The terms ‘wish’ and ‘desire’ come to us from popular psychology, and cover a great variety of actual experience. If we are willing to speak somewhat arbitrarily, we may say that a desire appears when some particular tendency to action, which has present control of the nervous system, is thwarted by external circumstances, while the goal of action is still regarded as attainable; and that a wish appears when some tendency to action rises to momentary dominance, but is promptly met by inhibiting tendencies, while the goal of action is regarded as unattainable. This statement of the difference between desire and wish will not fit every case, for the reason that the terms are popular, and not technical, and that their meanings are not sharply distinguished either in ordinary speech or in psychology. The experiences themselves, if we seek to compare them with the experiences discussed in previous chapters, approach most nearly to sense-feelings. Desire is a straining-exciting, and wish a straining-subduing feeling; and both desire and wish may be either pleasurable or unpleasurable, according as the focal idea is the idea of result, of the goal of action, or the idea of its (present or permanent) inaccessibility. The existence of these ideas, however, and the play of associative tendencies which it implies, set desire and wish upon a higher plane of mental development than the sense-feelings; and the fact of direction, of the pressure of determining tendencies, marks another difference between the two kinds of experience.
This reference to sense-feeling reminds us of the doctrine, common to the associationist psychology and to modern popular psychology, that ‘pleasure and pain’ are the sole determinants of action. Bain, for instance, tells us that “the proper stimulus of the will, namely some variety of pleasure or pain,” is always “needed to give the impetus”; “that primary constitution, under which our activity is put in motion by our feelings,” remains unchanged through the whole history of mind. Spencer, as we have seen (p. 86), regards it as a corollary to the general law of organic evolution that “pleasures and pains have necessarily been the incentives to, and deterrents from, actions which the conditions of existence demanded and negatived”; our actions are always ‘guided’ by pleasures and pains, immediate or remote. Leslie Stephen, who is in the main a disciple of Spencer, writes in his brilliant Science of Ethics: “pain and pleasure are the determining causes of action; it may even be said that they are the sole and the ultimate causes.” And, lastly,—though the list of quotations might be greatly extended,—Professor Sully asserts that “the prompting forces in our voluntary action are feelings.”
It is true that there is oftentimes a close relation between feeling and action; we gave some examples on p. 231. It is also true, however, that there are numberless actions into which feeling does not enter. The associationist school have, therefore, fallen into a mistake the opposite of that which we laid at their door on p. 161; as they look at the course of ideas in too intellectual a way, so do they look at action in too emotional a way. They also repeat a mistake which we noted on p. 146. There we found that an idea is supposed to have a ‘power’ to recall another idea; Hume refers to association as “a kind of attraction” which one idea exerts upon another. So here the feelings are supposed to have a ‘power’ to arouse or prevent or deflect actions; they are used to explain conduct, precisely as the laws of association are used to explain the course of ideas. Both these theories betray a misunderstanding of the psychological problem.
We must conclude, then, that the associationists are at fault in their observation; for even if the earliest impulsive actions (p. 244) were invariably preceded by feeling,—and that is a matter of guesswork,—it is still true that our present actions show no such uniformity. We conclude, also, that the explanation of action is to be found in the determining tendencies of the nervous system, and not in the motive force of feeling.
(1) (a) It is said on p. 232 that “the present is a good time for repeating” certain cautions. Now that you have read the chapter, can you see why the statement was made? (b) Criticise, in your own words, the doctrine that pleasure and pain have ‘power’ to determine actions.
(2) Give from your own experience instances (a) of sensorimotor and ideomotor action, and (b) of the passage of selective or volitional action into some simpler form. Make your account as detailed as possible.
(3) Draw up a table, in the form of a genealogical tree, of the various kinds of action discussed in this chapter. Write a psychological formula for every kind. Where does instinctive action come in?
(4) Give instances, from history or fiction, (a) of selective action, (b) of volitional action, and (c) of conflicts from which a volitional action might have resulted, but did not.