t is unconsciously
adopting and exaggerating the assumption which Bentham shared with most
of the other eighteenth and early nineteenth century philosophers--that
all motives result from the idea of some preconceived end.

[3] _Edinburgh Review_, March 1829, p. 185. (The italics are mine.)

If he had been pressed, Macaulay would probably have admitted that there
are cases in which human acts and impulses to act occur independently of
any idea of an end to be gained by them. If I have a piece of grit in my
eye and ask some one to take it out with the corner of his handkerchief,
I generally close the eye as soon as the handkerchief comes near, and
always feel a strong impulse to do so. Nobody supposes that I close my
eye because, after due consideration, I think it my interest to do so.
Nor do most men choose to run away in battle, to fall in love, or to
talk about the weather in order to satisfy their desire for a
preconceived end. If, indeed, a man were followed through one ordinary
day, without his knowing it, by a cinematographic camera and a
phonograph, and if all his acts and sayings were reproduced before him
next day, he would be astonished to find how few of them were the result
of a deliberate search for the means of attaining ends. He would, of
course, see that much of his activity consisted in the half-conscious
repetition, under the influence of habit, of movements which were
originally more fully conscious. But even if all cases of habit were
excluded he would find that only a small proportion of the residue
could be explained as being directly produced by an intellectual
calculation. If a record were also kept of those of his impulses and
emotions which did not result in action, it would be seen that they were
of the same kind as those which did, and that very few of them were
preceded by that process which Macaulay takes for granted.

If Macaulay had been pressed still further, he would probably have
admitted that even when an act is preceded by a calculation of ends and
means, it is not the inevitable result of that calculation. Even when we
know what a man thinks it his interest to do, we do not know for certain
what he will do. The man who studies the Stock Exchange list does not
buy his Debentures, unless, apart from his intellectual inference on the
subject, he has an impulse to write to his stockbroker sufficiently
strong to overcome another impulse to put the whole thing off till the
next day.