=3. Happiness and Desire.=--All men, then, may be said to desire happiness. But this happiness is not dependent upon prior experiences of pleasure, which, coming up in memory, arouse desire and rivet attention upon themselves. To say that the desire of a man is for happiness is only to say that happiness comes in the fulfillment of desire, the desires arising on their own account as expressions of a state of lack or incompletion in which the person finds himself. Happiness thus conceived _is dependent upon the nature of desire and varies with it, while desire varies with the type of character_. If the desire is the desire of an honest man, then the prosperous execution of some honorable intent, the payment of a debt, the adequate termination of a trust, is conceived as happiness, as good. If it be the desire of a profligate, then entering upon the riotous course of living now made possible by inheritance of property is taken as happiness--the one consummation greatly to be wished. If we know what any person really finds desirable, what he stakes his happiness upon, we can read his nature. In happiness, as the anticipation of the satisfaction of desire, there is, therefore, no sure or unambiguous quality; for it may be a token of good or of bad character, according to the sort of object which appeals to the person. The present joy found in the idea of the completion of a purpose cannot be the object of desire, for we desire only things absent. But the joy is a mark of the congruity or harmony of the thought of the object, whatever it be--health, dissipation, miserliness, prodigality, conquest, helpfulness--with the character of the agent. It is an evidence of the moving force, the influence, the weight, of the conceived end; it registers the extent in which the end is not a mere intellectual abstraction, but is a _motive_ (see p. 252). But the moral worth of this motive depends upon the character of the end in which the person finds his satisfaction. =4. Confusion of Future and Present Pleasure.=--It is the confusion of _present_ pleasure, attendant upon the thought of an object as satisfying desire, with the pleasure that _will come when the desire is satisfied_, that accounts for the persistence of the idea that pleasure is the object of desire. The fact that the object of desire is _now_ pleasurable is distorted into the statement that we _seek_ for an absent pleasure.[138] A good illustration of the confusion is seen in the following quotation: "The love of happiness must express the sole possible motive of Judas Iscariot and of his Master; it must explain the conduct of Stylites on his pillar or Tiberius at Capræ or à Kempis in his cell or of Nelson in the cockpit of the Victory. It must be equally good for saints and martyrs, heroes, cowards, debauchés, ascetics, mystics, misers, prodigals, men, women and babes in arms" (Leslie Stephen, _Science of Ethics_, p. 44).