The use of terms here suggested appears to me inconvenient, and the psychological analysis implied in it to a great extent erroneous. I admit that in certain simple cases of choice, where the alternatives suggested are each prompted by a single definite desire, there is no psychological inaccuracy in saying that in willing the act to which he is stimulated by any such desire the agent “identifies himself with the desire.” But in more complex cases the phrase appears to me incorrect, as obliterating important distinctions between the two kinds of psychical phenomena which are usually and conveniently distinguished as “desires” and volitions. In the first place, as I have before pointed out (chap. i. § [2] of this Book), it often happens that certain foreseen consequences of volition, which as foreseen are undoubtedly willed and—in a sense—chosen by the agents, are not objects of desire to him at all, but even possibly of aversion—aversion, of course, overcome by his desire of other consequences of the same act. In the second place, it is specially important, from an ethical point of view, to notice that, among the various desires or aversions aroused in us by the complex foreseen consequences of a contemplated act, there are often impulses with which we do not identify ourselves, but which we even try to suppress as far as possible: though as it is not possible to suppress them completely—especially if we do the act to which they prompt—we cannot say that they do not operate as motives.
[272] Cf. ante, chap. i. § [2] of this Book.
[273] Hutcheson, System of Moral Philosophy, Book i. chap. iv. § 10.
[274] See the Dissertation Of the Nature of Virtue appended to the Analogy.
[275] The Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Tugendlehre: but it ought to be observed that the ethical view briefly expounded in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft appears to have much more affinity with Butler’s.
[276] Types of Ethical Theory, Vol. ii. p. 284, 2nd edition.
[277] Cf. ante, chap. iv. § [2] of this Book.
[278] Types of Ethical Theory, vol. ii. p. 266. Dr. Martineau explains that the chief composite springs are inserted in their approximate place, subject to the variations of which their composition renders them susceptible.
[279] Thus we might ask why the class of “passions” is so strangely restricted, why conjugal affection is omitted, whether wonder can properly be regarded as a definite motive, whether “censoriousness” is properly ranked with “vindictiveness” as one of the “lowest passions,” etc.