We must next consider whether, in fact, the oblique aim at happiness is
really the most effectual.

A few words, first, as to the original source of the doctrine of a
devious course. Bishop Butler is renowned for his distinction between
Self-Love and Appetite; he contends that in Appetite the object of
pursuit is not the pleasure of eating, but the food: consequently,
eating is not properly a self-seeking act, it is an indifferent or
disinterested act, to which there is an incidental accompaniment of
pleasure. We should, under the stimulus of Hunger, seek the food,
whether it gave us pleasure or not.

Now, any truth that there is in Butler's view amounts to this:--In our
Appetites we are not thinking every instant of subduing pain and
attaining pleasure; we are ultimately moved by these feelings; but,
having once seen that the medium of their gratification is a certain
material object (food), we direct our whole aim to procuring that. The
hungry wolf ceases to think of his pains of hunger when he is in sight
of a sheep; but for these pains he would have paid no heed to the sheep;
yet when the sheep has to be caught, the hunger is submerged for the
time; the only relevant course, even on its account, is to give the
whole mind and body to the chase of the sheep. Butler calls this
indifferent or disinterested pursuit; and as much as says, that the wolf
is not self-seeking, but sheep-seeking, in its chase. Now, it is quite
true that if the wolf could give no place in its mind for anything but
its hungry pains, it would be in a bad way. It is wiser than that; it
knows the remedy; it is prepared to dismiss the pains from its thoughts,
in favour of a concentrated attention upon the distant flock. This
proves nothing as to its unselfishness; nor does it prove that Appetite
is a different thing from self-seeking or self-love.