SENSIBILITIES
PART THIRD.
DESIRES.
CHAPTER I.
NATURE AND CLASSIFICATION OF DESIRES.
General Character of Desire.—What we enjoy we love, and what we enjoy and love, becomes, when no longer present, or when, although yet present, its future absence is regarded as probable, an object of desire. In the latter case it is perhaps more properly the continuance of the loved object, rather than the object itself, that is desired. Strictly speaking, we desire only that which is not in possession, and which is regarded as good and agreeable. More frequently the objects of desire are those things which, in some measure, we have actually enjoyed, and learned by experience how to prize. In many cases, however, we learn in other ways than by our own experience the value of an object; we gather it from observation, from the testimony of others, partly, perhaps, from imagination; and in such cases what is known or supposed to be agreeable and a good thing, though never, perhaps, actually enjoyed by ourselves, may be an object of desire. Thus I may desire wealth, or power, long before they come into my possession to be enjoyed. The felicities which await the righteous in the future may be distinct and definite objects of desire, while yet we are pilgrims on the earth, and have not seen "the land that is very far off." Even in the cases supposed, however, we have enjoyed, to some extent, if not the very same, yet similar objects; we have experienced something, though it may be on a small scale, of the advantages which wealth and power confer, while in our enjoyment of earthly happiness there is doubtless something on which the imagination can build its more glorious anticipations of the future, and it is this enjoyment and realization of a present or a past good, that constitutes the foundation of our desires. If we had never enjoyed aught, it may be doubted whether we should ever desire aught.
Law of the Sensibility.—The great law of the sensibility, then, may be thus stated, as regards the order and relation of the several classes of emotion to each other: I enjoy, I love, I desire; and the reverse, I suffer, I dislike, I cherish aversion. That such is the order or law of mental operation has been ably shown by Damiron in his Cours de Philosophie, and also, before him, by Jouffroy.