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them, and the deer feeds on the herbage, likewise in obedience 
to its instinct ; and no one supposes that the lion or the deer 
acts in such cases from a conviction that food is necessary to 
their existence, or that herbivorous or carnivorous diet, as the 
case may be, is suitable for them. Nor can we suppose that 
they are aware of the more remote objects which they are ful- 
filling in the economy of Nature — that the lion is keeping down 
the excess of herbivorous animals, and that the deer is keep- 
ing down the excess of vegetation. Each animal acts according 
to the instinct implanted in him ; and although his actions are 
beneficial to himself, yet the knowledge that they are beneficial 
is plainly not his own knowledge. We cannot prove, indeed, 
that the lion does not perceive all the direct and indii’ect objects 
which he is fulfilling when he kills and eats the deer, any more 
than we can prove that he has not discovered a method of 
squaring the circle; but, in the absence of any evidence to the 
contrary, we are tolerably safe in assuming that he is actuated 
by an instinctive desire, and that a knowledge of the benefit 
resulting from the action has no share in its production. 
17. Granting, therefore, that all voluntary actions — I mean 
here all actions which are not performed under compulsion are 
beneficial to the agent, we must nevertheless divide actions, 
according to the method of their production, into two classes, 
those in which the agent is aware of the benefit resulting from 
the action, and those in which he is not. In the latter case 
the action is, and can be, only produced by desire ; in the 
former case, where the action proceeds from the knowledge 
possessed by the agent, it is questionable whether the term 
“desire ” is properly applicable to the inclination which draws 
him to the performance of the action. I of course except 
those cases where the desire is excited by the introduction of 
an image capable of awakening it. At all events actions are 
frequently produced by strong rational motives without any 
indication of desire. Let us suppose one man to murder 
another in a sudden access of passion, and that, beyond the 
gratification of the momentary impulse, the action is in no way 
beneficial to him. Here the murderer acts in obedience to an 
instinct which was originally implanted in him for the purpose 
of his self-preservation, and the indulgence of which, if he w r ere 
nothing more than an animal, might be, as a general rule, 
beneficial to him. But in the present instance his action is 
not caused by a perception of any benefit resulting from it, 
seeing that his greater benefit lies in the opposite direction. 
And when he comes to be hanged by process of law there is 
the strongest possible motive for his punishment, yet it cannot 
