A table of the springs of action : shewing the several species of pleasures and pains, of which man's nature is susceptible: together with the several species of interests, desires, and motives, respectively corresponding to them: and the several sets of appellatives, neutral, eulogistic and dyslogistic, by which each species of motive is wont to be designated: to which are added explanatory notes and observations ... / By Jeremy Bentham, Esq.

  • Bentham, Jeremy, 1748-1832.
Date:
1817
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A table of the springs of action : shewing the several species of pleasures and pains, of which man's nature is susceptible: together with the several species of interests, desires, and motives, respectively corresponding to them: and the several sets of appellatives, neutral, eulogistic and dyslogistic, by which each species of motive is wont to be designated: to which are added explanatory notes and observations ... / By Jeremy Bentham, Esq. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    pleasure may be termed inert. Pleasures which in their very na- ture are inert are : 1. All pleasures of mere recollection. '1. All pleasures of mere imagination. 3. Rven pleasures of expectation, when the expected pleasure is regarded as certain, and not capable of being by action either brought nearer or increased. And so it is with pains. 18. In a remote way, indeed, it may happen to any such plea- sure, howsoever in itself inert, to give birth to action : but then it is only by means of some different pleasure, which it happens to bring to view. ig. In itself, the pleasure derived, for example, from a recol- lected landscape, is an inert one. An effect of it may indeed be the sending a man again to the place to take another view. But, in that case, the operating pleasure— the actuating motive—is a different one : viz. the pleasurable idea of the pleasurable sensa- tion expected from that other view. (d) [original] 1. viz. as opposed to derivative. By the adjunct original may be distinguished such pleasures as are the immediate and simultaneous accompaniments of perception: viz. physical, i.e. corporeal, or merely psychological, i. e. mental:—and so of pains. 2. By the adjunct derivative, such as are not accompaniments of perception, viz. of present perception, but are derived from past perception : — and so of pains. 3. Derived from past perception, they are the fruit of memory, (i. e. of recollection) or of imagination : of memory, in so far as they are copies of an entire picture : of imagination, in so far as they are copies, taken in the way of abstraction, from detached parts ot any such picture ;—those parts being taken either, each by itself, or mixed up together, in any order, along with parts taken in like manner from other pictures. 4. Derived from imagination, if the conception formed of them be accompanied with a judgement more or less decided—a persua- sion more or less intense—of the future realization of the pictures so composed, the imagination is styled expectation: and the plea- sure, if any there be, which is the immediate accompaniment of such persuasion, is styled a pleasure of expectation, or a pleasure of hope: if not so accompanied, a pleasure ot imagination, and no- thing more. And so of pains: except that pains of erpectation have for their synonyms not pains of hope, but pains of appre- hension. 5. Thus, it is no otherwise than through the medium of the imagination, that an pleasure, or any pain, is capable of operating in the character of a motive. It is only through the medium of these derivative representations that the past original can, in any shape, or in any part, be brought to view. 6. Note, that in the way of imagination, from original pleasures may be derived not pleasures only but likewise pains. Pain, for