Spinoza’s _dictum_, followed by Volkmann, that we do not desire a thing because we deem it good, but we deem it good because we desire it, is not borne out by the commonest facts. A peddler shows me an apple, but I do not desire it and then deem it good, but I examine it, and if it seems good I may desire and buy it, but if bad, I have aversion, and return it. My desire thus depends altogether upon whether or not I deem the apple good, and not my deeming it good upon my desire. If I see any one desiring anything I at once judge that he first thought it good or he would not have desired it. All the excitation of desire is by representation of the good. The merchant tempts you by exhibiting his _goods_, the child with candy offers it to you crying, “good! good!” the moralist proclaims, “do this and thou shalt live.” The cause of desire, which for weal or woe plays such a large part in almost all psychism, is always by imaging the good. The bait and the reward as excitants of desire are most common; a mere suggestion of a representation without implication of its goodliness in realization does not excite desire. Thus some one, speaking of a totally unknown town, asks, “How would you like to live in Perry?” and we answer, “Is it a pleasant town?” A mere suggestion of change of abode starts desire only when there is already displeasure with present residence, and so desire for release as a good; but image of actualization considered solely by itself is desireless. And if to excite desire we offer the good or pleasurable, to extinguish desire we offer the bad and painful. I desire a fair looking apple, but cutting it and finding it wormy and rotten, desire flees. I extinguish the desire of a child for eating some noxious substance by assuring it of the bad taste and nauseating effect. Both positively and negatively then, common sense finds the basis, not of the good in desire, but of desire in the good. The facts in both exciting and extinguishing desire point to this conclusion.
Spinoza (_Ethics_ iii., Prop ix.) defines desire as “appetite with consciousness thereof.” But to be aware of being hungry is but the first step toward desire. In the midst of my daily occupations I become aware of pain, then of uneasiness, then of hunger, whereupon I may desire food, which desire includes as distinct elements: (1) idea of eating as act or movement; (2) idea of the thing eaten as _food_, a something satisfying; affording relief, and so a good; (3) thereupon the emotion wave of longing, the essential point in desire. This is, of course, followed by volition, I act to realize, I go to a restaurant. When Höffding (_Psychology_, p. 323) says that the impulse in hunger “has reference primarily to the food, not to the feeling of pleasure in its consumption,” he forgets that “food” is a something satisfying, and only thus is desired. Object is not desired as object, but for its value in experience.