am proposing to call 'hunger,' not some possibly mythical and certainly unknowable ingredient of the animal's mind. Generalizing what occurs in the case of hunger, we may say that what we call a desire in an animal is always displayed in a cycle of actions having certain fairly well-marked characteristics. There is first a state of activity, consisting, with qualifications to be mentioned presently, of movements likely to have a certain result; these movements, unless interrupted, continue until the result is achieved, after which there is usually a period of comparative quiescence. A cycle of actions of this sort has marks by which it is broadly distinguished from the motions of dead matter. The most notable of these marks are (1) the appropriateness of the actions for the realization of a certain result, (2) the continuance of action until that result has been achieved. Neither of these can be pressed beyond a point. Either may be (a) to some extent present in dead matter, and (b) to a considerable extent absent in animals, while vegetables are intermediate, and display only a much fainter form of the behavior which leads us to attribute desire to animals. (a) One might say that rivers 'desire' the sea: water, roughly speaking, remains in restless motion until it reaches either the sea or a place from which it cannot issue without going uphill, and, therefore, we might say that this is what it wishes while it is flowing. We do not say so, because we can account for the behavior of water by the laws of physics; and if we knew more about animals, we might equally cease to attribute desires to them, since we might find physical and chemical reaccions sufficient to account for their behavior. (b) Many of the movements of animals do not exhibit the characteristics of the cycles which seem to embody desire. There are first of all the movements which are 'involuntary,' such as slipping and falling, where ordinary physical forces operate upon the animal's body almost as if it were dead matter. An animal which falls over a cliff may make a number of desperate struggles while it is in the air, but its centre of gravity will move exactly as it would if the animal were dead. In this case, if the animal is killed at the end of the fall, we have, at first sight, just the characteristics of a cycle of actions embodying desire, namely, restless movement, until the ground is reached, and then quiescence. Nevertheless, we feel no temptation to say that the animal desired what occurred, partly because of the obviously mechanical nature of the whole occurrence, partly because, when an animal survives a fall, it tends not to repeat the experience. There may be other reasons also, but of them I do not wish to speak yet. Besides involuntary movements, there are interrupted movements, as when a bird, on its way to eat your best peas, is frightened away by the boy whom you are employing for that purpose. If interruptions are frequent and completion of cycles rare, the characteristics by which cycles are observed may become so blurred as to be almost unrecognizable. The result of these various considerations is that the differences between ani.nals and dead matter, when we confine ourselves to external unscientific observation of integral behavior, are a matter of degree and not very precise. It is for this reason that it has always been possible for fanciful people to maintain that even stocks and stones have some vague kind of soul. The evidence that animals have souls is so very shaky that, if it is assumed to be conclusive, one might just as well go a step further and extend the argument by analogy to all matter. Nevertheless, in spite of vagueness and doubtful cases, the existence of cycles in the behavior of animals is a broad characteristic by which they are prima facie distinguished from ordinary matter; and I think it is this characteristic which leads us to attribuce desires to animals, since it makes their behavior resemble what we do when (as we say) we are acting from desire. I shall adopt the following definitions for describing the behavior of animals: A 'behavior-cycle' is a series of voluntary or reflex movements of an animal, tending to cause a certain result, and continuing until that result is caused, unless they are interrupted by death, accident, or some new behavior-cycle. (Here 'accident' may be defined as the intervention of purely physical laws causing involuntary movements.) The 'purpose' of a behavior-cycle is the result which brings it to an end, normally by a condition of temporary quiescence-provided there is no interruption. An animal is said to 'desire' the purpose of a behavior-cycle while the behavior-cycle is in progress. I believe these definitions to be adequate also to human purposes and desires, but for the present I am only occupied with animals and with what can be learned by external observation. I am very anxious that no ideas should be attached to the words 'purpose' and 'desire' beyond those involved in the above definitions. We have not so far considered what is the nature of the initial stimulus to a behavior-cycle. Yet it is here that the usual view of desire seems on the strongest ground. The hungry animal goes on making movements until it gets food; it seems natural, therefore, to suppose that the idea of food is present throughout the process, and that the thought of the end to be achieved sets the whole process in motion. Such a view, however, is obviously untenable in many cases, especially where instinct is concerned. Take, for example, reproduction and the rearing of the young. Birds mate, build a nest, lay eggs in it, sit on the eggs, feed the young birds, and care for them until they are fully grown. It is totally impossible to suppose that this series of actions, which constitutes one behavior-cycle, is inspired by any prevision of the end, at any rate the first time it is performed. We must suppose that the stimulus to the performance of each act is an impulsion from behind, not an attraction from the future. The bird does what it does, at each stage, because it has an impulse to that particular action, not because it perceives that the whole cycle of actions will contribute to the preservation of the species. The same considerations apply to other instincts. A hungry animal feels restless, and is led by instinctive impulses to perform the movements which give it nourishment; but the act of seeking food is not sufficient evidence from which to conclude that the animal has the thought of food in its 'mind.' Coming now to human beings, and to what we know about our own actions, it seems clear that what, with us, sets a behavior-cycle in motion is some sensation of the sort which we call disagreeable. Take the case of hunger. We have first an uncomfortable feeling inside, producing a disinclination to sit still, a sensitiveness to savory smells, and an attraction toward any food that there may be in our neighborhood. At any moment during this process we may become aware that we are hungry, in the sense of say ing to ourselves, I am hungry'; but we may have been acting with reference to food for some time before this moment. While we are talking or reading, we may eat in complete unconsciousness; but we perform the actions of eating just as we should if we were conscious, and they cease when our hunger is appeased. What we call 'consciousness' seems to be a mere spectator of the process; even when it issues orders, they are usually, like those of a wise parent, just such as would have been obeyed even if they had not been given. This view may seem at first exaggerated, but the more our so-called volitions and their causes are examined, the more it is forced upon us. The part played by words in all this is complicated, and a potent source of confusions; but I shall ignore it for the present, since I am still concerned with primitive desire, as it exists in man, but in the form in which man shows his affinity to his animal ancestors. Conscious desire is made up partly of what is essential to desire, partly of beliefs as to what we want; what is essential to primitive desire is not cognitive. The primitive non-cognitive element in desire seems to be a push, not a pull, an impulsion away from the actual, rather than an attraction toward the ideal. Certain sensations and other mental occurrences have a property which we call discomfort; these cause such bodily movements as are likely to lead to their cessation. When the discomfort ceases, or even when it appreciably diminishes, we have sensations possessing a property which we call pleasure. Pleasurable sensations either stimulate no action at all, or at most stimulate such action as is likely to prolong them. I shall return shortly to the consideration of what discomfort and pleasure are in themselves; for the present, it is their connection with action and desire that concerns us. Hungry animals, we may suppose, experience sensations involving discomfort, and stimulating such movements as seem likely to bring them to the food which is outside the cages. When they have reached the food and eaten it, their discomfort ceases and their sensations become pleasurable. It seems, mistakenly, as if the animals had had this situation in mind throughout, when in fact they have been continually pushed by discomfort. And when an animal is reflective, like some men, it comes to think that it had the final situation in mind throughout; sometimes it comes to know what situation will bring satisfaction, so that, in fact, the discomfort does bring the thought of what will allay it. Nevertheless, the sensation involving discomfort remains the prime mover. This brings us to the question of the nature of discomfort and pleasure. There are, broadly, three theories that might be held in regard to them. We may regard them as separate existing items in those who experience them, or we may regard them as intrinsic qualities of sensations and other mental occurrences, or we may regard them as mere names for the causal characteristics of the occurrences which are uncomfortable or pleasant. The first of these theories, namely, that which regards discomfort and pleasure as actual contents in those who experience them, has, I think, not much to be said in its favor, it is suggested chiefly by an ambiguity in the word 'pain,' which has misled many people, including Berkeley, whom it supplied with one of his arguments for subjective idealism. We may use 'pain' as the opposite of 'pleasure,' and 'painful' as the opposite of 'pleasant,' or we may use 'pain' to mean a certain sort of sensation, on a level with the sensations of heat and cold and touch. The latter use of the word has prevailed in psychological literature, and it is now no longer used The confusion between discomfort and pain has made people regard discomfort as a more substantial thing than it is, and this in turn has reacted upon the view taken of pleasure, since discomfort and pleasure are evidently on a level in this respect. As soon as discomfort is clearly distinguished from the sensation of pain, it becomes more natural to regard discomfort and pleasure as properties of mental occurrences than to regard them as separate mental occurrences on their own account. I shall, therefore, dismiss the view that they are separate mental occurrences, and regard them properties of such experiences as would be called respectively uncomfortable and pleasant. as It remains to be examined whether they are actual qualities of such occurrences, or are merely differences as to causal properties. I do not myself see any way of deciding this question; either view seems equally capable of accounting for the facts. If this is true, it is safer to avoid the assumption that there are such intrinsic qualities of mental occurrences as are in question, and to assume only the causal differences which are undeniable. Without condemning the intrinsic theory, we can define discomfort and pleasure as consisting in causal properties, and say only what will hold on either theory. Following this course, we shall say: 'Discomfort' is a property of a sensation or other mental occurrence, consisting in the fact that the occurrence in question stimulates voluntary or reflex movements tending to produce some more or less definite change involving the cessation of the occurrence. any voluntary or reflex movement, or, if it does, stimulates only such as tend to prolong the occurrence in question. These definitions need to be supplemented by a definition of the sort of movements that can be called 'voluntary' or 'reflex.' The movements of our bodies are of three sorts, mechanical, reflex, and voluntary. By a 'mechanical' movement I mean one which does not depend upon the special properties of nervous tissue. When a man falls over a precipice, his nervous tissue behaves as so much ponderable matter, except in so far as he struggles while in mid-air. Just as we distinguish chemical properties of certain sorts of matter from physical properties of all matter, so we distinguish physiological properties of living matter from properties which it shares with dead matter. Mechanical movements are such as do not involve the special properties of living matter. All our other movements are either voluntary or reflex, and for our purposes it is unnecessary to discriminate between the two. The view of desire to which we have so far been led differs widely from the ordinary view, which regards desire as in its essence an attitude toward something imagined, not actual, called the end' of the desire, and the 'purpose' of any action resulting from the desire. The discomfort associated with unsatisfied desire, and the actions which are said to aim at satisfying desire, are both, on this view, effects of the desire. Our chief argument, so far, against this view, has been that we can judge of desires from the outside. It remains to examine desire in the form in which it is accompanied by the idea of an ‘end' or 'purpose.' My contention will be that desire of this sort differs from primitive desire only by the addition of a belief which is often erroneous, and has little connection with what 'Pleasure' is a property of a sensation or other mental occurrence, consisting in the fact that the occurrence in question either does not stimulate gives operative force to the desire. [The London Mercury] THE FUTURE POET AND OUR TIME BY J. C. SQUIRE HERE is our world in motion. We see a corner of it through our eyes. A man will march down a street with a crowd, or watch the politicians' cabs turning into Palace Yard, or make speeches, or stand on the deck of a scurrying destroyer in the North Sea, or mount guard in a Mesopotamian desert. A minute section of the greater panorama passes before him. In imagination he will, according to his information and his habit of mind, visualize what he sees as a part of what he does not see: the human conflict over five continents, climates and clothes, multitudes, passions, voices, states, soldiers, negotiations. Each newspaper that he opens swarms with a confusion of events and argument, of names familiar and unfamiliar Wilson, Geddes, Czecho-Slovakia, Yudenitch, Shantung, and ten thousand more. For the eye there is a medley, for the ear a great din. As far as he can, busy with his daily pursuits, a man usually ignores it when it does not intrude to disturb him. When most unsettled, the life of the world is most fatiguing. The spectacle is formless and without a centre; the characters rise and fall, conspicuous one day, forgotten the next. The newspapers mechanically repeat that we are at the greatest crisis of history, and that a great drama is being unrolled.' We are aware that the fortunes of our civilization have been and are in the balance. But we are in the wood and cannot see it as we see the French Revolution. It is difficult, even with the strongest effort of imagination, to visualize the process as history will record it. To pick out those episodes and those persons that will haunt the imagination of posterity by their color and force is more difficult still. An event, contemporaneously, is an event; a man is a man who eats, drinks, wears collars, makes speeches, bandies words with others, and is photographed for the newspapers. Yet we know that a time will come when these years will be seen in far retrospect as the years of Elizabeth or of Robespierre are now. The judgments of the political scientist and the historian will be made: these men will arrange their sequences and their scales of importance. They will deduce effects and measure out praise and blame. With them we are not concerned. But others beyond them will look at our time. We shall have left our legacy for the imagination. What will it be? Who of contemporary figures may we guess as likely to be the heroes of plays and the subjects of poems? Which of the multitudinous events of these years will give a stock subject to tragedy? Which of the men whom we praise or abuse will seem to posterity larger than human, and go with gestures across their stages, clad in an antique fashion? For to that age we shall be strange; whether our mechanical arts have died and left us to haunt the memory of our posterity as a race of unquiet demons, or whether 'progress' along our lines shall have |