[An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. by John Locke]@TWC D-Link book
An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I.

CHAPTER XXI
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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.


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