Let us try to analyse the psychological state which is called ‘desire.’ That name is usually confined to a state of mind in which the idea of some object or event, not yet existing, is present to us. Suppose, for instance, I am desiring a glass of port wine. I have the idea of drinking such a glass before my mind, although I am not yet drinking it. Well, how does pleasure enter in to this relation? My theory is that it enters in, in this way. The _idea_ of the drinking causes a feeling of pleasure in my mind, which helps to produce that state of incipient activity, which is called ‘desire.’ It is, therefore, because of a pleasure, which I already have--the pleasure excited by a mere idea--that I desire the wine, which I have not. And I am ready to admit that a pleasure of this kind, an actual pleasure, is always among the causes of every desire, and not only of every desire, but of every mental activity, whether conscious or sub-conscious. I am ready to _admit_ this, I say: I cannot vouch that it is the true psychological doctrine; but, at all events, it is not _primâ facie_ quite absurd. And now, what is the other doctrine, the doctrine which I am supposing held, and which is at all events essential to Mill’s argument? It is this. That when I desire the wine, it is not the wine which I desire but the pleasure which I expect to get from it. In other words, the doctrine is that the idea of a pleasure _not actual_ is always necessary to cause desire; whereas my doctrine was that the _actual_ pleasure caused by the idea of something else was always necessary to cause desire. It is these two different theories which I suppose the Psychological Hedonists to confuse: the confusion is, as Mr Bradley puts it[12], between ‘a pleasant thought’ and ‘the thought of a pleasure.’ It is in fact only where the latter, the ‘thought of a pleasure,’ is present, that pleasure can be said to be the _object_ of desire, or the _motive_ to action. On the other hand, when only a pleasant thought is present, as, I admit, _may_ always be the case, then it is the object of the thought--that which we are thinking about--which is the object of desire and the motive to action; and the pleasure, which that thought excites, may, indeed, cause our desire or move us to action, but it is not our end or object nor our motive. [12] _Ethical Studies_, p. 232.