Herman Melville - "Moby Dick; or The Whale"

Douglas Jerrold - "Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures"

Prince De Joinville - "Memoirs"

Traditional Text - "Pirke Avot"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: A Handbook of Ethical Theory

G >> George Stuart Fullerton >> A Handbook of Ethical Theory




29. SOCIAL ORGANIZATION.--The social body of which man becomes, by the
accident of birth, an involuntary member, may stand at any point in the
scale of economic evolution. It may be a primitive group living from hand
to mouth by the chase, by fishing or by gathering such food as nature
spontaneously produces. It may be a pastoral people, more or less
nomadic, occupied with the care of flocks and herds. It may be an
agricultural community, rooted to the soil, looking forward from seed-
time to harvest, capable of foresight in storing and distributing the
fruits of its labors. It may combine some of the above activities; and
may, in addition, have arrived at the stage at which the arts and crafts
have attained to a considerable development. In its life commerce may
have come to play an important role, bringing it into peaceful relations
with other communities and broadening the circle of its interests. That
human societies at such different stages of their development should
differ greatly in their internal organization, in their relations to
other communities, and in the demands which they make upon the
individuals who compose them, is to be expected. Some manner of life,
appropriate to the status of the community, comes to be prescribed. The
ideal of conduct, whether unconsciously admitted or consciously embraced
and inculcated, is not the same in different societies. The virtues which
come to be prized, the defects which are disapproved, vary with their
setting.

Moreover, the process of inner development results in differentiation of
function. Clearly marked social classes come into existence, standing in
more or less sharply defined relations to other social classes, endowed
with special rights and called to the performance of peculiar duties.

Man is not merely born into this or that community; he is born into a
place in the community. In very primitive societies that place may differ
little from other places, save as such are determined by age or sex. But
in more highly differentiated societies it may differ enormously, entail
the performance of widely different functions, and prescribe distinct
varieties of conduct.

"What will be the manner of life," said Plato, [Footnote: Laws, vii.]
"among men who may be supposed to have their food and clothing provided
for them in moderation, and who have entrusted the practice of the arts
to others, and whose husbandry, committed to slaves paying a part of the
produce, brings them a return sufficient for living temperately?"

His ideal leisure class is patterned after what he saw before him in
Athens. He conceives those who belong to it to be set free from sordid
cares and physical labors, in order that they may devote themselves to
the perfecting of their own minds and bodies and to preparation for the
serious work of supervising and controlling the state. Their membership
in the class defined their duties and prescribed the course of education
which should fit them to fulfill them. It is not conceived that the
functions natural and proper to one human being are also natural and
proper to another in the same community.

The flat monotony which obtains in those simplest human societies,
resembling extended families, where there is scarcely a demarcation of
classes, a distinction of occupations and a recognition of private
property in any developed sense, has given place in such a state to sharp
contrasts in the status of man and man. Such contrasts obtain in all
modern civilized communities. Man is not merely a subject or citizen; he
is a subject or citizen of this class or of that, and the environment
which molds him varies accordingly.

30. SOCIAL ORDER AND HUMAN WILL.--We have seen that the material
environment of a man, the extent of his mastery over nature and of his
emancipation from the dictation of pressing bodily needs, is a factor of
enormous importance in determining what he shall become and what sort of
a life he shall lead. That his social setting is equally significant is
obvious. What he shall know, what habits he shall form, what emotions he
shall experience in this situation and in that, what tasks he shall find
set before him, and what ideals he shall strive to attain, are largely
determined for him independently of his choice.

To be sure, it remains true that man is man, endowed with certain
instincts and impulses and gifted with human intelligence. Nor are all
men alike in their impulses or in the degree of their intelligence.
Within limits the individual may exercise choice, reacting upon and
modifying his environment and himself. But a moment's reflection reveals
to us that the new departure is but a step taken from a vantage-ground
which has not been won by independent effort. The information in the
light of which he chooses, the situation in the face of which he acts,
the emotional nature which impels him to effort, the habits of thought
and action which have become part of his being--these are largely due to
the larger whole of which he finds himself a part. He did not build the
stage upon which he is to act. His lines have been learned from others.
He may recite them imperfectly; he may modify them in this or in that
particular. But the drama from which, and from which alone, he gains his
significance, is not his own creation.

The independence of the individual in the face of his material and social
environment makes itself more apparent with the progressive development
of man. But man attains his development as a member of society, and in
the course of a historical evolution. It was pointed out many centuries
ago that a hand cut off from the human body cannot properly be called a
hand, for it can perform none of the functions of one. And man, torn from
his setting, can no longer be considered man as the proper subject of
moral science.

It is as a thinking and willing creature in a social setting that man
becomes a moral agent. To understand him we must make a study of the
individual and of the social will.




PART IV

THE REALM OF ENDS


CHAPTER XI

IMPULSE, DESIRE, AND WILL


31. IMPULSE.--Commands and prohibitions address themselves to man as a
voluntary agent. But it seems right to treat as willed by man much more
than falls under the head of conscious and deliberate volition. We do not
hesitate to make him responsible for vastly more; and yet common sense
does not, when enlightened, regard men as responsible for what is
recognized as falling wholly beyond the direct and indirect control of
their wills.

Motions due to even the blindest of impulses are not to be confounded
with those brought about by external compulsion. They may have the
appearance of being vaguely purposive, although we would never attribute
purpose to the creature making them. The infant that cries and struggles,
when tormented by the intrusive pin, the worm writhing in the beak of a
bird,--these act blindly, but it does not appear meaningless to say that
they act. The impulse is from within.

Some impulses result in actions very nicely adjusted to definite ends.
Such are winking, sneezing, swallowing. These reflexes may occur as the
mechanical response to a given stimulus. They may occur without our being
conscious of them and without our having willed them.

Yet such responses to stimuli are not necessarily unconscious and cut off
from voluntary control. He who winks involuntarily when a hand is passed
before his eyes may become conscious that he has done so, and may, if he
chooses, even acquire some facility in controlling the reflex. One may
resist the tendency to swallow when the throat is dry, may hold back a
sneeze, or may keep rigid the hand that is pricked by a pin. That is to
say, actions in their origin mechanical and independent of choice may be
raised out of their low estate, made the objects of attention, and
brought within the domain of deliberate choice.

Furthermore, many actions which, at the outset, claimed conscious
attention and were deliberately willed may become so habitual that the
doer lapses into unconsciousness or semi-unconsciousness of his deed.
They take on the nature of acquired reflexes. The habit of acting appears
to have been acquired by the mind and then turned over to the body, that
the mind may be free to occupy itself with other activities. The man has
become less the doer than the spectator of his acts; perhaps he is even
less than that, he is the stage upon which the action makes its
appearance, while the spectator is his neighbor. The complicated bodily
movements called into play when one bites one's nails had to be learned.
It requires no little ingenuity to accomplish the act when the nails are
short. Yet one may come to the stage of perfection at which one bites
one's nails when one is absorbed in thought about other things. And one
may learn to slander one's neighbor almost as mechanically and
unthinkingly as one swallows when the throat is dry.

When we speak of man's impulses, we are using a vague word. There are
impulses which will never be anything more. There are impulses which may
become something more. There are impulses which are no longer anything
more. Impulses have their psychic aspect. At its lower limit, impulse may
appear very mechanical; at its upper, one may hesitate to say that desire
and will are wholly absent. It is not wise to regard impulse as lying
wholly beyond the sphere of will.

32. DESIRE.--At its lower limit, desire is not distinguished by any sharp
line from mere impulse. Is the infant that stretches out its hands toward
a bright object conscious of a desire to possess it? Or does the motion
made follow the visual sensation as the wail follows the wound made by
the pin? At a certain stage of development the phenomena of desire become
unmistakable. The idea of something to be attained, the notion of means
to the attainment of an end, the consciousness of tension, may stand out
clearly. The analysis of the psychologist, which finds in desire a
consciousness of the present state of the self, an idea of a future
state, and a feeling of tension towards the realization of the latter,
may represent faithfully the elements present in desire in the higher
stages of its development, but it would be difficult to find those
elements clearly marked in desire which has just begun to differentiate
itself from impulse. There may be a desire where there can scarcely be
said to be a self as an object of consciousness; one may desire where
there is no clear consciousness of a future state as distinct from a
present one.

Moreover, the consciousness of desire may be faint and fugitive, as it
may be intense and persistent. Desire is the step between the first
consciousness of the object and the voluntary release of energy which
works toward its attainment. This step may be passed over almost
unnoticed. The thought of shifting my position when I feel uncomfortable
may be followed by the act with no clear consciousness of a tension and
its voluntary release. The mere thought, itself but faintly and
momentarily in consciousness, appears to be followed at once by the act,
and desire and will to be eliminated. It does not follow that they are
actually eliminated; they may be present as fleeting shadows which fail
to attract attention.

If, however, the desire fails to find its immediate fruition, if it is
frustrated, consciousness of it may become exceedingly intense. There is
the constant thought of the object, a vivid feeling of tension, of a
striving to attain the object. Desire may become an obsession, a torment
filling the horizon, and the volition in which it finds its fruition
stands forth as a marked relief. This condition of things may be brought
about by the inhibition occasioned by the physical impossibility of
attaining the object; but it may also be brought about by the struggle of
incompatible desires among themselves. The man is drawn in different
directions, he is subject to various tensions, and he becomes acutely
conscious that he is impelled to move in several ways and is moving in
none.

I have used the word "tension" to describe the psychic fact present in
desire. I have done so for want of a better word. Of the physical basis
of desire, of what takes place in the brain, we know nothing. With the
psychic fact, the feeling of agitation and unrest, we are all familiar.
Of the tendency of desire to discharge itself in action we are aware. A
desire appears to be an inchoate volition--that which, if ripened
successfully and not nipped in the bud, would become a volition. It may
be looked upon as the first step toward action--a step which may or may
not be followed by others. It does not seem out of place to call it a
state of tension, of strain, of inclination. In speaking, thus, we use
physical metaphors, but they do not appear out of place.

33. DESIRE OF THE UNATTAINABLE.--But if a desire may be regarded as an
unripe act of will, an inchoate volition, how is it that we can desire
the unattainable, a sufficiently common experience? I may bitterly regret
some act of my own in the past; I may earnestly wish that I had not
performed it. But the past is irrevocable. Hence, the desire for the
attainment of what is in this case the object, a different past, can
hardly be regarded as even a preparatory step toward attainment.

In this case it can not, and were all desires directed upon what is in
the nature of the case wholly unattainable by effort, it would occur to
no one to speak of desire as a first step toward action. But normally and
usually desires are not of this nature. They usually do constitute a link
in the chain of occurrences which end in action. Did they not, they would
have little significance in the life-history of the creature desiring.
With the appearance of free ideas, with an extension of the range of
memory and imagination, objects may be held before the mind which are not
properly objects to be attained. Yet such objects are of the kind which
attract or repel, i.e., of the kind which men endeavor to realize in
action. They cannot be realized; we do not will to realize them; but we
should will to do so were they realizable. The psychic factor, the
strain, the tension, is unmistakably present. Real desire is revealed,
and common speech, as well as the language of science, recognizes the
fact.

This general attraction or repulsion exercised by objects, in spite of
the fact that the objects may not appear to be realizable, is not without
significance. The hindrance to realization may be an accidental one; it
may not be wholly insuperable. The presence of a persistent desire may
result in persistent effort, which may ultimately be crowned by success.
Or it may show itself as a permanent readiness for effort. Were every
frustrated desire at once dismissed from consciousness, the result would
show itself in a passivity detrimental to action in general. Where the
object is intrinsically an impossible one, persistent desire is, of
course, futile. The dog baying at the cat in the tree is the prey of such
a desire, but he does not realize it, or he might discontinue his
inefficacious leaps. The man tormented by his unworthy act in the past is
quite aware of the futility of his longings. His condition is
psychologically explicable, but to a rational being, in so far as
rational, it is not normal.

Normally, desire is the intermediate step between the recognition of an
object and the will to attain it. The most futile of desires may be
harbored. The imaginative mind may range over a limitless field, and give
itself up to desires the most extravagant. But indulgence in this habit
serves as a check to action serviceable to the individual and to the
race. As a matter of fact, desire is usually for what seems conceivably
within the limit of possible attainment. The man desires to catch a
train, to run that he may attain that end; his mind is little occupied
with the desire to fly, nor does his longing center upon the carpet of
Solomon. To the desirability of dismissing from the mind futile desires
current moral maxims bear witness.

34. WILL.--The natural fruition of a desire is, then, an act of will; the
tension is normally followed by that release of energy which makes for
the attainment of the object or end of the desire.

The question suggests itself, may there not be present, even in blindly
impulsive action, something faintly corresponding to desire and will?
That there should be an object in the sense of something aimed at, held
in view as an idea to be realized, appears to be out of the question. But
may there not be a more or less vague and evanescent sense of tension,
and some psychic fact which may be regarded as the shadowy forerunner of
the consciousness of the release of tension which, on a higher plane,
reveals itself as the consciousness of will? There may be: introspection
is not capable of answering the question, and one is forced to fall back
upon an argument from analogy. Blindly impulsive action and action in
which will indubitably and consciously plays a part are not wholly
unlike, but they differ by a very wide interval. The interval is not an
empty gap, however, for, as we have seen, all volitions do not stand out
upon the background of our consciousness with the same unmistakable
distinctness. There are volitions no one would hesitate to call such. And
there are phenomena resembling volition which we more and more doubtfully
include under that caption as we pass own on the descending scale.

Naturally, in describing desire and volition we do not turn to the
twilight region where all outlines are blurred and indistinct. We fix our
attention upon those instances in which the phenomena are clearly and
strongly marked. They are most clearly marked where desire does not, at
once and unimpeded, discharge itself in action, but where action is
deferred, and a struggle takes place between desires.

The man is subject to various tensions, he is impelled in divers
directions, he hesitates, deliberates, and he finally makes a decision.
During this period of deliberation he is apt to be vividly conscious of
desire as such--as a tension not yet relieved, as an alternation of
tensions as the attention occupies itself, first with one desirable
object, then with another. And the decision, which puts an end to the
strife, is clearly distinguished from the desires as such.

In the reflective mind, which turns its attention upon itself and its own
processes, the distinction between desire and will seems to be a marked
one. But it is not merely the developed and reflective mind which is the
seat of deliberation. The child deliberates between satisfying its
appetite and avoiding possible punishment; it reaches for the forbidden
fruit, and withdraws its hand; it wavers, it is moved in one direction as
one desire becomes predominant, and its action is checked as the other
gains in ascendency. Deliberation this unmistakably is. And deliberation
we may observe in creatures below the level of man; in the sparrow,
hopping as close as it dares to the hand that sprinkles crumbs before it;
in the dog, ready to dart away in pursuance of his private desires, but
restrained by the warning voice of his master. This is deliberation. Such
deliberation as we find in the developed and enlightened human being it
is not. That, however, there is present even in these humble instances,
some psychic fact corresponding to what in the higher mind reveals itself
as desire and volition, we have no reason to doubt.

35. DESIRE AND WILL NOT IDENTICAL.--I have had occasion to remark that
the modern psychologist draws no such sharp line between desire and
volition as the psychologist of an earlier time. That some distinction
should be drawn seems palpable. It is not without significance that
immemorial usage sanctions this distinction. The ancient Stoic's quarrel
was with the desires, not with the will. The will was treated as a master
endowed with rightful authority; the desires were subjects, often in
rebellion, but justly to be held in subjection. And from the days of the
Stoic down almost to our own, the will has been treated much as though it
were an especial and distinct faculty of man, not uninfluenced by desire,
but in no sense to be identified with it,--above it, its law-giver,
detached, independent, supreme. This tendency finds its culmination in
that impressive modern Stoic, Immanuel Kant, who desires to isolate the
will, and to emancipate it altogether from the influence of desire.

Recently the pendulum has swung in the other direction. It has been
recognized that will is the natural outcome of desire, and that without
desire there would be no will at all. It has even been maintained that
will _is_ desire, the desire "with which the self identifies
itself." [Footnote: See, for example, GREEN, _Prolegomena to
Ethics_, Sec 144-149.]

To this last form of expression objection may be made on the score of its
vagueness. What does it mean for the self to "identify" itself with a
desire? And if such an identification is necessary to will, can there be
volition or anything resembling volition where self-consciousness has not
yet been developed? It is very imperfectly developed in young children,
and in the lower animals still less developed, if at all; and yet we see
in them the struggle of desires and the resultant decision emerging in
action. If we call a volition in which consciousness of the self has
played its part "volition proper," it still remains to inquire how
volitions on a lower plane are to be distinguished from mere desires.

What happens in a typical case of deliberation and decision? Two or more
objects are before the mind and the attention occupies itself with them
successively. Tensions alternate, wax strong and die away, only to
recover their strength again. Finally the attention fixes upon one object
to the exclusion of others, the strife of desires come to an end, and
there is an inception of action in the direction of the realization of
that particular desire. The desire itself is not to be confounded with
the decision; the tension, with its release. The psychic fact is in the
two cases different. The decision brings relief from the strain. It
cannot properly be called a desire, not even a triumphant desire,
although in it a desire attains a victory and its realization has begun.

Such a victory not all desires, even when most intense and prolonged, are
able to attain. We have seen that the desire for the unattainable may
amount to an obsession, and yet it will not ripen into an act of
volition. The release of the tension in incipient action does not come.
The bent bow remains bent. From the sense of strain in such a case one
may be freed, as one is freed from the desires which succumb during the
process of deliberation, by the occupation of the attention with other
things. But the desire has been forgotten, not satisfied. It may at any
time recur in all its strength.

We cannot more nearly describe the psychic fact called decision. Just as
we cannot more nearly describe the psychic fact to which we have given
the name "tension." Although the nervous basis of the phenomena of desire
and will are unknown, we can easily conceive that, during desire, and
before desire has resulted in the release of energy which is the
immediate forerunner of action, the cerebral occurrence should be
different from that which is present when that release takes place. Nor
should it be surprising that the psychical fact corresponding to each
should be different.

The view here set forth does not confuse desire and will, making will
indistinguishable from desire, or, at least, from certain desires. On the
other hand, it does not separate them, as though they could not be
brought within the one series of occurrences which may properly be
regarded as a unit. It has the advantage of making comprehensible the
mutual relations of impulse, desire, and will. Blind impulse discharges
itself in action seemingly without the psychic accompaniments which
distinguish desire and will. But all impulse is not blind impulse, and
desiring and willing admit of many degrees of development. To deny will
to creatures lower than man, as some writers have done, is to misconceive
the nature of the process that issues in action. We are tempted to do it
only when we compare will in its highest manifestations with those
rudimentary foreshadowings of it which stand at the lower end of the
scale. But even in man we can discern blind impulse, dimly conscious
desires which ripen into as dimly recognized decisions, and, at the very
top of the scale, conscious decisions which follow deliberation, and are
the resultant of a struggle between many desires.

For ethical science it is of no little importance to apprehend clearly
the relation of decision to desire. Moral rules aim to control human
conduct, and conduct is the expression of the whole man. If we have no
clear conception of the desires which struggle for the mastery within
him, and of the relation of his decisions to those desires, in vain will
we endeavor to influence him in the direction in which we wish him to
move.