pauses of such a process, I venture to think that when the feeling is observed under these conditions, it will not be found in accordance with the common experience of mankind to describe it as essentially painful. Take, as a simple instance, the case of a game involving bodily exercise and a contest of skill. Probably many persons who take part in such exercises for sanitary or social purposes begin without any perceptible desire to win the game: and probably as long as they remain thus indifferent the exercise is rather tedious. Usually, however, a conscious desire to win the game is excited, as a consequence of actions directed towards this end: and--in my experience at least--in proportion as the feeling grows strong, the whole process becomes more pleasurable. If this be admitted to be a normal experience, it must surely be also admitted that Desire in this case is a feeling in which introspection does not enable us to detect the slightest quality of pain. It would be easy to give an indefinite number of similar instances of energetic activity carried on for an end--whether in sport or in the serious business of life--where a keen desire for the attainment of the end in view is indispensable to a real enjoyment of the labour required to attain, and where at the same time we cannot detect any painfulness in the desire, however much we try to separate it in introspective analysis from its concomitant feeling. The error that I am trying to remove seems to me partly due to overlooking these cases, and contemplating exclusively cases in which Desire is for some reason or other prevented from having its normal effect in stimulating activity directed to the attainment of the desired object. Partly, however, it seems to be due to the resemblance between Desire and Pain, to which I have drawn attention in the text of this chapter, _i.e._ the _unrestfulness_ which is undoubtedly a characteristic of the state of desire, and--ordinarily--of pain. For the characteristic of “unrestfulness” requires some care to distinguish it from “uneasiness,” in the sense in which this latter term signifies some degree of painfulness. The mistake is connected with the equally erroneous view--which Hobbes controverts in his usual forcible style--that “the Felicity of this life consisteth in the repose of a mind satisfied”; and it has also some affinity with the widespread view--which has left its mark on more than one European language--that labour, strenuous activity, is essentially painful. On both these points, it ought to be said, there is doubtless considerable divergence between the experiences of different individuals: but at any rate among Englishmen I conceive that a person who finds desire always painful--in the sense in which, as I have tried to show, the word is commonly used both by moralists and in ordinary discourse--is as exceptional a being as one who finds labour always painful. FOOTNOTES: