It is here when touch involves representation and becomes a sign of something, _e.g._, edible thing, that desire and other simple emotions originate. A possibility of pleasurable experience being recognised, it is necessary, if useful action would follow, that emotion springs up as incentive, and this emotion we term desire. Hunger drives, but desire draws, and as reinforcement and guide to the blind hunger impulse desire has a large function. A mere indifferent recognition, the pleasurable foreseen but not felt about, would be entirely unserviceable. If we do not desire the pleasurable and beneficial, we do not act for it. And originally, at least, perception of the good always stirred desire; and desire was awakened in no other way; for in the course of natural evolution, knowledge and emotions have alike to be interpreted in their origin and meaning with reference to advantageous action, this alone being the arena of natural selection. A meaningless knowledge and a self-contained emotion or feeling, are entirely contrary to the trend of evolution on the basis we have assumed. Moreover, through ages of activity the tendency to desire the good and the good only becomes so ingrained that I think it hardly fails, even in the highest and latest minds. The most hyper-conscious man, once convinced that something will give him pleasant experience, _so long_ and _so far_ as this feeling is _dominant_ in mind will have incipient desire. On this long disputed question of the relation of desire to the good or pleasurable, evolutionary psychology, which views mind as serving life, as interpreting things with reference to their serviceability and so implied pleasurability, always bases desire in its origin and growth on pleasure. But is this general point of view borne out by the facts of mind? A typical example of common desire is this: At a fair I observe a toboggan chute and say to my companion, “That must be sport, how would you like to try it?” The appeal to “sport” awakens desire in my comrade and he says, “Let’s try it.” We test its pleasurability, and, enjoying it, desire to go again. It is evident that desire arises not on the mere image of actualization as such, the idea of sliding, but on conception of its pleasure quality. Whenever by our own experience or by the testimony of others we are assured of a good thing to be experienced we straightway desire it.