For this purpose Butler pointed to the whole class of affections which, although they may also tend to private interest, have an immediate reference to the good of others; and, in addition to these, he contended for an original principle of benevolence towards others in human nature, as well as of self-love or care for one's own interests and happiness. This latter, he held, so far from being the sole principle of action, implied the existence of a number of particular passions and affections, directed immediately to external objects--the satisfaction of these desires giving pleasure, though pleasure was not the end they aimed at. Voluntary action is thus not brought under any common rubric; for, at the same time that the calm principle of self-love is directed to the agent's greatest pleasure, the object of hunger, for example, is said to be not pleasure but food, that of benevolence not personal pleasure but the good of others. [Sidenote: Non-hedonistic action generalised by Herbart,] [Sidenote: from the tendency of ideas to self-realisation.] The attempt to give unity to the non-hedonistic view of desire has come from a different quarter. Uninfluenced by the exigencies of ethical controversy, which formed the entire motive of Butler's investigation, Herbart and his school have worked out a theory of desire, which has many points of comparison with that of Butler. However much they may differ from the English moralist--of whose existence they are mostly ignorant--they are at one with him in rejecting the maxim of psychological hedonism, _nihil appetimus nisi sub specie boni_; and their differences from him are largely due to their having gone further in their analysis of the facts, and endeavoured to bring them under a general principle. Butler's view of the object of desire is distinguished from the Herbartian chiefly in two respects. In the first place, he identifies that object with the external or real thing, whereas Herbart is careful to point out that it is a presentation or idea. In the second place, while Butler is content to postulate an original tendency of our nature towards certain objects, Herbart attempts to get behind this tendency, and explain the phenomena of striving from the interaction of presentations. Over and above the ordinary hypothesis of natural realism, Butler's theory implies a sort of pre-established harmony between our active tendencies and things outside the mind, in virtue of which some of these things do, and some do not, attract our desires. Herbart, on the other hand, attempts nothing less than a complete genetic account of mental phenomena, explaining the facts of presentation, desire, and feeling through "the persistence of presentation in consciousness and their rise into clearer consciousness."[72] The phenomena of desire and feeling are both accounted for by this mechanism of impelling and inhibiting forces.[73] [Sidenote: This tendency recognised in the doctrine of fixed ideas]