An Introduction to Ethics, for Training Colleges/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
IMPULSE AND DESIRE.
§ 1. Impulse and Instinct. We have seen that instincts lead to certain types of action. The pugnacious instinct, for example, is responsible for the readiness of the normal boy to fight on the slightest provocation, or on none at all. The instinct of pugnacity gives rise to the impulse to strike. Again, the instinct of curiosity immediately prompts the child to explore with its hands the object that excites its interest. Or the instinct will drive the child to investigate the fire, until a sharp lesson teaches it that some impulses must be restrained. In every case impulse is intimately connected with instinct. Impulsive behaviour may be defined as instinct in action. An impulse is the executive aspect of an instinct.
The actions of the young child are almost all impulsive. They are done on the spur of the moment. Offer two apples of different sizes to a young child, and he will at once take the larger one.[1] The impulse simply exerts itself without let or hindrance. The frank impulsiveness of the child is often very attractive. But impulsive behaviour which would be charming in the child might be detestable in the adult. We say that the adult ought to be able to control his impulses.
Impulses are isolated. There is no continuity between one impulsive action and another. Impulsive behaviour is stimulated simply by the needs and interests of the moment. Hence there is nothing stable or constant about impulsive behaviour. The uncertainty and capriciousness of impulses become very evident when they conflict. For example, a young child is set on the floor on the other side of the room from its mother and father, who are sitting on either side of the fire. For fun the father tries to attract the child to come to him, and the mother seeks to entice it to come to her. The child is obviously swayed, as we can see by its "wobbling," now by the impulse to go to its mother, now by that to go to its father. The impulses immediately impel it in one direction or the other, and it simply obeys the impulse which is strongest at the moment.
§ 2. The Control of Impulse. As the child's character develops, it gradually comes to control its impulses. It reflects, in a rudimentary way, on the alternatives when two impulses affect it, and it deliberates whether to obey the one or the other. Thus its conduct becomes consistent, instead of being at the mercy of everything it happens to see and every thought or mental image that occurs to it. The possibility of rational conduct depends on the control of impulse. The child has been burnt when it has gone too near the fire, in obedience to its impulse to satisfy its curiosity. Later on, the same impulse to investigate the gleaming, glowing thing will recur. The child may be swayed by this impulse again, but it will also be moved by the impulse to avoid the thing that has previously given it pain. It may repress the former impulse simply because its dread of being burnt is stronger than its curiosity. In this case one impulse has overcome the other. But the child cannot be said to control its impulses until it knows what the fire is, and why it should not approach too close to it. If it knows this, it is able to reflect, in a rudimentary way, and to dismiss the impulse to explore the fire, not because it has been over-mastered by a stronger impulse, but because it has been controlled by reason.
Thus one of the conditions of controlling impulse is knowledge. The animals are at the mercy of their impulses because they have no knowledge. But man can "look before and after"; he can deliberate on his impulses and reflect whether the actions to which they impel will be valuable to his life as a whole. Thus even the every-day knowledge that the child is acquiring in school and elsewhere is fitting him more and more to reflect on his impulses and thus to restrain those that tend to unworthy ends.
But it is a matter of common experience that it is not enough merely to know that an impulse is unworthy. We may know that it is wrong, and still allow it to translate itself into action. We may, indeed, feel powerless to stop it. Take, for instance, this striking case. "A nurse, a gentle, peaceable creature as a rule, during her mistress's absence one day felt an irresistible impulse to cut the throat of the little child she was nursing, with a knife that she saw on the table, and this though she was devoted to the child. She ran into the kitchen with the knife, threw it away, and begged the cook to keep near her. The cook refused. The irresistible inclination to murder the child came on again, and she would probably have done it, had not her mistress returned in the nick of time. Later on she admitted what awful torture these impulses had been to her."[2] But we do not need to go to such extreme and abnormal cases for examples of the overpowering strength of impulses. Most of us can think of occasions in our own experience when we have acted on impulse, though we were perfectly well aware of the unworthiness of the impulse. When we thus allow an impulse to become an action in contravention of our better judgment, it shows that our lives are not yet completely under the dominion of our wills. The open secret of controlling our impulses lies in "putting them in their proper place," in bringing them into subjection to the self as a whole, which, as conscience, is able to judge them, and, as will, is able either to restrain them or bring them into action.
§ 3. Desire. Desires may be regarded, at least from one standpoint, as developed impulses. As developed impulses, they differ in two respects from mere impulses, (a) When we act on impulse, the end that we aim at is not usually clearly present to us. In purely impulsive behaviour we are impelled in a certain direction without clearly knowing why. On the other hand, when we desire, we know the end we wish to attain, and we definitely desire something, (b) As we have seen, impulses are isolated and temporary. If an impulse be restrained, it disappears. Impulses do not persist long at the same time, though they may recur again and again. But desires are relatively permanent. If an end that is desired is comprehensive enough, the desire for it may last a life-time. Of course, desires vary in their permanence. Many of our desires are quite capricious. But, on the whole, desires are more permanent and consistent than impulses.
Desires, like impulses, may conflict. Usually a desire for a comprehensive end is opposed by a transient and isolated desire. A student may desire to pass a certain examination. If the examination be a long way ahead, e.g. a Civil Service Examination, the desire to pass it will organise all his studies for years previously. And it will often happen that other desires will conflict with the comprehensive desire to pass the examination. Six months before his examination, he is offered a trip to America. He greatly desires to go, but he knows that it will interfere with his preparation for his examination. If he deliberates well, he will decide for the more comprehensive desire. But he is very apt to be enticed by the more immediate satisfaction which the trip to America offers.
§ 4. The Education of Desire. In order that the moral life may be harmonious, desires must be educated and trained.
(1) Desires should be selected. It is a great mistake to think that all desires should be restrained. Sometimes we are told that morality consists in suppressing our desires and being content to see the world that it is good. The Stoics tell us that we should acquiesce, with passive contentment, in any lot which fortune has seen fit to assign to us. Desires, they say, are mischievous, and they should be destroyed. But this is quite wrong. Every child has a myriad desires. They cannot all be satisfied, and it is not well that they should be. But these desires should not be suppressed wholesale. To suppress all desires is to close the safety-valve of character. Sooner or later, if healthy desires are repressed, a moral eruption will result.
Again, we sometimes speak of controlling desires as if, like Plato, we pictured them as unruly horses which need to be reined in. Impulses may have to be controlled in this way; but desires are not so isolated as impulses, and we control desires most effectively not by holding in those which are evil, but by strengthening those that are socially valuable and giving rein to them.
If the child's desires are good, then they should by all means be confirmed and encouraged. There is a natural selection among desires, but if the desires are left to themselves, the fittest will not always survive. The moral educator must throw all his weight on the side of the good desires. If they are strengthened and confirmed, the evil ones will gradually be ousted and overcome.
(2) The child should be encouraged to organise his desires. It is here especially that the teacher may expect to be able to exercise a real influence. He can point out that certain desires are inconsistent with other more comprehensive desires, and therefore should not be satisfied. As we grow older we naturally and unconsciously organise our desires. The character of saint or sinner depends on the fact that their desires have been organised in sub-ordination to some comprehensive good or bad end. The infant's desires are at first little more than impulses, and they are aroused by everything he hears and sees. They are comparatively isolated, and their objects are desired for themselves and not with a view to any more comprehensive end. The infant desires the coin the visitor shows him, simply because it looks an interesting thing, and not for the sake of anything it can buy. As the child grows up, his desires become less capricious. He comes to have some idea why he desires things. But still things are desired largely on their own account. The child does not take large views, and rarely has comprehensive aims. Yet, even when his aims are very limited, his desires naturally become organised with reference to them. Take the case of education. The young child desires to know his lesson, in order to "get top" of the class. This is certainly a very limited end, and in the young child it may be the only end of his desire. But he soon grows to desire to "get top" in order to satisfy the more comprehensive end of getting a prize. It is often remarkable how such a relatively restricted aim as this may organise the child's desires and activities. He will himself curb his desire for play in order to prepare his home lessons. His desire for a perfect school attendance will enable him to overcome a violent desire to accept his uncle's invitation to a pantomime some afternoon. In these ways he is organising his desires with reference to some relatively permanent and comprehensive aim. The great purpose of moral education is to encourage the organisation of desires under some worthy end. Right desires are as important for the child as true knowledge. It has been said, and with much truth, that the great aim of all education is to teach men and women to desire the right things.
So far we have been following common usage in speaking of "good desires" and "evil desires." But these phrases conceal an important distinction, which must now be explained. When we speak of "good desires," we are apt to confuse two meanings of the word desire. Desire properly means the actual process of desiring. But it is often used to mean the thing desired, the object of desire. When we say that a man's desires are evil, we do not mean that his actual mental processes are evil, but that the objects to whose attainment those processes are directed are, in relation to himself, evil. Desire is always for some object, and it is the goodness or badness of that object in relation to the self that makes the desire good or evil. In strictness, we should not speak of desires (in the plural) at all. There is one process of desiring, a process which may be directed to the attainment of this or that kind of object.
Now, if this be so, are we able to explain why people desire such very different kinds of objects? Or to relapse into the more usual language, why do people have such very different desires? At the present moment you may desire a knowledge of Italian, I a pork pie. Why do I desire the pork pie, and why do you desire a knowledge of Italian? The answer is that objects are always desired in reference to the self. They become objects of desire only because they have some value for the self that desires them. Hence what has value for one man may have none for another. Men desire only those objects on which they set some value, and they set a value on them because they promise a satisfaction of the self. Incidentally we may note that the reason why all men desire money is that money is potentially all that money can buy. Money is a standard of value because money can be turned into many of the objects which men desire. Money is not desired for itself, but because it can buy the objects in which the most different kinds of people find satisfaction.
All the objects of desire, whether purchasable by money or not, owe their moral worth to their relation to some self. In themselves, these objects of desire, or the sums of money that buy them, are neither good nor bad. Their moral goodness or badness springs from their relation to the self, and their connection with its dominant purposes and aims.
§ 5. Ambition, the System of Desire. When a man's desires are organised in subordination to his self, with the system of its purposes, they constitute his ambition. A man's ambition is simply the system of his desires and purposes. Nothing organises a life so effectively and worthily as a noble ambition. If we wish for an example of the systematising power of a great ambition, we need only look at the way in which all St. Paul's activities and desires were organised in accordance with his noble ambition. A worthy ambition is within the reach of all. Every child should be encouraged to form a worthy ambition: every one should be reminded that there is some position in life, however humble, which he will fill, and that his vocation consists in performing faithfully the duties of his station in society. It should be his ambition to organise all his desires and consecrate all his energies to the service of his vocation.
For further reading: T. Loveday and J. A. Green: Introduction to Psychology, ch. vi.; J. S. Mackenzie: Manual of Ethics, bk. i. ch. i.; A. F. Shand: Foundations of Character, bk. iii.; T. H. Green: Prolegomena to Ethics, §§ 118-129.
- ↑ It is instructive, as an instance of the way in which moral education is apt to defeat itself, to notice what may happen when the child has been taught that its impulse to grab the larger apple is selfish and naughty. It is taught (a) that it is wrong to grab—"let others have their choice before you," and (b) that it is wrong to take the biggest. Now the child is very apt, next time apples are offered to it, to pass them to others before helping itself, because it knows that they will take the smaller ones' and thus the big one will be left for it."
- ↑ Störring: Mental Pathology, p. 286.