And again he says that "we enjoy all the advantages of pain without any of its inconveniences. If the uneasiness should become too distinct, we should be miserable in our awaiting the good which relieves it; but as it is, there is a constant victory over these half-pains, which we always find in desire, and this gives us a quantity of half-pleasures, whose continuance and summation (for they acquire force like a moving body as it falls) result in a whole and true pleasure." In short, there is indeed an element of pain in all desire which stimulates us to action, and therefore to higher development. But ordinarily this element of pain is not present as such in consciousness, but is absorbed in the pleasure which accompanies the realization of the higher good. Thus Leibniz, accepting and emphasizing the very same fact that served Schopenhauer as a psychological base of pessimism, uses it as a foundation-stone of optimism. But desire, or the conscious tendency towards something required as a good, accompanied by the dim feeling of uneasiness at its absence, does not yet constitute the complete act of volition. "Several impulses and inclinations meet in forming the complete volition which is the result of their conflict." In the concrete act of will there are contained impulses which push us towards some end whose nature is not known; there is desire both in its inchoate stage, where pleasure and pain are not in consciousness, and in its formed state, where the pain and pleasure are definitely presented. Mixed with these desires and impulses are images of past experiences which call up the feelings which were formerly attached to them, and thus there are aroused indirectly additional impulses and desires. Out of this complicated mass of impulses, desires, and feelings, both original and reproduced, comes the "dominant effort" which constitutes complete will. But what governs the production of this prevailing or dominant effort, which we may interpret as the act of choice? The answer is simple: the result of the conflict of these various factors, the striking of the balance, _is_ the choice. Some desire emerges from the confused complex, and that desire is the final determination of the will. This desire may not in all cases be the strongest in itself,--that is, the one whose satisfaction will allay the greatest "uneasiness," for the others, taken together, may outweigh it; it may, so to speak, have a plurality, but not a majority, of volitional forces on its side,--and in this case a fusion of opposing factors may defeat it. But in any event the result will be the _algebraic_ sum of the various desires and impulses.