We desire concrete THINGS, without reference
to their bearing on our happiness. We even go directly and consciously
counter to our happiness at times, deliberately sacrifice it, perhaps
for some foolish fancy. The idealist in politics expects to get no
pleasure out of what his associates deem his pigheadedness; but he
has seen a vision and he keeps true to it. Regulus did not go back
to Carthage to be tortured to death for the pleasure of it, or to avoid
the greater pain of an uneasy conscience; he went in spite of foreseen
pain and the allurement of possible pleasure. When a man endures
privations for the sake of posthumous fame, it is not that he expects
to enjoy that fame when it comes, or expects others to enjoy it; he
is simply so made that he cannot resist the sway of that ambition which
will bring him no good. The pursuit of pleasure is a sophisticated
impulse which appears in marked degree only in a few self-conscious
and idle individuals. William James gave the deathblow to this
pleasure-seeking psychology. "Important as is the influence of pleasures
and pains upon our movements, they are far from being our only stimuli.
With the manifestations of instinct and emotional expression, for
example, they have absolutely nothing to do. Who smiles for the pleasure
of smiling, or frowns for the pleasure of the frown? Who blushes to
escape the discomfort of not blushing? Or who in anger, grief, or fear
is actuated to the movements which he makes by the pleasures which
they yield? In all these cases the movements are discharged fatally
by the vis a tergo which the stimulus exerts upon a nervous system
framed to respond in just that way.
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