disputed: and the objection made will be, not that desire can possibly
be directed to anything ultimately except pleasure and exemption from
pain, but that the will is a different thing from desire; that a person
of confirmed virtue, or any other person whose purposes are fixed,
carries out his purposes without any thought of the pleasure he has in
contemplating them, or expects to derive from their fulfilment; and
persists in acting on them, even though these pleasures are much
diminished, by changes in his character or decay of his passive
sensibilities, or are outweighed by the pains which the pursuit of the
purposes may bring upon him. All this I fully admit, and have stated it
elsewhere, as positively and emphatically as any one. Will, the active
phenomenon, is a different thing from desire, the state of passive
sensibility, and though originally an offshoot from it, may in time take
root and detach itself from the parent stock; so much so, that in the
case of an habitual purpose, instead of willing the thing because we
desire it, we often desire it only because we will it. This, however, is
but an instance of that familiar fact, the power of habit, and is nowise
confined to the case of virtuous actions. Many indifferent things, which
men originally did from a motive of some sort, they continue to do from
habit. Sometimes this is done unconsciously, the consciousness coming
only after the action: at other times with conscious volition, but
volition which has become habitual, and is put into operation by the
force of habit, in opposition perhaps to the deliberate preference, as
often happens with those who have contracted habits of vicious or
hurtful indulgence. Third and last comes the case in which the habitual
act of will in the individual instance is not in contradiction to the
general intention prevailing at other times, but in fulfilment of it; as
in the case of the person of confirmed virtue, and of all who pursue
deliberately and consistently any determinate end. The distinction
between will and desire thus understood, is an authentic and highly