Sensuality has the same duplicity of meaning, with all the other names, just enumerated; it is the name, both of the Motive and of the Disposition.
Temperance, and Intemperance, are names of Dispositions, which have a reference to pleasures generally.
We have seen, from a previous illustration, that when the motive resulting from the association of a pleasure is not obeyed, it is owing to the association of a pain. When the association of the pain resulting from any act so balances that of the pleasure, that when the value of the pain exceeds that of the pleasure, the pleasure never prevails,—the 262 Disposition called Temperance exists; that is, an equal facility of associating with any act both its pleasures and its pains.
When the association in the two cases is not in this manner equally balanced; that is, when the association of the pleasures is an overmatch for the pains, the Disposition called Intemperance exists.[49]
[49] A Motive is that which influences the will; and the Will is a subject we have not yet arrived at the consideration of. Meanwhile, it is here shewn that a motive to an act consists in the association of pleasure with the act; that a motive to abstain from an act, is the association of pain with it; and we are prepared to admit the truth deduced therefrom, that the one or the other motive will prevail, according as the pleasurable or the painful association is the more powerful. What makes the one or the other more powerful, is (conformably to the general laws of association) partly the intensity of the pleasurable or painful ideas in themselves, and partly the frequency of repetition of their past conjunction with the act, either in experience or in thought. In the latter of these two consists the efficacy of education in giving a good or a bad direction to the active powers.
In further elucidation of Motives, I cite the following passages from the First Appendix to the author’s “Fragment on Mackintosh” (pp. 389, 390):—
“A motive is something which moves—moves to what? To action. But all action, as Aristotle says, (and all mankind agree with him) is for an end. Actions are essentially means. The question, then, is, what is the end of action? Actions, taken in detail, have ends in detail. But actions, taken in classes, have ends which may be taken in classes. Thus the ends of the actions which are subservient to the pleasures of sense, are combined in a class, to which, in abstract, we give the name sensuality. The class of actions which tend to the 263 increase of power, have a class of ends to which we give the name ambition, and so on. When we put all these classes together, and make a genus; that is, actions in general; can we in like manner make a genus of the ends; and name ends in general?
“If we could find what the several classes of ends; sensuality for example; ambition; avarice; glory; sociality, &c.; have in common, we could.
“Now, they have certainly this in common, that they are all agreeable to the agents. A man acts for the sake of something agreeable to him, either proximately or remotely. But agreeable to, and pleasant to; agreeableness, and pleasantness, are only different names for the same thing; the pleasantness of a thing is the pleasure it gives. So that pleasure, in a general way, or speaking generically; that is, in a way to include all the species of pleasures, and also the abatement of pains; is the end of action.
“A motive is that which moves to action. But that which moves to action is the end of the action, that which is sought by it; that for the sake of which it is performed. Now that, generically speaking, is the pleasure of the agent. Motive, then, taken generically is pleasure. The pleasure may be in company or connection with things infinite in variety. But these are the accessaries; the essence, is the pleasure. Thus, in one case, the pleasure may be connected with the form, and other qualities of a particular woman; in another, with a certain arrangement of colours in a picture; in another, with the circumstances of some fellow-creature. But in all these cases, what is generical, that is the essence, is the pleasure, or relief from pain.