556 PSYCHOLOGY. 



ing impulse, for example. If such an impulse is arrested, 

 however, by an extrinsic force, a great feeling of uneasiness 

 is produced — for instance, the dyspnoea of asthma. And 

 in proportion as the arresting force is then overcome, relief 

 acrues — as when we draw breath again after the asthma sub- 

 sides. The relief is a pleasure and the uneasiness a pain ; 

 and thus it happens that round all our impulses, merely as 

 such, there twine, as it were, secondary possibilities of 

 pleasant and painful feeling, involved in the manner in 

 which the act is allowed to occur. These pleasui'es and 

 pains of achievement, discharge, or fruition exist, no matter 

 what the original spring of action be. We are glad when 

 we have successfully got ourselves out of a danger, though 

 the thought of the gladness was surely not what suggested 

 to us to escape. To have compassed the steps towards a 

 proposed sensual indulgence also makes us glad, and this 

 gladness is a pleasure additional to the pleasure originally 

 proposed. On the other hand, we are chagrined and dis- 

 pleased when any activity, however instigated, is hindered 

 whilst in process of actual discharge. We are ' uneasy ' 

 till the discharge starts up again. And this is just as true 

 when the action is neutral, or has nothing but pain in view 

 as its result, as when it was undertaken for jjleasure's ex- 

 press sake. The moth is probably as annoyed if hindered 

 from getting into the lamp-flame as the roue is if inter- 

 rupted in his debauch ; and we are chagrined if prevented 

 from doing some quite unimportant act which would have 

 given us no noticeable pleasure if done, merely because the 

 prevention itself is disagreeable. 



Let us now call the pleasure for the sake of which the 

 act may be done the pursued pleasure. It follows that, even 

 when no pleasure is pursued by an act, the act itself may be 

 the pleasantest line of conduct when once the impulse has 

 begun, on account of the incidental pleasure which then 

 attends its successful achievement and the pain which would 

 come of interruption. A pleasant act and an act pursuing a 

 pleasure are in themselves, however, two perfectly distinct 

 conceptions, though they coalesce in one concrete phenome- 

 non whenever a pleasure is deliberately pursued. I cannot 

 help thinking that it is the confusion of pursued pleasure 



