Human desire

“ We are all prompted by the same Motives, all deceived by the same Fallacies, all animated by Hope, obstructed by Danger, entangled by Desire, and seduced by Pleasure. ”

“ The sensuous desire is violent but limited; the moral desire is infinite: the craving which soul feels for perfect communion with soul, and the infinite variety with which that desire is maintained, give to love its lustre and its immortality. ”

“ For this special desire becomes the master-motive in the man; and, if strong, establishes a unity in his consciousness, and calls out certain passions, appetites, powers of mind and conscience, heart and soul; and, in a long life, the man creates himself anew in the image of his ideal desire. This desire, good or bad, which sways the man, is writ on his character, and thence copied into the countenance; and lust or love, frivolity or science, interest or principle, mammon or God, is writ on the man. ”

“ And, then, as the man develops his nobler nature, there arises the desire higher yet—the passion of passions, the hope of hopes—the desire that he, even he, may somehow aid in making life better and brighter, in destroying want and sin, sorrow and shame. ”

“ So, in that rightful bringing-in of novelty which is the business of the fully living soul, the most powerful agent is love, understood as the controlling factor of behaviour, the sublimation and union of will and desire. ”

“ He who dwells, not so much upon pleasure, as upon the satisfaction of desire and will, must state it differently, but the problem is much the same. What degree of recognition should be given to the will of each individual, or to the separate volitions and desires in the life of the individual? Should everybody count for one? Should every desire or group of desires receive recognition? Is no distinction to be made in the intensity of desires? ”

“ Have done then with this illusion that thy Self is all in all. Intuition tells thee no more about thy future Self than it tells thee about thy neighbors. Desire, bred in thee by generations of struggle for existence, emphasizes the expectation of thy own bodily future, the love for thy own bodily welfare, and makes thy body’s life seem alone real. ”

“ The will itself is the capacity of being affected by objects with emotion, passion, and desire,—and with that form of passion which we call the sense of the most agreeable or choice, and which is connected with effects or consequents as their stated antecedent. ”

“ The passions, again, originate in our wants, and their progress depends on that of our knowledge; for we cannot desire or fear anything, except from the idea we have of it, or from the simple impulse of nature. ”

“ This desire, so kindly expressed, immediately awakened within me an inclination to comply with it; for, if in the early years of life our passions lead us to follow our own course, and, in order not to swerve from it, we impatiently repel the demands of others, so, in bur later days, it becomes highly advantageous to us, should any sympathy excite and determine us, cordially, to new activity. ”

“ But the thing in which we are now most concerned is how to reach and strengthen the will through the feelings. Some of the feelings which powerfully influence the will are desire of approbation, ambition, love of knowledge, appreciation of the beautiful and the good; or, on the other side, rivalry, envy, hate, and ill-will. Now, it is clear that a cultivation of the feelings and emotions is possible which may strongly influence the purposes and decisions of the will, either in the right or wrong direction. ”

“ What next I bring shall please thee, be assured, Thy likeness, thy fit help, thy other self, Thy wish exactly to thy heart's desire. ”

“ We desire unfeignedly that all the thoughts and designs of our minds, all the affections and tempers of our hearts, and all the actions of our life, may be pure, holy, and unreproveable in thy sight.
Search us, O Lord, and prove us; try out our reins and our heart. Look well if there be any way of wickedness in us, and lead us in the way everlasting. Let thy favour be better to us than life itself; that so in all things we may approve our hearts before thee, and feel the sense of thy acceptance of us, giving us a joy which the world cannot give. ”

“ We believe that, in spite of the fact that certain persons desire to imbue you with such an idea, you are assured of our good will and deed in all matters affecting you, which are such as love, duty, and reason demand. ”

“ To fulfil the poorest necessities of our being, we must be his children in brain and heart, in body and soul and spirit, in obedience and hope and gladness and love—his out and out, beyond all that tongue can say, mind think, or heart desire. ”

“ But whether we strive for that which is truly good, or is deceptively regarded as a good, we are perpetually acting under the impulse of a desire that is implanted in us, and that operates as a desire whether its objects are worthy or unworthy, beneficial or injurious, noxious or innoxious to our moral health. ”

“ So far we have been following common usage in speaking of "good desires" and "evil desires." But these phrases conceal an important distinction, which must now be explained. When we speak of "good desires," we are apt to confuse two meanings of the word desire. Desire properly means the actual process of desiring. ”

“ Now you desire nothing else; every other desire is driven out; see that none enter again. 'Keep thyself pure;' let your 'eye' remain 'single, and your whole body shall be full of light.' Admit no desire of pleasing food, or any other pleasure of sense; no desire of pleasing the eye or the imagination, by anything grand, or new, or beautiful; no desire of money, of praise, or esteem; of happiness in any creature. ”

“ Whither, in fact, would you have interest lead in the train of desire? My desire is certainly to be the most fortunate possible. My interest is to seek to be so by all means, whatever they may be, under the single reserve that they be not contrary to their end. If I am born the first of men, the richest, the most beautiful, the most powerful, etc., I shall do every thing to preserve the advantages I have received. ”

“ Desire is implanted within us, as the very principle of existence; the physical desire fills the world, and the moral desire improves it. Where there is desire, there must be discontent: if we are satisfied with all things, desire is extinct. But a certain degree of discontent is not incompatible with happiness, nay, it has happiness of its own; what happiness like hope,—what is hope but desire? The European serf, whose seigneur could command his life, or insist as a right on the chastity of his daughter, desires to better his condition. ”

“ It has been recognized that will is the natural outcome of desire, and that without desire there would be no will at all. It has even been maintained that will is desire, the desire "with which the self identifies itself." ”

“ Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit. Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent. 5. Transversely was their severing line extended: what was above it then, and what below it? There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here and energy up yonder 6. Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation? The Gods are later than this world's production. ”

“ In both cases a certain readiness is required to exclude the senses from that which the spirit does, because feelings must be abstracted from knowledge, and passion or desire from every moral act of the will. ”

“ It is not the less true that will, in the beginning, is entirely produced by desire; including in that term the repelling influence of pain as well as the attractive one of pleasure. Let us take into consideration, no longer the person who has a confirmed will to do right, but him in whom that virtuous will is still feeble, conquerable by temptation, and not to be fully relied on; by what means can it be strengthened? How can the will to be virtuous, where it does not exist in sufficient force, be implanted or awakened? ”

“ Here we see emotion at its proper work; the movement of desire passing over at once into the act of concentration, the gathering up of all the powers of the self into a state of determined attention, which is the business of the Will. ”

“ The exaltation of desire, of hope, of self-sacrifice by which love manifests itself and in which it principally consists, could not have any moral merit nor could it become a real incentive to noble actions except on certain conditions. ”

“ Fill your heart with desires after what is worthy of desire; and the greater having entered in, all lesser objects will rank themselves in the right place, and the 'glory that excelleth' will outshine the seducing brightness of the paltry present. Oh! it is want of love, it is want of earnest desire, it is want of firm conviction that God, God only, God by Himself, is enough for me, that makes me careful and troubled. ”

“ If the matter be examined however casually, it will become at once clear that what we are most conscious of in effort, hope, desire, fear, love, hatred, and determination, are the workings and manifestations of Will. ”

“ Next to Right Views came Right Aspirations; because nature abhors a vacuum, and since base cravings are to be expelled, other desires must be encouraged—love for the service of others, desire to do and secure justice and the like. ”

“ Again, we might arrange the classes of motives according to the degree in which immediate qualities of feeling appear in them, from unrestrained desire, through desire present but restrained, action for self, action for pleasure generalized beyond self, motives involving a retro-consciousness of self in outward things, the personification of the community, to such motives as direct obedience, reverence, naturalism, evolutionism, experimentalism, pancratism, religionism, in which the element of self-feeling is reduced to a minimum. ”

“ A person states that his desires are so-and-so, and that it is these desires that inspire his actions; but the outside observer perceives that his actions are such as to realize quite different ends from those which he avows, and that these different ends are such as he might be expected to desire. ”

“ After Right Views come Right Aspirations. It is evil desires, low ideals, useless cravings, idle excitements, that are to be suppressed by the cultivation of the opposite—of right desires, lofty aspirations. In one of the Dialogues [11] instances are given—the desire for emancipation from sensuality, aspirations towards the attainment of love to others, the wish not to injure any living thing, the desire for the eradication of wrong and for the promotion of right dispositions in one’s own heart, and so on. ”

“ We will now consider some of the modes by which the will controls the intellect, desires, and emotions.
We have seen, in previous pages, the influence which desire and emotion exert in making both our perceptions and conceptions more vivid. Whatever purpose or aim in life becomes an object of strong desire, is always distinctly and vividly conceived, while all less interesting objects are more faint and indistinct. ”

“ That desire, if specific and urgent, we call a wish.
All these varieties of desire include the same two factors: on the one hand a recognition of present defect in ourselves, on the other imagination of possible bettered conditions. Diminish either, and personal power is narrowed. The richer a man's imagination, and the more abundant his pictures of possible futures, the more resourceful he becomes. Pondering on desire as rooted in the sense of defect, we may feel less regret that our age is one not easily satisfied. ”

“ Desires and Interests.—These complexes of thinking, feeling, and willing make up the conscious desires and interests that mould the individual life. Through the processes of attention to the stimuli that act upon human nature, discrimination between them, association of [346] impressions and ideas that come from present and past experience, and deliberate judgments of value, the mind moves to action for the satisfaction of personal desires and interests. ”

“ But the process of coming to consciousness as to what we can rationally desire, mean, and believe, as the fulfilment of our highest purposes, is a process in which private desires must be subordinated. ”

“ We cannot desire too much, and when we desire with all the life and power that is within us, our desires shall positively be fulfilled. The wish must be whole-hearted, not half-hearted; it must contain all the power we have, not simply the limited actions of shallow thinking; and it must contain soul, not simply emotion, but that deep, spiritual feeling that touches the very spirit of limitless life and power. ”

“ When I said that the good life consists of love guided by knowledge, the desire which prompted me was the desire to live such a life as far as possible, and to see others living it; and the logical content of the statement is that, in a community where men live in this way, more desires will be satisfied than in one where there is less love or less knowledge. ”

“ You would say—would you not?—that the soul of him who desires is seeking after the object of his desire; or that he is drawing to himself the thing which he wishes to possess: or again, when a person wants anything to be given him, his mind, longing for the realization of his desire, intimates his wish to have it by a nod of assent, as if he had been asked a question? ”

“ For my own part, I am glad even to perceive a faint desire, a feeble longing, a degree of uneasiness, or a measure of weariness of sin, or a craving after mercy. Will it not be wise for you, also, to allow things to begin at the beginning, and to be satisfied with their being small at the first? See the blade of desire, and then watch for more. ”

“ A proper name for it is ambition—a selfish quality, whose essence bears no relation to the aspiration of boy and girl, man and woman, toward what is finest and best.
This feeling of aspiration, which exists in the soul and appears to be innate in human beings everywhere, offers a clear and indisputable revelation of a purpose for man's life, above and beyond the mere continuation of it. It is one very solid answer to the second part of the great question: What is the purpose of my life? To strive toward betterment and excellence, in accordance with your lights and conscience. ”