Whence it appears, that our pleasures and pains are at least as various and as numerous as our irritations; and that our desires and aversions must be as numerous as our pleasures and pains. And that as sensation is here used as a general term for our numerous pleasures and pains, when they produce the contractions of our fibres; so volition is the general name for our desires and aversions, when they produce fibrous contractions. Thus when a motion of the central parts, or of the whole sensorium, terminates in the exertion of our muscles, it is generally called voluntary action; when it terminates in the exertion of our ideas, it is termed recollection, reasoning, determining.
[3]. As the sensations of pleasure and pain are originally introduced by the irritations of external objects: so our desires and aversions are originally introduced by those sensations; for when the objects of our pleasures or pains are at a distance, and we cannot instantaneously possess the one, or avoid the other, then desire or aversion is produced, and a voluntary exertion of our ideas or muscles succeeds.
The pain of hunger excites you to look out for food, the tree, that shades you, presents its odoriferous fruit before your eyes, you approach, pluck, and eat.
The various movements of walking to the tree, gathering the fruit, and masticating it, are associated motions introduced by their connection with sensation; but if from the uncommon height of the tree, the fruit be inaccessible, and you are prevented from quickly possessing the intended pleasure, desire is produced. The consequence of this desire is, first, a deliberation about the means to gain the object of pleasure in process of time, as it cannot be procured immediately; and, secondly, the muscular action necessary for this purpose.
You voluntarily call up all your ideas of causation, that are related to the effect you desire, and voluntarily examine and compare them, and at length determine whether to ascend the tree, or to gather stones from the neighbouring brook, is easier to practise, or more promising of success; and, finally, you gather the stones, and repeatedly fling them to dislodge the fruit.
Hence then we gain a criterion to distinguish voluntary acts or thoughts from those caused by sensation. As the former are always employed about the means to acquire pleasurable objects, or the means to avoid painful ones; while the latter are employed in the possession of those, which are already in our power.
Hence the activity of this power of volition produces the great difference between the human and the brute creation. The ideas and the actions of brutes are almost perpetually employed about their present pleasures, or their present pains; and, except in the few instances which are mentioned in Section [XVI], on instinct, they seldom busy themselves about the means of procuring future bliss, or of avoiding future misery; so that the acquiring of languages, the making of tools, and labouring for money, which are all only the means to procure pleasures; and the praying to the Deity, as another means to procure happiness, are characteristic of human nature.
[4]. As there are many diseases produced by the quantity of the sensation of pain or pleasure being too great or too little; so are there diseases produced by the susceptibility of the constitution to motions causable by these sensations being too dull or too vivid. This susceptibility of the system to sensitive motions is termed sensibility, to distinguish it from sensation, which is the actual existence or exertion of pain or pleasure.
Other classes of diseases are owing to the excessive promptitude, or sluggishness of the constitution to voluntary exertions, as well as to the quantity of desire or of aversion. This susceptibility of the system to voluntary motions is termed voluntarity, to distinguish it from volition, which is the exertion of desire or aversion; these diseases will be treated of at length in the progress of the work.
Association.