A Manual of Moral Philosophy

The Desires.

The Desires are distinguished from the Appetites, first, in their not originating from the body; secondly, in their not being necessarily intermittent; and thirdly, in their tendency to increase indefinitely, often through the whole of life, and to gain strength by the attainment of their specific objects. If classified by their objects, they might seem too numerous to be specified; but they may all be embraced under the [pg 013] titles of the Desire for Knowledge, for Society, for Esteem, for Power, and for Superiority. These all may be traced, in a more or less rudimentary form, in the inferior animals. Many of these animals show an active curiosity. Many are gregarious in their native state, and most of the domestic animals delight in the society of their kind; some take manifest pleasure in human society; and the instances are by no means rare, in which animals, by nature mutually hostile, become strongly attached to each other, and render to each other the most friendly services. The dog, the horse, and the cat evidently crave the esteem of human beings, and show tokens of genuine grief when they incur rebuke or discern tokens of disapproval. The dog maintains with watchful jealousy his own authority in his own peculiar domain; and in the chase or on the race-ground the dog and the horse are as emulous of success as their masters.

1. The Desire of Knowledge. This in the human being is manifested with the earliest dawn of intelligence. The infant is busy with eye and hand throughout his waking hours; and that the desire of knowledge is innate, and has no reference to the use that is to be made of the things known, is manifest from the rapid growth of knowledge in the first years of life, before the child has any distinct conception of the uses of objects, or any conscious capacity of employing them for his own benefit. It may be doubted whether in any subsequent year of life so much knowledge is acquired as during the first year. The [pg 014] child but a year old has learned the nature of the familiar objects of the house and the street, the faces and names of a large number of relatives, domestics, and acquaintances, the regular succession of seasons and events in daily domestic life, and the meanings of most of the words that are addressed to him or employed concerning him and the objects around him. In more advanced life this desire grows by what it feeds on, and never ceases to be active. It assumes, indeed, different directions, in part determining, and in part determined by, condition, profession, or employment. Even in the most idle and frivolous, it is strong, often intense, though its objects be worthless. Such persons frequently are as sedulous in collecting the paltry gossip of society as the naturalist in acquiring the knowledge of new species of plants or insects, and as ingenious in their inferences from what they see and hear as the philosopher in his inductions from the facts of science.

Not only in infancy, but through life, knowledge is sought evidently for its own sake, and not merely for its uses. But a very small part of what one knows can be made of practical utility as to his own comfort or emolument. Many, indeed, voluntarily sacrifice ease, gain, position, in the pursuit of science or literature. Fame, if it accrues, is not unwelcome; but by the higher order of minds fame is not pursued as an end, and there are many departments of knowledge in which little or no reputation is to be attained. Then, too, it is not the learner, [pg 015] but the teacher, not the profound scholar, merely, but the able expositor, speaker, or writer, who can expect a distinguished name; while there are many who content themselves with acquiring knowledge, without attempting publicity. Nor yet can benevolence account for the love of knowledge. Many, indeed, make their attainments the property of others, and are zealous in diffusing their own scientific views, or in dispensing instruction in their own departments. But there are also many solitary, recluse students; and it may be doubted whether, if a man who is earnestly engaged in any intellectual pursuit were shut out entirely from human society, and left alone with his books or with nature, his diligence would be relaxed, or his ardor abated.

2. The Desire of Society. This, also, is manifested so early as to show that it is an original, and not an acquired principle. Little children dread solitude, crave the presence of familiar faces, and evince pleasure in the company of children of their own age. A child, reared in comparative seclusion and silence, however tenderly, suffers often in health, always in mental vigor and elasticity; while in a large family, and in intimate association with companions of his own age, the individual child has the fullest and most rapid development of all his powers. There is, indeed, in the lives of many children, a period when the presence of strangers is unwelcome; but this state of feeling—seldom of long duration—can in most instances be traced to some sudden fright, harsh voice, or imagined neglect or unkindness.

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The natural course of human life proves that man is by the necessity of his nature a social being. The young of other animals are at a very early period emancipated and forsaken by their parents, while the human child has many years of dependence, and is hardly prepared to dispense with the shelter and kind offices of his native home, when he is moved to create a new home of his own.

There is no pursuit in life in which a community of interest fails to give added zest and energy. There is no possible ground of association on which societies are not formed, and the trivial, fictitious, or imaginary pretences on which men thus combine, meet, and act in concert, are manifest proofs of a social proclivity so strong as to create reasons for its indulgence where such reasons do not already exist. Even in science and in the most abstruse forms of erudition, men of learning seek mutual countenance and encouragement, and readily suspend their solitary research and study for the opportunity of intercommunication on the subjects and objects of their pursuit. The cases in which society is voluntarily shunned or forsaken are as rare as the cases of congenital disease or deformity; and for every such instance there may generally be assigned some grave, if not sufficient, cause. Religious asceticism has, indeed, induced many persons, especially in the early Christian ages, to lead a solitary life; but the coenobites have always vastly outnumbered the hermits; monasteries (solitary abodes) have become convents (assemblages); and those who [pg 017] are shut out from the rest of the world find comfort in social devotion, in the common refectory, and in those seasons of recreation when the law of silence is suspended. For prisoners solitary confinement has been found deleterious both to body and mind, and this system, instituted with philanthropic purpose, and commended on grounds that seemed intimately connected with the reformation of the guilty, is now generally repudiated as doing violence to human nature. Even for the insane, society, with judicious classification and restriction, is an essential part of curative treatment, and the success of asylums, as compared with the most skilful and humane private treatment, is due in great part to the social element.

It cannot be maintained that the desire of society results from fear, and from the felt need of mutual protection; for it exists in full at the most fearless periods of life, and among those who are the least timid, and is equally manifest in the strong and the weak, in those who can proffer and in those who might crave protection.

3. The Desire of Esteem. It is almost superfluous to say that this is a native and indestructible element of the human constitution. Its first manifestations bear even date with the earliest displays of intelligence and affection. To the infant, approval is reward; rebuke, even by look, is punishment. The hope of esteem is the most healthful and effective stimulant in the difficult tasks of childhood and of school-life. Under the discipline of parents both [pg 018] wise and good, it is among the most important and salutary means of moral discipline. It is seldom deficient in young persons. Their chief danger lies in its excess; for when it is too strongly developed, it inclines them to seek at all hazards the approval of their associates for the time being. Hence the chief danger from vicious or unscrupulous associates. The first steps in vice are oftener prompted, no doubt, by the desire for the complacent regard of one's companions than by an antecedent disposition to evil. Indeed, the confession is often made, that these steps were taken with compunction and horror, solely from the fear of ridicule and from the desire to win the approval and favor of older transgressors.

On the other hand, the desire of the esteem of good men is one of the strongest auxiliary motives to virtue; while a yearning for the Divine approval forms an essential part of true piety towards God.

4. The Desire of Power. This is manifested in every period of life, and in the exercise of every faculty, bodily, mental, and moral. It is this which gives us pleasure in solitary exercises of physical strength, in climbing mountains, swimming, lifting heavy weights, performing difficult gymnastic feats. It is this, more than deliberate cruelty, that induces boys to torture animals, or to oppress and torment their weaker or more timid companions.

In intellectual pursuits, the love of power leads to many exercises and efforts that have no ulterior result. The mathematician will turn aside from his [pg 019] course of study to master a problem, which involves no new principle, but is merely difficult and perplexing. The reading of books obscurely written, or in languages that task the utmost power of analysis, frequently has no other result, and probably no other object, than the trial of strength. What can be attained only by strenuous mental labor, is for that very reason sought, even if it promise no utility.

In the affairs of practical life, every man desires to make his influence felt. With persons of the highest character, the love of power is manifest in connection with the aim to be useful. Even the most modest men, while they may spurn flattery, are gladdened by knowing that they are acting upon the wills and shaping the characters of those around them.

The love of property belongs in great part under this head. Money is power, preËminently so at the present day. Property confers influence, and puts at one's command resources that may be the means of extended and growing power alike over inanimate nature and the wills of men. Avarice, or the desire of money for its own sake, is not an original desire. Few or none are avaricious in very early life. But money, first sought for the power it confers, from being a means becomes an end, to such a degree that, in order to possess it, the miser will forego the very uses for which he at the outset learned to value it.

5. The Desire of Superiority. This is so nearly universal in all conditions of society, and at all periods [pg 020] of life, that it must be regarded as an original element of human nature. Without it there would be little progress. In every department of life, men stimulate one another toward a higher standard of endeavor, attainment, or excellence. What each does, his neighbor would fain outdo; what each becomes, his neighbor would fain surpass. It is only by perversion that this desire tends to evil. It finds its proper satisfaction, not in crushing, depressing, or injuring a rival, but barely in overtaking and excelling him; and the higher his point of attainment, the greater is the complacency experienced in reaching and transcending it. On the race-ground, I do not want to compete with a slow runner, nor will it afford me the slightest satisfaction to win the race by tripping up my competitor; what I want is to match myself with the best runner on a fair field, and to show myself his equal or superior. The object striven for is the individual's own ideal, and those whom he successively passes on his course mark but successive stages on his progress toward that ideal. Thus, in the pursuit of moral excellence, it is only a mean and a bad man who can imagine that he gains anything by detracting from the merit of others; but he who is sincerely contending for a high place among virtuous men, rejoices in the signal examples of goodness of every kind which it is his privilege to emulate, and rejoices most of all that the ideal of perfect excellence—once only actualized in human form—is so pure and lofty that it may be his life-work to approach it without reaching it.

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Emulation is not envy, nor need it lead to envy. Among those who strive for superiority there need be no collision. The natural desire is to be, not to seem, superior; to have the consciousness, not the mere outward semblance, of high attainment; and of attainment, not by a conventional, but by an absolute standard; and this aim excludes none,—there may be as many first places as there are deserving candidates for them. Then, too, there is so wide a diversity of ideals, both in degree and in kind, there are so many different ruling aims, and so many different routes by which these aims are pursued, that there need be little danger of mutual interference. Even as regards external rewards, so far as they depend on the bounty of nature, the constitution of society, or the general esteem and good will of men, the success of one does not preclude the equal success of many; but, on the other hand, the merited prosperity and honor of the individual cannot fail to be of benefit to the whole community. It is only in offices contingent on election or appointment that the aspirant incurs a heavy risk of failure; but when we consider how meanly men are often compelled to creep into office and to grovel in it, it can hardly be supposed that a genuine desire of superiority holds a prominent place among the motives of these who are willingly dependent on patronage or on popular suffrage.

These desires, according as one or another has the ascendency, prompt to action, without reference to [pg 022] the good or the evil there may be in the action; and they therefore need the control of reason, and of the principles which reason recognizes in the government of conduct.

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