WILL. 655 



all the disguises that wrap up what we call motives, something of one 

 or other of these two grand, conditions can be detected. " * 



Accordingly, where Professor Bain finds an exception to 

 this rule, he refuses to call the phenomenon a ' genuinely 

 voluntary impulse.' The exceptions, he admits, ' are those 

 furnished by never-dying spontaneity, habits, and fixed 

 ideas.' t Fixed ideas * traverse the proper course of voli- 

 tion.' t 



" Disinterested impulses are wholly distinct from the attainment of 

 pleasure and the avoidance of pain. . . . The theory of disinterested 

 action, in the only form that I can conceive it, supposes that tlie action 

 of the will and the attainment of happiness do not square throughout. "§ 



Sympathy " has this in common with the Fixed Idea, 

 that it clashes with the regular outgoings of the will in 

 favor of our pleasures."! 



Prof. Bain thus admits all the essential facts. Pleasure 

 and pain are motives of only part of our activity. But he 

 prefers to give to that part of the activity exclusively which 

 these feelings prompt the name of ' regular outgoings ' and 

 * genuine impulses ' of the will, IF and to treat all the rest as 

 mere paradoxes and anomalies, of which nothing rational 

 can be said. This amounts to taking one species of a 

 genus, calling it alone by the generic name, and ordering 

 the other co-ordinate species to find what names they may. 

 At bottom this is only verbal play. How much more con- 

 ducive to clearness and insight it is to take the genus 

 ' springs of action ' and treat it as a whole ; and then to 

 distinguish within it the species ' pleasure and pain ' from 

 whatever other species may be found ! 



There is, it is true, a complication in the relation of 

 pleasure to action, which partly excuses those who make 

 it the exclusive spur. This complication deserves some 

 notice at our hands. 



An impulse which discharges itself immediately is gen- 

 erally quite neutral as regards pleasure or pain — the breath- 



* P. 354. f P. 355. I P. 390. 



§ Pp. 295-6. II P. 121. 



1 Cf. also Bain's note to Jas. Mill's Analysis, vol. ii. p. 305. 



