in the feeling of pleasure or pain (according as the impression furthers or
hinders the vital function), whence desire and aversion follow in respect
to future experience. Further developments from the feelings experienced at
the signs of honor (the acknowledgment of superior power) and the contrary,
are the affections of pride, courage, anger, of shame and repentance, of
hope and love, of pity, etc. Deliberation is the alternation of different
appetites; the final, victorious one which immediately precedes action is
called will. Freedom cannot be predicated of the will, but only of the
action, and even in this case it means simply the absence of external
restraints, the procedure of the action from the will of the agent; while
the action is necessary nevertheless. Every motion is the inevitable result
of the sum of the preceding (including cerebral) motions.

Things which we desire are termed good, and those which we shun, evil.
Nothing is good _per se_ or absolutely, but only relatively, for a given
person, place, time, or set of circumstances. Different things are good to
different men, and there is no objective, universal rule of good and
evil, so long as men are considered as individuals, apart from society. A
definite criterion of the good is first reached in the state: that is right
which the law permits, that wrong which it forbids; good means that which
is conducive to the general welfare. In the state of nature nothing is
forbidden; nature gives every man a right to everything, and right is
coextensive with might. What, then, induces man to abandon the state of
nature and enter the state of citizenship? The opinion of Aristotle and
Grotius that the state originates in the social impulse is false; for man
is essentially not social, but selfish, and nothing but regard for his own
interests bids him seek the protection of the state; the civil commonwealth
is an artificial product of fear and prudence. The highest good is
self-preservation; all other goods, as friendship, riches, wisdom,
knowledge, and, above all, power, are valuable only as instruments of the