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.  For I think we may conclude, that, if the bare contemplation of these good ends to which we are carried by these several uneasinesses had been sufficient to determine the will, and set us on work, we should have had none of these natural pains, and perhaps in this world little or no pain at all.  ’It is better to marry than to burn,’ says St. Paul, where we may see what it is that chiefly drives men into the enjoyments of a conjugal life.  A little burning felt pushes us more powerfully than greater pleasure in prospect draw or allure.

35.  The greatest positive Good determines not the Will, but present Uneasiness alone.

It seems so established and settled a maxim, by the general consent of all mankind, that good, the greater good, determines the will, that I do not at all wonder that, when I first published my thoughts on this subject I took it for granted; and I imagine that, by a great many, I shall be thought more excusable for having then done so, than that now I have ventured to recede from so received an opinion.  But yet, upon a stricter inquiry, I am forced to conclude that good, the greater good, though apprehended and acknowledged to be so, does not determine the will, until our desire, raised proportionably to it, makes us uneasy in the want of it.  Convince a man never so much, that plenty has its advantages over poverty; make him see and own, that the handsome conveniences of life are better than nasty penury:  yet, as long as he is content with the latter, and finds no uneasiness in it, he moves not; his will never is determined to any action that shall bring him out of it.  Let a man be ever so well persuaded of the advantages of virtue, that it is as necessary to a