The general idea of Sensibility springs from other ideas which are more precise: pain, want, desire, taste, appetite, on one side; and, on the other, pleasure, enjoyment, competence.
Between these two extremes a middle term is interposed, and from the general idea of Activity spring the more precise ideas of pain, effort, fatigue, labour, production.
In analyzing Sensibility and Activity we encounter a word common to both; the word Pain. To experience certain sensations is a pain, and we cannot put an end to it but by an effort, which is also a pain. We feel pains; we take pains. This advertises us that here below we have only a choice of evils.
In the aggregate of these phenomena all is personal, as well the Sensation which precedes the effort, as the Satisfaction which follows it.
We cannot doubt, then, that Personal interest is the great mainspring of human nature. It must be perfectly understood, however, that this term is here employed as the expression of a universal fact, incontestable, and resulting from the organization of man,—and not of a critical judgment on his conduct and actions, as if, instead of it, we should employ the word egotism. Moral science would be rendered impossible, if we were to pervert beforehand the terms of which it is compelled to make use.
Human effort does not always come necessarily to place itself between the sensation and the satisfaction. Sometimes the [p069] satisfaction comes of its own accord. More frequently the effort is exercised upon materials, by the intervention of forces which nature has placed gratuitously at our disposal.
If we give the name of Utility to all which effects the satisfaction of wants, there are, then, utilities of two kinds:—one, vouchsafed to us gratuitously by Providence; the other (if I may use the expression), requiring to be purchased by an Effort.
Thus the complete evolution embraces, or may embrace, these four ideas:
| Wants | Gratuitous Utility Onerous Utility | Satisfaction. |
Man is endued with progressive faculties. He compares, he foresees, he learns, he reforms himself, by experience. If want is a pain, effort is a pain also, and there is therefore no reason why he should not seek to diminish the latter, when he can do so without diminishing the satisfaction, which is his ultimate object. This is the reason of his success when he comes to replace onerous by gratuitous Utility, which is the perpetual object of his search.