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When they tell us that we can have but one motive, that of pleasure, they ought in the first place, to admit that if so, it cannot be the pleasure taken in the act but must be the pleasure taken in the process of transforming a resolution into a determination.
Because it is the determination that is the efficient agent.
That is formed before the act; it may be long before.
Thus, strictly speaking it is not the same individual who forms the determination as he who acts.
If is not, strictly speaking, the same man.
Why then should this man who forms the determination and thus compells the other man to act consults the agent's pleasure any more than he would consult the pleasure of any other servant.
It must be his own pleasure.
But it is absurd to say that an agency is brought into being by a quality of that agency.
For it has not the quality until it exists.
They tell us that it is unthinkable that a desire should desire any-