Note 20 — Chapter II · EGOISM.

Thus Jonathan Edwards says: "When I say that the Will is as the greatest apparent good, or (as I have explained it) that volition has always for its object the thing which appears most agreeable, it must be carefully observed, to avoid confusion and needless objection, that I speak of the direct and immediate object of the act of volition, and not some object to which the act of will has only an indirect and remote respect."—On the Freedom of the Will, part i. § 2; Works, i. 133. The matter is put still more clearly by the late Alfred Barratt: "Action does not always follow knowledge. Of course not: but the doctrine [Hedonism] does not require that it should; for it says, not that we follow what is our greatest possible pleasure, or what we know or 'think' to be so, but what at the moment of action is most desired."—Mind, vol. ii. 173; cf. Physical Ethics, p. 52 ff. So Mr Stephen, Science of Ethics, p. 47: "It is more accurate to say that my conduct is determined by the pleasantest judgment, than to say that it is determined by my judgment of what is pleasantest." The negative side of the same view was expressed by Locke in his doctrine that action is moved by the most pressing uneasiness (Essay, II. xxi. 29, 31), and distinguished by him from the former view (b), that the "greater visible good" is the motive (II. xxi. 35, 44).