The great importance of this question will perhaps justify further detail. Pain, it may be urged, must check action, because at least in some cases the pleasant activity could not otherwise cease. But this objection would forget that, as the pain of want goes, the pleasure loses its assistance; and that again, further, with physical change the positive conditions of pleasure may disappear. The mere tendency of the idea to realise itself survives, but in its weakened state this can be driven out by the ordinary competition of other ideas and sensations, and that without pain. And when further we are asked how, if pleasure does not move, a half-tasted satisfaction can intensify desire, it is not hard to make answer. In the tension of desire the idea of the movement is struggling and unsteady. Hence doubt may weaken desire and certainty may inflame it, not because desire implies expectation or belief or even clear consciousness, but because it does in some ways depend on the strength and steadiness of the idea. Now increase of pleasure does go to support the idea. And further in partial satisfaction the idea will probably be reinforced by sensations which have come in. And both of these influences again will cause excitement by expansion. Secondly, by the same influence, the pain of want will be increased and so the tension aggravated. And the natural result of the whole is that desire becomes more violent and moves more violently. We see the other side of this when the cup raised to the lips removes thirst before the drinking. That is not only because the pain of uncertainty is removed, but mainly also because the idea overpowers the reality. This is now viewed, not as thwarting the idea, but as itself passing into its process, and so the tension, and (possibly) the pleasure, disappears. Where ideas are weaker, as in the lower animals, this seems to happen much less. And where we are active it happens seldom, for there usually to the last there is something which resists, and the last obstacle is often most vigorously attacked. Thus a port in view makes the idea of wreck doubly painful, and adds to our striving unless the sight of danger disappears. What is called the effort of despair comes on the other hand mainly from the pain and the extraordinary excitement which its tension has generated; the pleasant idea of escape must of course be an element, but the whole state is clearly painful, and pain the chief mover.

Turning now from the inquiry: What moves in desire? let us once more inquire, What is the object desired? That the object is always pleasure we have seen is a mistake, and it

would be another mistake to introduce muscular activity into its essence. Indeed even in some sensuous desire, as for warmth, there may be no essential relation of the object to our muscles. Nor can I see any good reason to doubt that a creature might have desire even though it possessed no self-movement. But, passing by these prejudices, let us raise another question. What is desired seems to be always the realisation of our idea; and it has been argued that this reality must be a reality for us. But that, it is further urged, must be our state of mind. If so, what is desired will be a presentation to ourselves. But this is clearly not the case. We may desire what we know it is impossible we should see, as the fortune of our descendants and a good use of our legacies. And to call this an illusion, and to argue that our desire is here really for certitude, or else for the impossible, would be to me a mere paradox. 'Oh! to know he is safe!' implies a wish for his safety, and we want the knowledge of that usually as something per accidens. Desire of course cannot be satisfied unless the idea is both realised and realised for me. But the idea, the content of the desired, as distinct from the psychical state of desire, need not include any kind of relation to me. That relation must exist in my actual satisfaction, and my desire can, therefore, in some cases, never be followed by satisfaction. But I fail to see how that shows that the object of my desire must be other than I think it, or why in general desire must imply a possible satisfaction. Again, I have of course a natural tendency to imagine myself there where I know that I cannot be. But this tendency is very far from always qualifying the object of desire.

I will now glance briefly at a point far too negligently handled. What is the nature of aversion? First the object of aversion, like the object of desire, is always an idea. We may indeed seem to desire the sensations that we have, but our object is really their continuance or their increase, and these are ideas. And so it is with aversion.2 The mere incoming of the painful is not aversion, nor is even the fear of it, if fear is confined to mere contraction or again to aimless shrinking back. To me aversion seems positive, what we

1 Drobisch, p. 220; Volkmann, ii. 397; Lipps, Grundtatsachen, &c., p. 610. 2 Mr. Sully, Psych., 582, should not have spoken of "the assertion of Waitz that aversion involves a belief in the reality of the pain". What Waitz says is that its object must be thought probable and expected, a very different view. Even this, however, is contrary to fact. All that is true in it is, that, where we can, we suppress groundless fears because their nature is essentially painful, while that of our desires is not so.

call 'active dislike'. It implies a desire for negation, for avoidance or destruction. And hence its object, to speak strictly, cannot be reality, since it implies negation, and that is an idea. But desire for negation is still not aversion, until painfulness is added. The object to be negated must be felt to be painful and may also be so thought of. Aversion then is the desire for the negation of something painful. It is not a negative kind of desire over against a positive kind, and I myself could attach no meaning to a negative desire. Aversion is positive, but its true object is the negation of that which is commonly called its object—a confusion which has arisen from taking dislike to be mere negative liking. Aversion has a positive character, or it would not be desire; but its positive side is variable. There may be a definite position whose maintenance we want, as when we are averse to the injury of something we love; or again, the positive may be left blank-something, anything is what we want if it will serve to rid us of the painful. But again we may positively desire the act of destruction, with the agencies of its process, and so depend for the pleasures of life on our aversions. I hope this brief sketch may throw light on an obscure corner of our subject, and I will, in passing, advert to another mistake. Desire and aversion have been taken to be aspects of desire, since that is tension,1 and (we may add) is to that extent painful. This is mere confusion, for all aversion has an ideal object. Now the (painful) tension of desire is not an object at all. It may be made one, and so may give rise to an aversion. But this will clearly not be an aspect of the original desire, but will be a new desire supervening. I may remark further that (as was the case with desire) the object of aversion (as distinct from the state) need not contain any sort of reference to the self. It is no illusion by which I am now averse to the ruin of my country after my death.

The subject of desire offers other interesting questions, but I must go on to volition, and will do so by the discussion of a necessary problem. How far is an idea required for desire? It may be truly objected that, if idea is to mean image, then, when desire is directed on an object of sense, there need be no image, distinct from that, present to the mind, and, if so, no idea. But my reply is that idea is no more equivalent to image than it is to sensation. With me the opposition here is not between external sensation and internal image, for both of these are mere psychical facts. The difference between them is doubtless psychologically important and

1 Volkmann, § 140; Lipps, p. 604.

also interesting, and it would be a pleasure to me elsewhere to discuss its difficulties. But here it is irrelevant. Sensation and image are psychical facts of different kinds, still they are mere facts. Their content is not alienated from and indifferent to their existence. But an idea is in any part of the content of a fact so far as that works beyond its existence. It does not work apart from, but it works more or less independently of, its starting-place. It is of course a psychical event, but that side of it is accidental. It is what later becomes a meaning. And for this reason we may have an image without an idea, and again an idea without any image, since a sensation may supply us with a content used beyond the sensation. Now the result of the idea's working need not be separated from its basis, as when I see a man, and through association then see him as an Englishman, and do this without any image. Here what, we say, is called up' (and which is not an image) may be said to coalesce with, and be modified by, the starting-point.' But again the element brought in may be discrepant with the presentation, as when the sight of a fruit gives me feelings of taste, which cannot, while that is out of my mouth, be identified with it. The result here may be an image, a psychical fact known not to be in outward existence. But there is an intermediate state where the presented is qualified ideally so as to collide with itself, and where this discrepant content is desired without being a separate image. A common instance of this would be desire for (the continuance of) a feeling which exists. And it was when sensation had been overpowered by its idealised self, that desire, as we saw, almost ceased before the moment of possession. This again is how we can have a desire without knowledge, a dim desire with no clear object-as in the usual example of the sexual impulse. It is not that we have no idea, for, if so, our state would be something lower than desire. But the idea is a common element, a something in a number of psychical states, which pleases and is not in harmony with these states as they are, and its increase is felt to lead us beyond, we know not where. We desire the presented, but we desire it with an ideal qualification. We need have no image, and yet even here we want to realise an idea.

To take idea merely as existing psychical fact is everywhere to be driven into a dead-lock or a fiction. For instance, desire, we all know, may be for internal fact; we may want, e.g., the

1 This is only a mode of statement and is really incorrect. Since in the present case nothing comes into existence in separation from the starting-place, there can be no coalescence or modification proper.

existence of an idea. But, if so, we must have the idea of an idea. Upon this, James Mill, a man whose courage rose higher as facts grew more opposite, presents us with a dilemma. The idea is there or it is not there (Analysis, ii. 358). No, we reply, when we desire, it must be there and yet not there. We must have a psychical fact containing features out of harmony with its existence and pointing beyond. Suppose I desire to go through a proposition in Euclid. I have a psychical fact which contains both the general character of this process, sufficiently for recognition, and also the feature of the existence of the process as my psychical fact and this is not in harmony with what I have. No doubt to say what the basis of an idea is may be very difficult indeed, and I am not discussing that (MIND ix. 289, xi. 313). What I must insist on is that, when we desire, we have already what we want in recognisable character; and, if an idea is an image, this leads to difficulties which, in my knowledge, have never been met. Suppose that we are trying to remember, for example, a name, what is there in our mind? This question was forced on his editors by James Mill, but the answer is unsatisfactory. "We have some collateral or something to determine our search for it," is Prof. Bain's answer (Analysis, ii. 358). If we had a mere collateral, I reply, that is not the idea of another collateral at all; nor again, if it were, should we desire this particular one, for the mere collateral would be satisfied by anything else which turned out to be collateral. And if Prof. Bain means more than this, will his theory account for it? "We will to remember the Greek name of the god, called by the Romans, Bacchus. We have in mind the name Bacchus, and the knowledge that the Greeks had a different name for the god" (Analysis, ii. 359). Yes, but the idea of a name qualified by the general feature of belonging to a god with a certain character-how is this going (apart from the grossest of fictions) to be translated into the existence of mere psychical images?1

The importance of this point in regard to Volition compels me to refer to another mistake. I cannot admit that mere completeness, and the filling out of detail, is the essential distinction of the real from the desired. It is usually a concomitant, but it may be absent. The main feature which is desired is existence within the context of the outer or inner world of presentation-and the detail

1 And what is the image of "a blank in our present ideas?" J. S. Mill has tried (Analysis, i. 99) to answer the question: What is the idea of the absence of anything? and his failure is again instructive here.