In the present treatise `Desire' is primarily regarded as a felt impulse or stimulus to actions tending to the realisation of what is desired. There are, however, states of feeling, sometimes intense, to which the term `desire' is by usage applicable, in which this impulsive quality seems to be absent or at least latent; because the realisation of the desired result is recognised as hopeless, and has long been so recognised. In such cases the `desire' (so-called) remains in consciousness only as a sense of want of a recognised good, a feeling no more or otherwise impulsive than the regretful memory of past joy. That is, desire in this condition may develop a secondary impulse to voluntary day-dreaming, by which a bitter-sweet imaginary satisfaction of the want is attained; or, so far as it is painful, it may impel to action or thought which will bring about its own extinction: but its primary impulse to acts tending to realise the desired result is no longer perceptible.

With this state of mind

---`` the desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow''---