Studies in the Evolutionary Psychology of Feeling

by Hiram Miner Stanley

As to the range of desire we must then disagree with Aristotle and later psychologists, who suppose that desire is limited by the belief in the possibility of realization. Desire existed before this belief was generated; and while, after its generation, it may often affect desire, yet often it does not. I may wish for the moon as readily as the child to whom the notion of possibility or impossibility of realization is beyond experience. The unrepresentable only cannot be wished, and desire is bounded only by the power of conception and perception. Hope is a species of desire which has to do with belief in the possibility of the event or act: it is a joyful emotion connected with belief of realization of the pleasurable. This distinction between hope and desire in general is implied in the phrases, “I wish he would do it,” and “I hope he will.” The hope includes the desire, but the desire may exist without the hope, as we say, “I wish he would, but know he won’t.” Desire may be hopeless, but hope cannot be desireless.

Desire is vitally connected with ideation and volition, but properly it is the intermediate emotional moment between these, and not idea of pleasure—as James Mill—nor yet to be placed under will—Bain, James. It is neither phase of ideation or volition. Desire is neither idea of, nor striving after realization; it is not the idea of goal nor the effort to reach goal. I may have idea of a goal without desire to reach it—at least, analysis discriminates thus as separate mental stages—and I may desire to reach it without trying to reach it,—impotent desire, sometimes called wish. The striving is the consequent, and the idea the antecedent of the desire which is the emotion wave we emphasize by the word, longing. Desire is neither phase of volition nor ideation. Volition is properly effort at realization, and is stimulated by the emotion toward the realization ideally apprehended.

The relation of desire to will has been a fertile subject of discussion from Aristotle down, but we have to take up but a single aspect, namely, whether will and desire may with reference to the same object be contrary or distinct. Take the example of contrariety mentioned by Stewart. I wish a certain man not to do a certain act, but yet I persuade him to do it at the request of a friend. If I say I will persuade him, though I wish him not to be persuaded, this merely implies that the wish to oblige my friend overcomes the aversion to persuading the man. And, in general, apparent cases of conflict of will and desire may be resolved into conflict of desires. Hence the phrase, “I will do it, though I do not want to do it,” is inaccurate or rather an incomplete analysis. We should always add, “because I have some extraneous and stronger desire.” A box of bonbons is hung in a room at a height to be had by whomsoever will jump and reach it. In any party of persons there may be some to whom the wish for ease, the disinclination to jump, overcomes the inclination for the bonbons, so that this volition does not occur, others who jump even against this disinclination, the desire for the bonbons being the stronger desire, and others, very active, who jump without feeling any disinclination to the act. Conflict of desires is a common and almost constant state with many minds, and the evolution of man has been mainly through conflict of desire in sacrificing an immediate to a future good. In lower minds with so little self-consciousness and consciousness of a consciousness that they do not grasp conduct as a whole, there is a simple alternation of volitions flowing from the desires of rival goods, till one by its intrinsic force dominates with some permanence. These are the creatures of impulse, unreflecting and unself-directing by principle and reason. Higher minds realize their situation and consciously bring in higher desire or motive; they form rules and principles of conduct: they become ethical beings, having self-control and self-direction.

Desire is based by Mr. Bain on hindrance and opposition to activity, on “a bar in the way of activity.” This is true if we understand it to refer to sense of unreality and of lack as connected with an apprehension of thing where the thing is really absent from the usual correlation, and hence physiological activities are checked. We have in the previous pages discussed this, but this is not Mr. Bain’s point of view. The three elements he emphasizes are: deficiency, idea of pleasure, and the hindrance. Thus, he contrasts the prisoner who looks out on a bright day and longs to take a walk, with a perfectly free man who looks out on a fine day and freely follows his inclination to walk. However, it appears to me that both have desire, and that in the same sense both are moved by the motive, though only one is free to attain the action. So if I get thirsty in a waterless desert or in my room with a jug of water on the table, the bodily sensations will equally lead to desire. The conflict in desire is between state actual and state conceived, and not between will and restraint. Mr. Bain remarks, “If all motive impulses could be at once followed up, desire would have no place.” (Emotions and Will, p. 423.) But desire is itself an original impulse, and is more or less an ingredient in all emotion impulse; and it is plain that emotion impulses as implying representation are the only ones which can be “followed up.” Where every wish is gratified as soon as formed, as with a petted child of rich parents, desire still remains in all its characteristic quality. Such an one, however, by having only the momentary pleasure of completed realization, misses the joys of realizing, and loses all that happiness which has been defined as sense of progress. If every wish were gratified as soon as formed, if every representation of pleasure was immediately followed by realization, desire would still exist in all its peculiar force. The moment of gratification is always second to the moment of desire, and a Fortunatus with his wishing-cap cannot possess in absolute coincidence with the wish.

It may be objected that Tantalus’ desire is certainly a form where hindrance is the main stimulant. When one is continually hindered just on the point of realization, desire is intensified, but this intensifying is very largely due to the increased definiteness of presentation or representation, and to the increase of confidence in the event. To tantalize is to bring before one an object of strong desire into the clearest prominence and seemingly certain attainment, yet to constantly withhold it.

We have spoken of desire as an impulse, and we would include all emotion as impulse, for to impel is its function and action. Impulse is the will side of emotion as interest is its intellectual side. If I fear a man, this is my interest in him and impulse from him. True, we speak of being driven by “blind impulse”; but emotion cannot be blind, it can only be kindled by object imaged. Anything which actuates the will may very broadly but wrongly be called impulse, for impulse strictly connotes an emotion wave undirected and issuing at once in action. Where unforeseen ends are served, as when a hen driven by sensation of heat sits on eggs, we commonly but wrongly denominate it impulse. Without some representation there is no emotion and no impulse. So when standing over a precipice I say I have the impulse to throw myself down, this means that the depth wakens in me image of falling and an awful desire to realize the image, which impels the act. If I am merely giddy I will fall, but if I have the emotion-impulse I will throw myself down; I am not impelled by dizziness or any sensation, but the term denotes emotion as desire or fear.

For the ordinary human mind desire seems in general a spontaneous and instinctive act. We do not make an effort in desiring, though desire like other mental functions undoubtedly arose in struggle. Originally this psychosis was a stress and strain activity; it was a rarely achieved emotion, just as the emotion of pleasurable appreciation of Beethoven’s music or Michael Angelo’s sculpture is for most minds a rare uplift of psychic force. Knowing as compound of presentation and representation and as involving emotion and volition, is, with us, within certain limits, an habitual spontaneous act of mind. I feel the pain from cold, without sensation of cold, as bare pain, as undifferentiated feeling of discomfort, I then feel cold, I feel cold object, I desire warmth, I will to draw near the stove; here is a progressive series of correlated psychoses which are constantly occurring in a spontaneous way in ordinary experience. But this psychic structure which operates so easily is really the outgrowth of ages of psychic evolution wherein the separate steps have been achieved and the correlation established only by the severest nisus.

Associations are first achieved in experience established by numberless reiterations before there is spontaneous tendency to re-occurrence, this is the law of psychic evolution to-day, and is the only clue we have to the past. The evolution of mind is not and never has been a mechanical process, but its basis is in pure feeling as stimulating volition. Paradoxical as the expression sounds, yet in a sense it is true that the organism has learned to know and to feel thereupon. It may even be that in the course of psychic ages with certain species of animals some emotions may become innate, and such advantageous psychoses as fear or desire may occur without any integration through individual experience. The new-born chick, when it hears the note of a hawk, is said to show signs of fear, though what actual psychosis occurs, if any, seems almost beyond our power to know. The whole process may be reflex nervous action, a mere closed neural circuit being affected. It is no doubt true that all long-continued, often recurring psychoses tend to so embody themselves in a neural combination that the given activities are carried on in a sub-conscious and finally in an unconscious way. It is very probable that much that we take for emotion with lower animals is reflex or semi-reflex action; yet it is likewise true that there is, as a matter of advantage in struggle for existence, an inherited instinctive tendency to certain emotions, to certain kinds of fear and desire, and there may be a distinct awareness of the potency in things, which has never been individually realized. In its every transaction with things the young organism may act by reflex action or by inherited emotional tendency. How far either or both enter into the first individual experiences is a matter for the psychology of the future.

The general function of desire in life is obvious; it is the most potent factor in conserving and extending life. Far back in a paleozoic psychic period life was below desire; but once originating under the pressure of the struggle for existence it has since developed into the most manifold and complex forms. Human life is the outcome of desire, and the human being is par excellence the desiring psychism. As the moving factor of humanity history is its record, and present human organization, faculty, and achievement is its product. Desire, as the force to realize, to convert seen potency into actuality, the idea into reality, is now in the very highest examples of psychic development an ever increasing power, and no prospect of a psychic stage to be reached beyond desire is intimated in the present course of normal development. The tendency toward extinction of desire, when it does occur, appears always as pathologic or retrogressive symptom. It may be the dream of a philosopher or of a cult, but with Schopenhauer himself desire was a most forceful factor, and the devotee of desirelessness by very reason of being a devotee to an object, desires it, namely, the state of desirelessness. We may desire to extinguish certain desires, and succeed in accomplishing this, but to desire not to desire, as general act, is a psychological contradiction in terms. A very low vegetative psychic status without any desire is possible, but all teleologic activity implies desire, hence extinction of desire can never be attained as an end.

Desire moves the world and is the core of psychic being. Deprived of definite desire, we long for it, and if every wish were immediately realized, we should desire delay in gratification. The amount and value of life is measured by the quantity, quality, and effectiveness of desire. Orton characterizes the Indians of the Amazon as “without curiosity or emotion,” which must, however, be taken only as relatively true, but yet marking them as extremely low in the psychic scale.