To revert then to the question from which this part of our discussion started, we shall be right in refusing to admit that particular desires are the only realities and that Desire is a logical fiction; right in asserting a real existence of Desire as such, if by this we understand the one soul or subject, and that a self-conscious soul or subject, which desires in all the desires of each of us, and as belonging to which alone, as related to each other through relation to it, our several desires are what they are. But if we mean anything else than this when we hypostatise desire--as we do when we talk of Desire moving us to act in such or such a way, misleading us, overcoming us, conflicting with Reason, &c.--then Desire is a logical abstraction which we are mistaking for reality. It is thus equally important to bear in mind that there is a real unity in all a man's desires, a common ground of them all, and that this real unity or common ground is simply the man's self, as conscious of itself and consciously seeking in the satisfaction of desires the satisfaction of itself. (§ 129 ¶ 1)

But the real unity underlying the operations of intelligence is also the man's self-conscious self. It is only in virtue of his self-consciousness, as has previously been pointed out, that he is aware of facts as facts, or that his experience reveals to him a world of related objects. It is clear then that we must not imagine Desire and Intellect, as our phraseology sometimes misleads us into doing, to be separate agents or influences, always independent of each other, and in the moral life often conflicting. The real agent called Desire is the man or self or subject as desiring; the real agent called intellect is the man as understanding, as perceiving and conceiving; and the man that desires is identical with the man that understands. Yet, on the other hand, to desire is clearly not the same thing as to understand. How then is the state of the case to be truly represented? (§ 129 ¶ 2)