that dish; and in these cases there is no motive proper. Or I may have a motive. I may wish to please the person who offers it, or to prevent some one else having it; I may eat in illness because, though with present pain and disgust, I have to support my life. Now in every one of these cases it is or it may be incorrect to say that the idea of my pleasure is what moves me to act. I have or I may have no such idea before my mind. I do not say to myself, ‘Now it will please me to do this, and therefore I will do it.’ This I do only when I think about my food beforehand, when I realize in imagination the taste of what I am about to eat, recognize this as pleasant, and make the pleasantness a motive for eating it; or when, without calling up any particular image, I know that the eating of this or that will produce pleasure, and, with a view to the pleasure as an end, provide the eatables simply as a means. Here in these two cases my motive is the idea of a pleasure,[1] while in the cases before it was not.
We see, then, that we may act on instinctive impulse or on conscious desire for this or that, either with or without the idea of an ulterior end, or that which we commonly call ‘motive:’ and to say that the idea of my feeling of satisfaction is the ‘because’ of every action in the sense of its motive, either as the thought of this pleasure which I desire, or of pleasure in general to which this or that is subordinated—is simply to ignore plain facts, as every one may judge for themselves. When I quarrel with a man and stab him, I may act with purpose and intent, and yet altogether without any motive in its ordinary sense of an ulterior end, being moved simply by the negative desire of hate and the positive longing for revenge; in short, because I want to: but most certainly the idea of my want is not present to my mind as my reason or cause for killing; i.e. I do not say, ‘I will kill him in order that I may not feel this want, or may feel it satisfied,’ although no doubt it is possible that I might.
So much let us now take for granted; but we have not yet satisfactorily removed the ground for the assertion of universal selfishness. Pleading the cause of that doctrine, we may further say, ‘But all this is not to the point. All that is desired is (or, if
- ↑ For further explanation of this phrase see below, p. 236.
