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To disinterested eyes the sight might have appeared one of agonised appetition, in which, as in battle, some particular person or movement arrested the attention for a moment from the general effect: a stout and determined matron planted like James Fitz-James upon his rock; a tall youth with salad raised aloft as he turned to make his escape; the perspiring face of some bewildered darkey, who could have found ample use for the hands of a Briareus in the stress of conflicting orders.
On the first is based the distinction between the rational and the empirical or historical method of treatment. The latter concerns itself with the actual, the former with the possible and necessary, or the grounds of the actual; the one observes and describes, the other deduces. The antithesis of cognition and appetition gives the basis for the division into theoretical and practical philosophy.
Sensuous, prudential, or moral appetition has always an "interest" in the actual existence of the object; the beautiful, on the other hand, calls forth a disinterested satisfaction. According to quantity and modality the judgment of taste claims universal and necessary validity, without this being based upon concepts.
Now those who withhold their assent and doubt of all things take not away this, but make use of the appetition or instinct naturally conducting every man to that which seems convenient for him. What, then, is the only thing that they shun?
We must discover, then, which is the best state of each of these, because that will be the Excellence of each; and this again is relative to the work each has to do. There are in the Soul three functions on which depend moral action and truth; Sense, Intellect, Appetition, whether vague Desire or definite Will.
So then the Irrational is plainly twofold: the one part, the merely vegetative, has no share of Reason, but that of desire, or appetition generally, does partake of it in a sense, in so far as it is obedient to it and capable of submitting to its rule. Now that the Irrational is in some way persuaded by the Reason, admonition, and every act of rebuke and exhortation indicate.
From perception arises appetition, not as independent activity, but as a modification of perception; it is nothing but the tendency to pass from one perception to another (l'appetit est la tendance d'une perception
This was the part of the soul which received phantasies and it was also that in which impulses were generated with which we have now more particularly to do. Impulse or appetition was the principle in the soul which impelled to action. In an unperverted state it was directed only to things in accordance with nature.
For action stands in need of two things, to wit, the apprehension or imagination of what is agreeable to Nature, and the instinct or appetition driving to that which is so imagined; of which, neither the one nor the other is repugnant to the retention of assent. For reason withdraws us from opinion, and not from appetition or imagination.
Descartes does not shrink from such a conclusion. Animals are mere machines; they are bodies animated, but soulless; they lack conscious perception and appetition, though not the appearance of them. When a clock strikes seven it knows nothing of the fact; it does not regret that it is so late nor long soon to be able to strike eight; it wills nothing, feels nothing, perceives nothing.
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