Handbook of Ethical Theory by George Stuart Fullerton (e reader TXT) 📕

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.