CHAPTER II.

OF OUR DESIRES.

OUR desires are distinguished from our appetites by the following circumstances:

1. They do not take their rise from the body.

2. They do not operate periodically after certain intervals, nor do they cease after the attainment of a particular object.

The most remarkable active principles belonging to this class are,

1. The Desire of Knowledge, or the principle of Curiosity.

2. The Desire of Society.

3. The Desire of Esteem.

A. The Desire of Power, or the principle of Ambition. 5. The Desire of Superiority, or the principle of Emulation.

SECTION I.

THE DESIRE OF KNOWLEDGE.

I. Early and various Manifestations.] The principle of curiosity appears in children at a very early period, and is commonly proportioned to the degree of intellectual capacity they possess. The direction, too, which it takes, is regulated by nature according to the order of our wants and necessities; being confined, in the first instance, exclusively to those properties of material objects, and those laws of the material world, an acquaintance with which is essential to the preservation of our animal existence. Hence the instinctive eagerness with which children handie and examine every thing which is presented to them; an employment which we are commonly apt to consider as a mere exercise of their animal powers, but which, if we reflect on the limited

province of sight prior to experience, and on the early period of life at which we are able to judge by the eye of the distances and of the tangible qualities of bodies, will appear plainly to be the most useful occupation in which they could be engaged, if it were in the power of a philosopher to have the regulation of their attention from the hour of their birth. In more advanced years curiosity displays itself in one way or another in every individual, and gives rise to an infinite diversity in their pursuits,engrossing the attention of one man about physical causes, of another about mathematical truths, of a third about historical facts, of a fourth about the objects of natural history, of a fifth about the transactions of private families, or about the politics and news of the day.

Whether this diversity be owing to natural predisposition, or to early education, it is of little consequence to determine, as, upon either supposition, a preparation is made for it in the original constitution of the mind, combined with the circumstances of our external situation. Its final cause is also sufficiently obvious, as it is this which gives rise in the case of individuals to a limitation of attention and study, and lays the foundation of all the advantages which society derives from the division and subdivision of intellectual labor.

II. Neither Selfish nor Moral in itself.] These advantages are so great, that some philosophers have attempted to resolve the desire of knowledge into selflove. But to this theory the same objection may be stated which has already been made to the attempts of some philosophers to account, in a similar way, for the origin of our appetites;- that all of these are active principles, manifestly directed by nature to particular specific objects, as their ultimate ends; - that as the object of hunger is not happiness, but food, so the object of curiosity is not happiness, but knowledge. To this analogy Cicero has very beautifully alluded, when he calls knowledge the natural food of the understanding. "Est animorum ingeniorumque nostrorum na

turale quoddam quasi pabulum consideratio contem platioque naturæ." We can indeed conceive a being prompted merely by the cool desire of happiness to accumulate information; but in a creature like man, endowed with a variety of other active principles, the stock of his knowledge would probably have been scanty, unless self-love had been aided in this particular by the principle of curiosity.

Although, however, the desire of knowledge is not resolvable into self-love, it is not in itself an object of moral approbation. A person may indeed employ his intellectual powers with a view to his own moral improvement, or to the happiness of society, and so far he acts from a laudable principle. But to prosecute study merely from the desire of knowledge is neither virtuous nor vicious. When not suffered to interfere with our duties it is morally innocent. The virtue or vice does not lie in the desire, but in the proper or improper regulation of it. The ancient astronomer, who, when accused of indifference with respect to public transactions, answered that his country was in the heavens, acted criminally, inasmuch as he suffered his desire of knowledge to interfere with the duties which he owed to mankind.

III. But superior in Dignity and Use to the Appetites.] At the same time, it must be admitted that the desire of knowledge (and the same observation is applicable to our other desires) is of a more dignified nature than those appetites which are common to us with the brutes. A thirst for science has been always considered as a mark of a liberal and elevated mind; and it generally coöperates with the moral faculty in forming us to those habits of self-government which enable us to keep our animal appetites in due subjection.

There is another circumstance which renders this desire peculiarly estimable, that it is always accompanied with a strong desire to communicate our knowl edge to others; insomuch, that it has been doubted if the principle of curiosity would be sufficiently power

ful to animate the intellectual exertions of any man in a long course of persevering study, if he had no prospect of being ever able to impart his acquisitions to his friends or the public. "Si quis in cœlum ascendisset," says Cicero, "naturamque mundi et pulchritudinem siderum perspexisset, insuavem illam admirationem ei fore, quæ jucundissima fuisset, si aliquem, cui narraret, habuisset. Sic natura solitarium nihil amat, semperque ad aliquod tamquam adminiculum annititur, quod in amicissimo quoque dulcissimum est.” * And to the same purpose Seneca: "Nec me ulla res delectabit, licet sit eximia et salutaris, quam mihi uni sciturus sum. Si cum hac exceptione detur sapientia, ut illam inclusam teneam, nec enuntiem, rejiciam: nullius boni, sine socio, jucunda possessio est." t

A strong curiosity, properly directed, may be justly considered as one of the most important elements in philosophical genius; and, accordingly, there is no circumstance of greater consequence in education than to keep the curiosity always awake, and to turn it to useful pursuits. I cannot help, therefore, disapproving greatly of a very common practice in this country, that of communicating to children general and superficial views of science and history by means of popular introductions. In this way we rob their future studies of all that interest which can render study agreeable, and reduce the mind, in the pursuits of science, to the same state of listlessness and languor as when we toil through the pages of a tedious novel after being made acquainted with the final catastrophe.

* De Amicitia, 23. Thus translated, or rather paraphrased, by Melmoth: "Were a man to be carried up to heaven, and the beauties of universal nature displayed to his view, he would receive but little pleasure from the wonderful scene, if there were none to whom he might relate the glories he had beheld. Human nature, indeed, is so constituted as to be incapable of lonely satisfaction: man, like those plants which are formed to embrace others, is led by an instinctive impulse to recline on his species. and he finds his happiest and most secure support in the arms of a faithful friend."

t Seneca, Epist. Mor, Lib. I. Ep. 6. "Nor, indeed, would any thing give me pleasure, however excellent and salutary it might be, were I to keep the knowledge of it to myself. Were wisdom offered me under such restriction as to be obliged to conceal it, I would reject it. No enjoyment whatever an be agreeable without participation."

*

It would contribute greatly to the culture and the guidance of this principle of curiosity, if the different sciences were taught as much as possible in the order of the analytic rather than in that of the synthetic method; a plan, however, which I readily admit it is not so practicable to carry into effect in a course of public as of private instruction. Such a mode of edu cation, too, would be attended with the additional advantage of accustoming the student to the proper method of investigation; and thereby preparing him in due time to enter on the career of invention and discovery. Nor is this all. It would impress the knowledge he thus acquired, in some measure by his own ingenuity, much more deeply on his memory than if it were passively imbibed from books or teachers; in the same manner as the windings of a road make a more lasting impression on the mind when we have once travelled it alone, and inquired out the way at every turn, than if we had travelled along it a hundred times trusting ourselves implicitly to the guidance of a companion.

I am happy to be confirmed in this opinion by its coincidence with what has been excellently remarked on the same subject by Miss Edgeworth, in her treatise on Practical Education; a work equally distinguished by good sense and by originality of thought. The passage I allude to more particularly at present is the short dialogue about the steam-engine, as improved by Mr. Watt.f

I. An Instinctive Principle.] Abstracted from those affections which interest us in the happiness of others,

Analytically we discover, by a sort of decomposition, the simple laws which are concerned in the phenomenon under consideration; synthetically taking the laws for granted, we determine à priori what the result will be of any hypothetical combination of them ED.

Essays on Practical Education, Chap. XXI.