Editorial note — Chapter IV · PLEASURE AND DESIRE

Note.—Some psychologists regard Desire as essentially painful. This view seems to me erroneous, according to the ordinary use of the term: and though it does not necessarily involve the confusion—against which I am chiefly concerned to guard in the present chapter—between the volitional stimulus of desire itself and the volitional stimulus of aversion to desire as painful, it has some tendency to cause this confusion. It may therefore be worth while to point out that the difference of opinion between myself and the psychologists in question—of whom I select Dr. Bain as a leading example—depends largely, though not entirely, on a difference of definition. In chap. viii. of the second division of his book on The Emotions and the Will, Dr. Bain defines Desire as “that phase of volition where there is a motive and not ability to act on it,” and gives the following illustration:—