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 193only 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 194but 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 195desires 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 196may 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 197eating 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 h?ffding (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 198to 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, 199but 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 encyclop?dia 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 200most 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 201that 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. 202hunger 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 203exercise 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. 204craving 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 205by 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 206active 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, 207as 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. 208it 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.

2097. 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.

210primarily 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 211pain, 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 212not 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 213state 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 214psychosis 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, 215is 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 216our 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 217share 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 218know 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 219ease, 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 220to 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 221which 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 222by 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 223struggle 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 224true 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, ?sthetic, moral and religious desires, and of providing for their progressive gratification with the best arranged and most suggestive material.