chapter, and many of our habits too, contain no precise reference to
our self. Intelligent, purposeful, moral conduct, however, is
everywhere shaped by the hope of improving the condition of him who
acts. We do not act till we find something within or about us
unsatisfactory. If contemplating myself in my actual conditions I
could pronounce them all good, creation would for me be at an end. To
start it, some sense of need is required. Accordingly I have named
desire as the second state in the formation of a purpose, for desire
is precisely this sense of disparity between our actual self and that
possible bettered self depicted in the ideal.

Popular speech, however, does not here state the matter quite fully.
We often talk as if our desires were for other things than ourselves.
We say, for example, "I want a glass of water." In reality it is not
the water I want. That is but a fragment of my desire. It is water
plus self. Only so is the desire fully uttered. Beholding my present
self, my thirsty and defective self, I perceive a side of myself
requiring to be bettered. Accordingly, among imagined pictures of
possible futures I identify myself with that one which represents me
supplied with water. But it is not water that is the object of my
desire, it is myself as bettered by water. Since, however, this
betterment of self is a constant factor of all desire, we do not
ordinarily name it. We say, "I desire wealth, I desire the success of
my friend, or the freedom of my country," omitting the important and
never absent portion of the desire, the betterment of self.

Of course a stage in the formation of the purpose so important as
desire receives a multitude of names. Perhaps the simplest is
appetite. In appetite I do not know what I want. I am blindly impelled
in a certain direction. I do not perceive that I have a suffering