire for food
we determine that the first element toward and in desire is a lack-pain
generating felt want, and so—and such common use of words is
significant—we want, _i.e._, desire what we are in want of. A feeling of
need or lack is fundamental. Now sense of lack is more than pain from
restriction or intermission, for it implies a measure of in-ground
integrated experience with objects, a constant connecting of object with
purely subjective experience. For instance, hunger and feeling the need
of food, the craving for food, are not the same, for it is evident that
to feel lack of anything with such a central pain as hunger-pain means
that this something has often been conjoined with the pain experience.
Hunger is primarily an organic uneasiness and gnawing pain which does
not include any sense of object as of a food or reference thereto. Our
subjective and objective experience have been so completely integrated,
and feeling of lack and that for a very definite thing has become so
ingrained in mind with pains, we feel so spontaneously and immediately
need of _thing_ in connection with organic pains that it is very
difficult for us to realize a state where this connection has not been
formed or is forming. But it would seem that the first hunger pains of
the infant are of this primitive quality, and that need is not felt in
connection therewith. It is only after some crude cognitions of bodies
have been generated in connection with the feeding act and as guides
thereto that on occasion of hunger pains there can occur the sense of
lack of food object, a painful feeling of unrealization, at first very
dimly representative, and so a craving, an incipient emotion. Desire
rests then upon capacity to feel the lack of accustomed satisfying thing
in connection with some form of perception or representation of the
thing. When a satisfying object is missing, it must be _missed_
psychically before desire can awake. The reaction when a customarily
conjoined experience does not occur is a peculiar feeling in mind, a
disturbance, uneasiness, a unique sense of loss and lack which is the
immediate stimulus of desire. Hunger at first leads blindly to
activities tending to satisfy hunger, but the satisfying
thing—food—therewith becomes gradually known, hence thereafter when
hunger comes there is struggle both to know and to act thereby. This
struggle has impulsation from feelings of lack.
Lack pains then prompt to cognitive activities to find the thing lacked
and desired. The first knowledge is that some things satisfy, and an
appropriative activity is excited. The lowest organisms under impulse of
hunger pains reach out after things, feel for them, and as soon as they
sense the edible, appropriate it. It is quite evident that they exercise
cognition only as driven to it, and then it is effort even for the
simplest knowing. But what the first psychic facts are is hard for us to
interpret, because we have progressed so far beyond them. However, we
may well believe that the general form of primitive consciousness is
akin to what we have when dozing or half awake. The realization of
things is dim indefinite, and it is only as pains of considerable
severity are felt and as the psychism gains in capacity for pain that
particular knowledges and particular needs and desires are accomplished.
After having repeatedly sensed something—as a soft vegetable form—in
connection with bodily pain as hunger and with the feeding activity as
allaying hunger, a renewal of the pain from organic conditions will
give, not merely purely subjective pains, but also, as the
pre-associated cognition of thing and the allaying of hunger is not
experienced, there arises as reaction a vague sense of lack which may
lead to equally vague desire. A vague uneasiness and restlessness which
knows object and misses object only in the most general way is the
lowest basis. A study of some case of waking from a doze by reason of
hunger would give the original formation of desire as involving lack
sense. Here a purely subjective pain gradually intensifies till it
wakens a very general objectifying, and we feel need of undefined
something, which soon becomes specialized, when fully wakened, to need
of something to eat, and finally as need of some particular usual food,
as bread, meat, or milk, which is then desired.
Pain from restriction or intermission of some organic activity, as the
digestive and assimilatory, may then lead to sense of lack and desire
for object which is unrealized. However, craving-desire as implying
sense of loss, of something pleasurable missed, is not organic, but is
mere reflex of organization. It is not progressive, but conservative; it
does not initiate, it merely keeps the organism to its accustomed level.
This is the limited range of appetite. Craving rests on past evolution.
However, we have to explain the origin of those activities which, when
intermitted, produce such distressful results. We must first acquire the
liking before we miss what we like, and tastes uniformly originate
through effort, and all pleasurable activity is built up by painful
volition as urged by direct pains or by desires. Desire then is more
than craving. Craving as based on organic lack is satiable, desire is
insatiable. We desire what we have never missed and modes of experience
we have never attained. We, who have never had a gold watch, desire one,
and having received one, we lose it, miss it, and so desire is
reinforced. All the progressive activity of the human world originates
in desire, as ambition, or as desire of truth, virtue, etc. Here we do
not miss what we are accustomed to, but we are forming habits, which
will be the basis for cravings with descendants. For instance, one who
now does not miss beauty of art, but is ambitiously striving to
appreciate art, may come finally—or at least his descendants—to miss
art, and so to crave it. But for the time he has no art craving, only an
art desire. Of course all desire in the craving form, or in the higher
desire form, involves a missing actualization. All desire is
extinguished in realization. But this obviously does not destroy the
distinction of desire as based on craving, a spontaneous resultant from
integration, an intermittence of habit, and desire as itself integrating
habit-forming emotion.
However, with the lowest psychisms, we may perhaps suppose it unlikely
that representation does ever become definite enough for desire, except
when in direct sensing of a thing, as, for example, in a touch
perception. The psychism is impelled to touch activity by its subjective
pains and simple, undifferentiated lack pains. It does not desire a food
through the representation of it brought up by hunger, for such
representation of things in their potentiality is probably not
originally stimulated directly by subjective feelings, though with man,
for instance, we know that hunger and other simple feelings will provoke
representations of foods, which foods will be desired; and particularly
in famine the most lively representations of feasts occur, and thus
there is a strengthening and defining of desire. Thus in famine there
comes a greater and greater urgency to action as its necessity becomes
greater. The vivid representations of foods become through desire—though
there may be no sense connection with food—a mighty force for
self-preservative action.
Yet primitively desire probably awoke only after some sensing was
accomplished, not the mere subjective pain, but the touch perception
awoke the representation, for it would seem the original _status_ that
representation occurs at first only with correlated presentation. Thus
it is that the simplest psychisms are driven by their pains to achieve a
touch or some sensing of a thing before they interpret it as food, and
so desire it; that is, things must have a food meaning attached to them
through actual sense appreciation of them as such, before they can be
directly instanced in pure representation as foods. Hunger leads us
immediately to think of food, but this ability to directly represent
food is based upon having thoroughly learned certain things as food by
repeated direct experiences. A savage who has never seen or known of
bonbons is presented with a box of them, and he may receive them with
indifference, but a bonbon is placed in his mouth, whereupon he says,
“it tasted so good, I want another.” Such is the genesis of desire when
pleasure quality is attached to thing, is learned by experience. The
visual and tactual experience is actively conjoined with pleasure
experience, so that seeing another bonbon, he represents its
pleasurability and so desires it.
Further, the relative presentations and feelings must be mentally
correlative, the connection must be more than phenomenal series of
several forms; there must be an active connecting psychic process as
basis. You are told to open your mouth and shut your eyes, and a bonbon
is dropped in; the taste will at once give rise to a revival visual
presentation, and if a person holds up before your eyes a fine bonbon,
saying, “look at this,” there may occur revival taste experiences. But
the immediate basis of desire is not here, for if psychic process
stopped here, there would be no higher elements; these can only be
accomplished by a definite bringing up and attribution of subjective
quality to the thing. You represent its possible pleasurableness on the
basis of past experience, by the action of the inductive instinct, a
complex process. Here revival is not an active correlating, but is
self-contained, lying isolated by itself, and unfruitful till its
revival character is recognised, and it is actively wrought into
experience. That is, integrating act is presupposed in all desire.
The way in which revival becomes the basis representation is hard to
trace, but in many cases it seems to be connected with certain
physiological activities. A revival form implies correlated physical
functions, as when the sight of a peach causes the taste pre-experienced
therewith to be revived, and the mouth waters, as if in actual
deglutition. As the reacting and assimilating process is carried on
without any real thing to be acted upon, there comes a physiological
reaction, which in turn gives rise to peculiar psychic affections, and
specially the uneasy feeling of lack. The unreality and mere revival
character of the revival experience is ultimately recognised, and
representation becomes possible, and idea of pleasure as both
experienced and experienceable is evolved. Thus an unsubstantial
revival, where the thing is sensed in one form only, but thereby
re-awakening other associated experiences, as in the case of merely
seeing a peach, leads finally to know the thing as a potency; I taste,
but after all I taste nothing; hence I am led to perceive the thing as a
sign, as unrealized in its pleasure significance, but realizable. How we
attain sense of reality and unreality we discuss in chapter on
Induction, but with special reference to desire we add here an
illustration. When engaged in reading on a hot day, I have feeling of
discomfort, and then spontaneously arises image of a wonted bathing
place, I have the image of moving in the clear, cool water, but at once
recognising the unreality of the image, I long for realization. I, when
heated, have so often seen the water, and plunged in it, that the
presentation of mode of relief has become firmly associated with the
discomfort, so when it organically returns, presentation revives, and
its unreality known, desire rises. One not accustomed to bathe, but to
taking lemonade when heated, will have visions of lemonade and desire
therefor. One who is just forming some habit of relief will not have
spontaneous images, but must call them up. Desire also will be purely
general, “Oh! to get rid of this heat.” Specific desire, as founded upon
a definite image of realization, is primarily the result of active
association of definite object and mode with a given pleasure-pain
state. The realizing the image as unreality, as suggesting an
actualization to be wished for, is learned from rude experience with
present sensations and perceptions quite at variance with the image.
Thus, that the vision of water is unreality I know by seeing the room
before me, touching the chair, sense of painful heat unrelieved, etc. An
image of actualization barely of itself does not include desire. I may
conceive that I can image myself moving in water without any emotion
therewith connected, but as matter of fact, this never occurs; all our
images of actualization carry some desire value. Even bare phantasy, as
imagining myself living on the moon, is not without a tinge of desire or
aversion, for the origin and growth of imaging has been so bound up with
desire, and is for desire as life function that some desire tendency is
retained even in the purest flights of imagination. It becomes
increasingly evident that such a simple and understandable expression
as, “I want that peach,” implies a great complexity of psychic process
which is hidden from us by the summarizing facility of language. Emotion
is evidently far too complex for full analysis. Its complexity is such
that we may well hesitate to attribute it, as is so often and easily
done, to the lowest psychisms. Since desire includes a measure of
self-consciousness, and also of consciousness of pleasure, it seems
improbable at first sight that such elements should exist in certain low
consciousnesses where primitive organisms seem impelled by desire.
However, though this _a priori_ view has weight, it must not be allowed
to be of supreme value. Yet when we fairly interpret a very simple case,
as when a dog scenting and seeing meat on a shelf, is said to desire it,
and so to spring for it, we certainly imply a complexity of mental
activity, which might by many be thought quite beyond the power of even
a very intelligent dog. We have at least the following factors:—
1. Simple scent or vision of the thing; bare presentation or
representation of object.
2. Either a definite bringing up, or a mechanical re-occurrence of past
pleasurable associated feelings and sensations, or both.
3. Sense of unreality.
4 Feeling of lack.
5. Pain of lack.
6. Sense of pleasure potentiality of the thing, which implies—
(_a_) Idea of pleasure.
(_b_) Idea of personal experience thereof, _i.e._, some egoistic
sense.
(_c_) Sense of experience as in time past, as experienced.
(_d_) Sense of time as future as implied in sense of the
experienceable.
7. The longing, yearning, peculiar desire quality as feeling mode.
8. Desire pain.
In the first place then, the object of desire, the _desideratum_, is not
the object as such. We do not desire things merely as such, but only as
far as they are significant of experience. Presentation does not, at
least normally and originally, ever end in itself, but it is always
connected, and connects with pleasure-pain experiences. Desire begins by
being vague as to its object; under slight pressures of pain we want
something, but we know not what; we have dim, undefined longing, but the
indefinite object is always a possibility of experience, a centre of
pleasure-pain potency. At the first stirring of hunger pains, we have a
vague uneasiness and sense of lack, with a most general idea of object
and longing toward it, and suffer the pain from hunger. We may be
physiologically hungry without feeling hungry, and so may have a desire
of thing in general to remove pain before the pain is felt and
recognised in its particularity as hunger pain. When hunger comes, or,
primitively, is achieved, then we want something to eat; and as this
feeling intensifies, the craving becomes more and more definite as to
object; bread, etc., is wanted, and in famine hunger there is the most
particular representation, as of certain dishes formerly eaten with
great relish. Lumholtz, wandering famished on a Christmas in the wilds
of Australia, thinks of the puddings in his native Norway. The
evolutionary significance of this increasing definition of object in
desire is obvious in that greater definiteness and accuracy of
self-preservative action is thereby assured.
As far as the nature of the emotion desire goes, it seems quite
indifferent whether there is presentation or representation of object. I
desire equally, whether I actually see the bonbon on the table or when I
merely represent it—see it in my mind’s eye.
Primarily then, and always, even in the latest evolution, as tendency at
least, the desire is for the pleasure in the object, and desire is
excited by every representation of the pleasurable. If one says, “I can
look upon pleasure without desire,” we may well question whether there
is really personal pleasure represented. Dancing, card-playing,
wine-drinking, may be pleasures which do not attract me because I do not
care for them; and by such a statement we indicate the practical
parallelism of pleasure and desire which is forced upon common
introspection. If you care for it, it is a pleasure to you; if you do
not care for it, it is not a pleasure to you; such is the result of
common observation, and a very just conclusion so far as I can see. To
excite desire, we naturally suggest the pleasurable. One person
persuading another to go to a party says: “I know you would have a good
time.” When one answers, “I know that I would have a good time, but I
dread the trouble of getting ready”; here is a conflict of desires in
which desire of present ease and comfort may overcome desire of future
pleasure. We may, indeed, assert that one cannot honestly say, “I know
it would be a great pleasure to me, but I have no desire for it.” When
such a phrase is used, it can only mean that the pleasure is interpreted
as belonging to the generic class of pleasures, yet not a pleasure to
the individual in his present conception, or else its contingency,
implied by “would,” is so great that desire is practically _nil_.
And if the pleasurable is always the desirable, the desirable also may
be said to be only the pleasurable. The martyr in his most eager desire
for a painful death, fixes his mind, not upon the pain as pain, but upon
the enduring it successfully, and the triumphant pleasure, also the
satisfaction of the reward of martyrdom, and the pleasure of suffering
for right and the approval of conscience; these and many other factors
influence him.
Desire is _at_ pleasure, not _in_ pleasure, and thus contains pain,
especially as implied in the preparative factors, sense of unreality and
sense of lack. A bonbon may be so cunningly imitated, that placed in the
mouth it feels like a bonbon, yet not tasting so, the painful sense of
unreality and loss occurs. There is a painful waking up to the fact of
non-realization, much the same in quality as that which we suppose to
have happened in the original genesis of desire. The pleasant
hallucination is broken in upon by actuality not fulfilling the psychic
co-ordination pre-established under more favourable circumstances; and
this occurs in early psychisms on a wider variety of occasions than in
later development. That I am not tasting the bonbon I see on the table,
this fact _per se_ does not pain me. I take it as a matter of course in
an order of nature already well learned and completely acquiesced in.
But with infantile and lower stages of evolution generally, the lack of
immediate correlation seems highly painful. Seeing has directly
developed in immediate connection with a tasting, and the seeing without
tasting seems by its very nature as disquieting as the feeling in the
mouth the artificial bonbon without being able to taste is for later
experience. It is through the negations of customary coincident
impressions that anticipation and desire become forced by the exigencies
of life. The early psychism is limited in its adjustments to a very few
simple coincidences, but in the struggle of life in complex nature there
comes disruption of these primitive co-ordinations, and sequences become
apprehended, and meaning is discerned in things. This disruption
primitively occurred most easily when there was direct opposition to the
usual course of sensations. Just as when mouthing the imitation bonbon,
we apprehend most quickly and easily non-realization when it tastes sour
rather than sweet. By realities continually breaking in upon the common
course of psychic association, the significance of things is gradually
apprehended, and to see a thing is understood not merely as coincident
with other sensations and perceptions, touching, tasting, and
pleasure-feeling, but the thing is cognized as centre of pleasure
potency, and so can become object of desire. Experience loses its
self-contained simplicity, and is forced in the struggle of experience
in a complex environment into some definite understanding of things, and
into a feeling for them or at them, and not merely a feeling from them.
And so a world of desirables and aversibles is formed.
If no pain was felt in the experience of unreality and lack, if there
was mere passivity, desire would not be generated. This pain of loss
spurs the mind to achieve desire, and desire enables the organism to
attain the advantageous. At length a conventionalized world of
desirables so formed, and certain significances, become so inground into
experience that they seem often to be instinctively and immediately
recognised by the individual, anterior to any personal learning by
experience, as in cases of instinctive fear of, and desire for, certain
objects.
While desire is attained at the incitement of pain, it is in itself a
painful mental act. The emotional going out toward the _desideratum_ is
in itself a painful mode of consciousness. The feeling I have for the
bonbon which I see and desire is, so far as desire, painful, yet
negatively and comparatively, it may be pleasurable in that this
psychosis may supplant one more painful still. It may be said that
desire is painful, and also lack of desire, or _ennui_. But mere
desirelessness is not _ennui_. _Ennui_ is a feeling of lack and loss,
and so a feeling of desire, but a peculiar kind of desire. It is desire
for activity, when by a morbid _status_ there is no desire moving to
activity. Lack of desire and interest in things may be painfully
revealed to some active natures, but to the great majority of psychisms
it is a pleasure state. As far as we can judge, the undesire of the cow
leisurely chewing her cud in a warm corner of the barn yard is supreme
felicity. A state of desirelessness, complete yet blissful, occasionally
visits even the consciousness of the nineteenth century busy-body. But
the normality of desire for human adult consciousness in general is
apparent to all. One who loses all interest or desire loses hold on
life. Thus desire is life, and even when it is sought to extinguish it
either as dictated by a philosophical maxim or by religious and moral
scruples, on account of the innate selfishness of desire—Madame Guyon,
for instance—yet desire is sure to intrude, and must as a desire to
destroy desire. So whether we _would_ fly, or _would_ reach desire, we
thereby desire. We may uproot or cultivate certain kinds of desire which
thereby become objects of aversion or desire, but the effort to
extinguish desire as general fact of psychic life involves either a
psychological indefinite _regressus_ which is never desireless, or else
it means the extinction of consciousness itself in any grade above the
lowest.
A further element which appears in all desire is some measure of
self-consciousness. The representation of the experienceable implies
some representation of experiences. In constituting the world as the sum
total of the experienceable, we imply an ego-consciousness, and that
objectifying as psychic act is correlated with subjectifying. Desire,
like all other emotion, implies a subjective reference. We see clearly
that the psychic act expressed by “this is the food,” and as such the
precursor of and ingredient of desire, means an identification with past
personal experience. A similar act is performed, no doubt, by animals
very commonly, though not expressible in speech, yet in measure
expressible, as in the cluckings of a hen to attract the brood to some
seeds. In various ways the _desideratum_ is suggested to the mind, and
in view of it, both in the identifying as having experiences, and the
longing to experience, some consciousness of personality is implied.
This in early forms of psychosis is, no doubt, meagre and indefinite
enough, but not more so than its correlate sense of object. When a
strange object is presented, as when a famished traveller finds a new
house, identifying effort is instinctive; he at once seeks to understand
it, and gropes through his past experience to determine what has been
its life significance for him or other persons, and so what will be.
What is thus done in the full light of reflective consciousness by man,
is done in a summary and imperfect manner, generally by psychisms, as
preparative to making the object a _desideratum_ or _anti-desideratum_.
The assimilating and integrating, the knowing, never exists without some
appreciation of subject, because integration is not only of
something—objectifying act—but also to something—subjectifying act.
Things are from the first apprehended only in their immediate egoistic
significance, and also very early as centres of possible sensations
which become a matter of fear and hope, desire and aversion.
Desire is certainly a very extensive psychic _genus_ including many
varieties which are noted by common introspection, and which are even
denoted by special words. A wish is a momentary act of desire, longing
is intense form; ambition and aspiration are desires for higher order of
objects, as contrasted with desire for food or dress. The kinds as
distinguished by object are numberless since any object may be
desirable, and the realm of the desirable is coincident with the realm
of the knowable. In the course of evolution we become aware of things
and of states of consciousness, so that by feeling about them—having
emotions—there may result the advantageous action with reference to
them. This order, not consciously apprehended of course, is the natural
order of psychic events, and one which, in tendency at least, always
appears, even in latest evolutions. The desire to know what is the full
experience value of things, curiosity, is an early acquirement, since
complete cognition of object is obviously of the greatest advantage,
especially to the weaker animals, as deer, who act wholly on the
defensive. The very strong can afford to be largely indifferent to their
environment.
With reference to intensity, we can place forms from a positive to a
negative pole. Thus with a famished man desire for food is first intense
craving, becoming with continued eating moderate desire, then feeling of
satisfaction, then of repletion, then negative, as aversion in passive
form or satiety, then becoming active as disgust, and intense as
loathing. Content, or desire satisfied, is not desire extinguished,
rather it is an equilibrium wherein desire and its function are in
continual equalizing action. When desire granted means all desire
extinguished, with beings of any high tendency to activity _ennui_ is
the result. Here, as Schopenhauer notes, wish for a wish develops. Even
in complete pleasurable quiescence, there is desire for its continuance,
which is only saying that there can be no complete quiescence short of
coma, or else of a state where reality has never broken in, and
experience is wholly unformed where the being cannot anticipate or note
change. Pure and absolute content never occurs, and as a matter of fact
never will, the point of transition in the desire gamut, in passing from
positive to negative, being like a mathematical form, unreal and
theoretical. When positive desire ends, negative desire springs up
immediately, just as in the pleasure-pain gamut, where the indifference
point of transition has no existence in reality.
Desire in any of its forms may take on an altruistic, disinterested
phase, though much that is taken for altruistic is only apparently or
partially so, being really due to self-extension. If you take an
interest in anything, it becomes interesting to _you_, it is a matter of
personal concern, and becomes identified with the self. Thus in _our_
family, _our_ town, _our_ nation, _our_ race, desire plants itself; it
is in this personal extension of view that most of the pity, sympathy,
and benevolence is exercised. A well-wishing and consequent exertion for
humanity in general is very late, and still later is desire for animals
as sentient beings having a worth of being in themselves.
The remarks we have made concerning desire proper, apply equally to
aversion. We must bear constantly in mind that desire proper and
aversion are really in psychic analysis, merely phases positive and
negative of a certain definite mode of psychosis, hence we often use
desire in this large and generic sense, which instances will be apparent
from the context. Desire, like other emotions, is polar, and desire
generic has its antipodal feeling in some form of active desirelessness.
As desire is naturally and originally connected with all perception of
object, we find it closely allied with other emotions. While we must
suppose that early desire is upon idea of pleasure, upon the idea of its
realization to be attained, without any estimate of likelihood or
unlikelihood of realization, which factor is slow in evolution, yet when
through experience, sense of certainty or uncertainty is attained as to
the experienceable, this psychosis—belief—has a marked effect upon
desire, and is closely associated with it. Bare sense of the
experienceable was sufficient to generate desire, but when the measure
of probability of the experienceable actually happening is measured, we
have belief, expectation, hope, and kindred psychoses, bound up with
desire. The expression, “I hope it will be a good day to-morrow,”
indicates a wish that it would, _plus_ some confidence that it will be a
good day; “I wish it would be a good day, but I fear it will not,” shows
some lack of confidence in the realization of the event. Hope then
equals wish, _plus_ the intellectual element expectation, a desire for a
realization _plus_ some belief in it as actually to happen. A large
share of learning by experience consists in the reaction of this
expectation on the wish, in learning not to set our hearts on what we
believe to be unrealizable or extremely improbable to happen. Wish also
acts on belief, as is plainly expressed in the common phrase, “the wish
is father to the thought.” If belief tends to restrict or magnify
desire, desire also tends to determine belief. Hope, as very commonly
used, as when we say, “I hope it will turn out so,” is a passive
emotion, and does not appeal to the individual as self-determining the
event. As the primary end of emotion is to incite the organism to
determine its own experience, hope as passive seems a rather late
evolution, as having only an indirect and general value by maintaining
general pleasurable tone. The one who hopes it will be a good day
to-morrow is in a better and more advantageous frame of mind than he who
fears it will be a bad day, in so far as the events are equally beyond
self-determination, and it is of no direct use to either hope or fear.
As to the range of desire we must then disagree with Aristotle and later
psychologists, who suppose that desire is limited by the belief in the
possibility of realization. Desire existed before this belief was
generated; and while, after its generation, it may often affect desire,
yet often it does not. I may wish for the moon as readily as the child
to whom the notion of possibility or impossibility of realization is
beyond experience. The unrepresentable only cannot be wished, and desire
is bounded only by the power of conception and perception. Hope is a
species of desire which has to do with belief in the possibility of the
event or act: it is a joyful emotion connected with belief of
realization of the pleasurable. This distinction between hope and desire
in general is implied in the phrases, “I wish he _would_ do it,” and “I
hope he _will_.” The hope includes the desire, but the desire may exist
without the hope, as we say, “I wish he would, but know he won’t.”
Desire may be hopeless, but hope cannot be desireless.
Desire is vitally connected with ideation and volition, but properly it
is the intermediate emotional moment between these, and not idea of
pleasure—as James Mill—nor yet to be placed under will—Bain, James. It
is neither phase of ideation or volition. Desire is neither idea of, nor
striving after realization; it is not the idea of goal nor the effort to
reach goal. I may have idea of a goal without desire to reach it—at
least, analysis discriminates thus as separate mental stages—and I may
desire to reach it without trying to reach it,—impotent desire,
sometimes called wish. The striving is the consequent, and the idea the
antecedent of the desire which is the emotion wave we emphasize by the
word, longing. Desire is neither phase of volition nor ideation.
Volition is properly effort at realization, and is stimulated by the
emotion toward the realization ideally apprehended.
The relation of desire to will has been a fertile subject of discussion
from Aristotle down, but we have to take up but a single aspect, namely,
whether will and desire may with reference to the same object be
contrary or distinct. Take the example of contrariety mentioned by
Stewart. I wish a certain man not to do a certain act, but yet I
persuade him to do it at the request of a friend. If I say I will
persuade him, though I wish him not to be persuaded, this merely implies
that the wish to oblige my friend overcomes the aversion to persuading
the man. And, in general, apparent cases of conflict of will and desire
may be resolved into conflict of desires. Hence the phrase, “I will do
it, though I do not want to do it,” is inaccurate or rather an
incomplete analysis. We should always add, “because I have some
extraneous and stronger desire.” A box of bonbons is hung in a room at a
height to be had by whomsoever will jump and reach it. In any party of
persons there may be some to whom the wish for ease, the disinclination
to jump, overcomes the inclination for the bonbons, so that this
volition does not occur, others who jump even against this
disinclination, the desire for the bonbons being the stronger desire,
and others, very active, who jump without feeling any disinclination to
the act. Conflict of desires is a common and almost constant state with
many minds, and the evolution of man has been mainly through conflict of
desire in sacrificing an immediate to a future good. In lower minds with
so little self-consciousness and consciousness of a consciousness that
they do not grasp conduct as a whole, there is a simple alternation of
volitions flowing from the desires of rival goods, till one by its
intrinsic force dominates with some permanence. These are the creatures
of impulse, unreflecting and unself-directing by principle and reason.
Higher minds realize _their_ situation and consciously bring in higher
desire or motive; they form rules and principles of conduct: they become
ethical beings, having self-control and self-direction.
Desire is based by Mr. Bain on hindrance and opposition to activity, on
“a bar in the way of activity.” This is true if we understand it to
refer to sense of unreality and of lack as connected with an
apprehension of thing where the thing is really absent from the usual
correlation, and hence physiological activities are checked. We have in
the previous pages discussed this, but this is not Mr. Bain’s point of
view. The three elements he emphasizes are: deficiency, idea of
pleasure, and the hindrance. Thus, he contrasts the prisoner who looks
out on a bright day and longs to take a walk, with a perfectly free man
who looks out on a fine day and freely follows his inclination to walk.
However, it appears to me that both have desire, and that in the same
sense both are moved by the motive, though only one is free to attain
the action. So if I get thirsty in a waterless desert or in my room with
a jug of water on the table, the bodily sensations will equally lead to
desire. The conflict in desire is between state actual and state
conceived, and not between will and restraint. Mr. Bain remarks, “If all
motive impulses could be at once followed up, desire would have no
place.” (_Emotions and Will_, p. 423.) But desire is itself an original
impulse, and is more or less an ingredient in all emotion impulse; and
it is plain that emotion impulses as implying representation are the
only ones which can be “followed up.” Where every wish is gratified as
soon as formed, as with a petted child of rich parents, desire still
remains in all its characteristic quality. Such an one, however, by
having only the momentary pleasure of completed realization, misses the
joys of realizing, and loses all that happiness which has been defined
as sense of progress. If every wish were gratified as soon as formed, if
every representation of pleasure was immediately followed by
realization, desire would still exist in all its peculiar force. The
moment of gratification is always second to the moment of desire, and a
Fortunatus with his wishing-cap cannot possess in absolute coincidence
with the wish.
It may be objected that Tantalus’ desire is certainly a form where
hindrance is the main stimulant. When one is continually hindered just
on the point of realization, desire is intensified, but this
intensifying is very largely due to the increased definiteness of
presentation or representation, and to the increase of confidence in the
event. To tantalize is to bring before one an object of strong desire
into the clearest prominence and seemingly certain attainment, yet to
constantly withhold it.
We have spoken of desire as an impulse, and we would include all emotion
as impulse, for to impel is its function and action. Impulse is the will
side of emotion as interest is its intellectual side. If I fear a man,
this is my interest in him and impulse from him. True, we speak of being
driven by “blind impulse”; but emotion cannot be blind, it can only be
kindled by object imaged. Anything which actuates the will may very
broadly but wrongly be called impulse, for impulse strictly connotes an
emotion wave undirected and issuing at once in action. Where unforeseen
ends are served, as when a hen driven by sensation of heat sits on eggs,
we commonly but wrongly denominate it impulse. Without some
representation there is no emotion and no impulse. So when standing over
a precipice I say I have the impulse to throw myself down, this means
that the depth wakens in me image of falling and an awful desire to
realize the image, which impels the act. If I am merely giddy I will
fall, but if I have the emotion-impulse I will throw myself down; I am
not impelled by dizziness or any sensation, but the term denotes emotion
as desire or fear.
For the ordinary human mind desire seems in general a spontaneous and
instinctive act. We do not make an effort in desiring, though desire
like other mental functions undoubtedly arose in struggle. Originally
this psychosis was a stress and strain activity; it was a rarely
achieved emotion, just as the emotion of pleasurable appreciation of
Beethoven’s music or Michael Angelo’s sculpture is for most minds a rare
uplift of psychic force. Knowing as compound of presentation and
representation and as involving emotion and volition, is, with us,
within certain limits, an habitual spontaneous act of mind. I feel the
pain from cold, without sensation of cold, as bare pain, as
undifferentiated feeling of discomfort, I then feel cold, I feel cold
object, I desire warmth, I will to draw near the stove; here is a
progressive series of correlated psychoses which are constantly
occurring in a spontaneous way in ordinary experience. But this psychic
structure which operates so easily is really the outgrowth of ages of
psychic evolution wherein the separate steps have been achieved and the
correlation established only by the severest _nisus_.
Associations are first achieved in experience established by numberless
reiterations before there is spontaneous tendency to re-occurrence, this
is the law of psychic evolution to-day, and is the only clue we have to
the past. The evolution of mind is not and never has been a mechanical
process, but its basis is in pure feeling as stimulating volition.
Paradoxical as the expression sounds, yet in a sense it is true that the
organism has _learned_ to know and to feel thereupon. It may even be
that in the course of psychic ages with certain species of animals some
emotions may become innate, and such advantageous psychoses as fear or
desire may occur without any integration through individual experience.
The new-born chick, when it hears the note of a hawk, is said to show
signs of fear, though what actual psychosis occurs, if any, seems almost
beyond our power to know. The whole process may be reflex nervous
action, a mere closed neural circuit being affected. It is no doubt true
that all long-continued, often recurring psychoses tend to so embody
themselves in a neural combination that the given activities are carried
on in a sub-conscious and finally in an unconscious way. It is very
probable that much that we take for emotion with lower animals is reflex
or semi-reflex action; yet it is likewise true that there is, as a
matter of advantage in struggle for existence, an inherited instinctive
tendency to certain emotions, to certain kinds of fear and desire, and
there may be a distinct awareness of the potency in things, which has
never been individually realized. In its every transaction with things
the young organism may act by reflex action or by inherited emotional
tendency. How far either or both enter into the first individual
experiences is a matter for the psychology of the future.
The general function of desire in life is obvious; it is the most potent
factor in conserving and extending life. Far back in a paleozoic psychic
period life was below desire; but once originating under the pressure of
the struggle for existence it has since developed into the most manifold
and complex forms. Human life is the outcome of desire, and the human
being is _par excellence_ the desiring psychism. As the moving factor of
humanity history is its record, and present human organization, faculty,
and achievement is its product. Desire, as the force to realize, to
convert seen potency into actuality, the idea into reality, is now in
the very highest examples of psychic development an ever increasing
power, and no prospect of a psychic stage to be reached beyond desire is
intimated in the present course of normal development. The tendency
toward extinction of desire, when it does occur, appears always as
pathologic or retrogressive symptom. It may be the dream of a
philosopher or of a cult, but with Schopenhauer himself desire was a
most forceful factor, and the devotee of desirelessness by very reason
of being a _devotee_ to an object, desires it, namely, the state of
desirelessness. We may desire to extinguish certain desires, and succeed
in accomplishing this, but to desire not to desire, as general act, is a
psychological contradiction in terms. A very low vegetative psychic
status without any desire is possible, but all teleologic activity
implies desire, hence extinction of desire can never be attained as an
end.
Desire moves the world and is the core of psychic being. Deprived of
definite desire, we long for it, and if every wish were immediately
realized, we should desire delay in gratification. The amount and value
of life is measured by the quantity, quality, and effectiveness of
desire. Orton characterizes the Indians of the Amazon as “without
curiosity or emotion,” which must, however, be taken only as relatively
true, but yet marking them as extremely low in the psychic scale.
Education then, is a process of stimulating desire, of leading to
ambitions and aspirations. As what is imposed on consciousness without
desire is a hurtful burden, the true pedagogic method is always to
awaken the wish for knowledge and power before it is granted. Desire as
interest is assimilating power, and without it there is no mental
growth. The art of education is the art of stimulating intellectual,
æsthetic, moral and religious desires, and of providing for their
progressive gratification with the best arranged and most suggestive
material.