force in volition. People are supposed to indulge in it, not from deliberate preference, but simply from the overmastering influence of the exciting pleasure. According to this view, which has been advocated by philosophers from Plato downwards, the force of excitement is the power of a present gratification which, by taking full possession of consciousness, excludes all reflection, comparison of ends, and deliberate preference of one end to another. One familiar illustration of this process is the condition of a morally weak and highly sensitive mind in view of an object of sensuous gratification immediately presented to it. And there is little doubt that this is the mode in which most persons are acted upon by the intenser forms of pleasure. We may see abundant illustrations of this weakness in the every-day life of Englishmen. Now it is the workman, who, finding himself in possession of a little store of accumulating wages, cannot resist the temptation of an immediate indulgence in the noisy delights of alcoholic stimulation. At another time it is the wife of a struggling business man, who is transported by the prospect of decking herself in luxurious apparel, and who at the moment of temptation is wholly unrestrained by considerations of a wise economy. The records of our bankruptcy and criminal courts abundantly testify to the overwhelming power of present excitement over the minds of large numbers of the community.
But this is not the only way in which exciting pleasures exercise a peculiar attraction on the human mind. Many men and women love excitement in quite another way. They make it an object of conscious preference and of deliberate anticipation. If it is not a paradox, one may say that they seek excitement in a quiet manner by coolly setting themselves to attain it and to prepare themselves for it. Take, for example, the case of a young woman living in a rather dull way in a quiet country town, whose occasional happiness it is to visit London and to see a little of the gaieties of fashionable society. She looks forward to her yearly treat with a fair amount of composure for several months, and seeks in the most practical way to make all her other arrangements fit in with this supreme engagement. If other prospects open up which would conflict with this one, she carefully reflects on the choice presented to her, and, after full deliberation, determines to attain the more exciting form of enjoyment. All of us probably are aware of the existence of certain forms of pleasurable excitement which in this way attract us at a great distance in time and of which we make a perfectly deliberate selection.
At first sight it might seem as if these two forms of attraction really involved as their conditions precisely the same mental qualities. But if this were so, we should find the people who are most susceptible of the one susceptible of the other in a proportionate degree. Facts, however, do not appear to support this view. Although it is true that very lively and excitable people often unite a high susceptibility to immediate excitement with an eager pursuit of distant excitement, we find many who show the first quality apart from the second, and others who display the latter with but very little of the former. That is to say, there are those who are exceedingly weak in presence of an intense enjoyment within momentary reach, and who yet betray no energy in the pursuit of remote excitements. There are men, for example, who are carried away as with an irresistible arm at the sight of wine, who nevertheless show little or no tendency to go out of their way to indulge themselves in this peculiar gratification; and these are the cases of morbid appetite which it is possible to deal with remedially. On the other hand, there are those who seem very much bent on providing themselves with occasional emotional stimulants, and who yet do not manifest this kind of impotence under the attraction of an immediately present exciting object. For instance, the bon vivant who delights in the stimulus of a good dinner, spiced with the presence of jovial companions, may display an irresistible firmness in the pursuit of occasional gratifications of his taste, and yet be perfect master of himself if suddenly tempted to an immediate indulgence.
It is characteristic of this more moderate pursuit of excitement that it should assume the form of a purpose to indulge in the wished-for enjoyment at certain more or less regular intervals. People who are in this condition of mind consciously resolve to seek a periodical excitement. They make their moments of emotional exaltation an orderly element in their existence. It is probable that English people show this peculiar quality less clearly than foreigners. The French and the Germans are quite as fond of excitement as ourselves, probably a good deal more so, but they compass their end in a much more orderly fashion. A woman in Paris or Berlin who is obliged to think a good deal about the pecuniary cost of her
