function ; and he sets forth as the only true pleasure the pleasure of the good man. Pleasure, according to Plato, is always a process towards the normal condition of a subject, and is never in itself an end. The absence of finality from pleasure proves that pleasure taken by itself could never be the end of life. The treatment of pleasure and pain is con- ducted by Plato always from a moral point of view.
While Aristotle builds so far on the results of the analysis of Plato, yet he is dissatisfied ^ith the argument that pleasure cannot be the .tiiiiimnui bonum because it is a mere process towards an end. Pleasure, he contends, is an ivipyua ; it arises from the unimpeded operation of our faculties ; it arises when an organ which acts perfectly comes into contact with its appropriate object, just as pain is the outcome of thwarted action on the part of either a sensitive or an intellectual faculty (Eth. Nic. vii. 12, 1153. 13). The moral value of the feelings of pleasure and pain arises, says Aristotle, out of the fact that by means of them man passes from a state of a merely cognitive and intellectual being, and becomes a moral and active being. ' It is when the sense perceives something as pleasant or painful tliat the mind affirms or denies it, jiur- sues or avoids it' (iii. 7. 2, 431. 8). Aristotle has ever before him the unity and wholeness of luiman nature. He is never merely intellectual, and is never wholly practical. He always lays stress on the corresjjondence between the speculative and the practical sides of human nature. Truth and error in the intellectual sphere become good and evil in the moral sphere. What the mind affirms as truth and error in the intellectual sphere becomes pursuit and avoidance in the practical sphere. In both spheres the mind is active. Impressions in the cognitive sphere become, through the activity of the subject, objects of cognition ; feelings of plea.sure and pain, through a similar activity of the subject, are translated into objects of desire or aversion ; become motives to action.
Two main factors, according to Aristotle, enter into the conative nature of man. It is difficult within our limits to expound this fully. But, briefly, it is that Desire and Reason must co-operate in order tliat a moral conclu.sion may be carried into effect. Moral choice or wpoalpeiris may be described as voSi ipeKTiKds, reason stimulated by desire, or Spe^it 5i.avo-qTi.Kri, desire guided by understanding. The significant part of the view is that both the irrational and the rational elements must act to- ;;cilii r : desire and reason are constant elements in ilistinetive moral action. For the merely logical understanding never leads to action. Reason, as mere reasoning, is powerless to shape the will, and mere appetite is quite as powerless. In order to cause action, pleasure and pain must be translated into the higher forms of Good and Evil. Desire must always have an object {dpeKTiKbv Si ovk dvev (pavraaia^ (433". 28)) ; but the object of desire deter- mines conduct only when thought has marked it out, defined it, and in a word constituted it (tA 6p€K7tKbv Kivel ov fOTjdTJvfu 7) (pafTaa&ijvat (433''. 12)).
'The true object of consciousness in thia union ot desire and
""n.a','"" Ah.l""'!. i! '' ' i 1 I '. •. il.i- ..l.j.-.i, of our final wish is ti ; rl ii I ,ii lliroufith tlie ag^ency of
it which determines desire : f conduct turns
It aspects of one and iwn e\j>erience it is ■inciple and startinj^-
■t dehnitely what is this object of iinnes and regulates our natural of an idealist. For while the I IS but the apparent and relativ e IS the absolute ideal good : and
DESIRE
451
idea of good ns the constructive reason which j;;ives Ijoth Itnow- ledge and reality to things, now finds the determining aim of con- duct in an absolute ideal which constitutes the pattern to which morality must raise itself (Aristotle's Psycholocji/ in Greek and Emjlish, with Introduction and Notes, hy Edwin' Wallace, M.A., Introduction, p. cxxiii f.).
We quote from Mr. Wallace, whose work represents the high- water mark of Aristotelian exposition, as it sets forth in brief space an interpretation of Aristotle which deserves study. It may be that Mr. Wallace has read Hegel into Aristotle, but in the present case he is right in saying that for Aristotle the world of desire is a rational world, and that the ground of conduct is the union of desire and reason. In short, the view of Aristotle corresponds to the definition of desire set forth by Professor Mackenzie. ' It is then,' says Aristotle, 'on good grounds that people have viewed as springs of action these two faculties of desire and practical intellect ; for the faculty of desire has itself a motive force, and the intellect excites to action just in so far as the object of desire supplies it with a starting-point: just as, similarly, imagination when it moves to action does not do so independently of desire. The spring of action thus resolves itself into one single thing, viz. the object of desire' (Wallace's tr. p. 179).
As to the question whether animals can liave desires, Ai-istotle decides that ' no animal can have the faculty of desire unless it Iiave imaginative power' (Wallace, p. 183) ; but then, as imaginative power is connected with the reason or the senses, so animals may have the imaginative power con- nected with the senses, and thus have what can be designated desires. But they do not possess the kind of desire wliieh forms itself as the conclusion of syllogism, so that their desire is destitute of any faculty of deliberation. ' In the case of men, however, sometimes the images of sense overcome and move tlie rational volition ; sometimes, as in incontinence, two things overcome and stir up one another, desire thus following on desire, mucli as a ball that players toss about ; but tlie normal and natural course is always that in which the superior course of reason is the more supreme and stimulates to action' (pi?. 184-185). Desire thus, according to Aristotle, implies deliberation, choice, the use of means towards an end. In a .significant passage in the Nicomachean Ethics he says (we quote the paraphrase of Sir A. Grant) : ' If the object of purpose is that which, being in our power, we desire after deliberation, purpose will be a desire of things in our jiower. After deliberating we decide, and form a desire in accordance with our deliberation ' (Grant's Aristotle's Ethics, vol. ii. p. 23). Desire ranges, according to Aristotle, through all life. Wlierever life is in presence of an object there is rudimentary desire. The animal world feels it in presence of an object present to its senses. A self-conscious being feels desire in pro- portion to its realization of self, and to its realiza- tion of the objects as existing in an ordered world. It is possible to regard the teaching of Aristotle as containing in itself the fuller analysis of desire as that analysis has been conducted by English Hedonists and by the English Neo-Hegelians.