" give me the thing desired, "or I
die." Life itself, and all its enjoyments, is a burden cannot be borne
under the lasting and unremoved pressure of such an uneasiness.
33. The uneasiness of desire determines the will. Good and evil,
present and absent, it is true, work upon the mind. But that which
immediately determines the will, from time to time, to every voluntary
action, is the uneasiness of desire, fixed on some absent good: either
negative, as indolence to one in pain; or positive, as enjoyment of
pleasure. That it is this uneasiness that determines the will to the
successive voluntary actions, whereof the greatest part of our lives
is made up, and by which we are conducted through different courses to
different ends, I shall endeavour to show, both from experience, and
the reason of the thing.
34. This is the spring of action. When a man is perfectly content
with the state he is in- which is when he is perfectly without any
uneasiness- what industry, what action, what will is there left, but
to continue in it? Of this every man's observation will satisfy him.
And thus we see our all-wise Maker, suitably to our constitution and
frame, and knowing what it is that determines the will, has put into
man the uneasiness of hunger and thirst, and other natural desires,
that return at their seasons, to move and determine their wills, for
the preservation of themselves, and the continuation of their species.
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