“Life,” wrote James Martineau,[177] “is a cluster of wants physical, intellectual, affectional, moral, each of which may have, and all of which may miss, the fitting object. Is the object withheld or lost? there is pain: is it restored or gained? there is pleasure: does it abide or remain constant? there is content. The two first are cases of disturbed equilibrium, and are so far dynamic that they will not rest till they reach the third, which is their posture of stability and their true end.” This is an adequate description of the essential features in conative process. But in genetic precedence, as in individual development, the physical wants come first, and, at the outset of behaviour, the satisfaction or content is not and cannot be foreseen, since it has never yet entered into experience. To adopt a distinction suggested by Professor Mackenzie,[178] the conation is _purposive_, since we see that an end is involved, but not _purposeful_, since there is no definite consciousness of the end aimed at. But when experience has introduced feeling-tone into the situation, we may say that this, in a sense, introduces a new end to subsequent behaviour.
Mr. Herbert Spencer has said[179] that pleasure is that which we seek to bring into consciousness and retain there; pain, that which we seek to get out of consciousness and keep out. May we assert, then, that, in the modification of behaviour due to experience, the pleasure to be gained or the pain to be avoided is the psychological end? Certainly not without qualification, unless we be among those who are content to accept any form of words which gives a general sort of notion of the kind of thing which we suppose is meant, and which is probably more or less correct. We want here and now to get clear ideas, and to express them with some approach to accuracy. To say that pleasure is the psychological end of intelligent behaviour is to put the matter too subjectively and in too abstract a form. Professor Mackenzie has clearly indicated the ambiguity in the word “pleasure.” “Pleasure,” he says,[180] “is sometimes understood to mean agreeable _feeling_, or the feeling of satisfaction, and sometimes it is understood to mean an _object_ which gives satisfaction. The hearing of music is sometimes said to be a pleasure, but of course the hearing of music is not a feeling of satisfaction; it is an object that gives satisfaction. Generally, it may be observed that when we speak of ‘pleasures’ in the plural, or rather in the concrete, we mean objects that give satisfaction; whereas when we speak of ‘pleasure’ in the abstract, we more often mean the feeling of satisfaction which such objects bring with them.” May we not go a step further, but entirely in the same direction, and say that pleasure is a constituent part of the concept self as an object of thought or desire; that its proper sphere is in the ideational consciousness; and that, as we interpret the animal mind, it has no place as such therein? The hedonist regards pleasure as the most excellent and distinctive characteristic of his ideal self and his ideal community. But animals have not risen or fallen to the level of hedonism. Pleasure is not for them a motive of conduct, though nice objects, as such, are attractive, and through them impulse acquires direction and force.