This discussion calls to mind a good passage from the novel "The Sea Wolf" by Jack London:
(Bold is mine)
Quote:he had engaged Maud in animated discussion. Temptation was the topic they
had hit upon, and from the few words I heard I made out that he was
contending that temptation was temptation only when a man was seduced by
it and fell.
"For look you," he was saying, "as I see it, a man does things because of
desire. He has many desires. He may desire to escape pain, or to enjoy
pleasure. But whatever he does, he does because he desires to do it."
"But suppose he desires to do two opposite things, neither of which will
permit him to do the other?" Maud interrupted.
"The very thing I was coming to," he said.
"And between these two desires is just where the soul of the man is
manifest," she went on. "If it is a good soul, it will desire and do the
good action, and the contrary if it is a bad soul. It is the soul that
decides."
"Bosh and nonsense!" he exclaimed impatiently. "It is the desire that
decides. Here is a man who wants to, say, get drunk. Also, he doesn't
want to get drunk. What does he do? How does he do it? He is a puppet.
He is the creature of his desires, and of the two desires he obeys the
strongest one, that is all. His soul hasn't anything to do with it. How
can he be tempted to get drunk and refuse to get drunk? If the desire to
remain sober prevails, it is because it is the strongest desire.
Temptation plays no part, unless--" he paused while grasping the new
thought which had come into his mind--"unless he is tempted to remain
sober.
"Ha! ha!" he laughed. "What do you think of that, Mr. Van Weyden?"
"That both of you are hair-splitting," I said. "The man's soul is his
desires. Or, if you will, the sum of his desires is his soul. Therein
you are both wrong. You lay the stress upon the desire apart from the
soul, Miss Brewster lays the stress on the soul apart from the desire,
and in point of fact soul and desire are the same thing.
"However," I continued, "Miss Brewster is right in contending that
temptation is temptation whether the man yield or overcome. Fire is
fanned by the wind until it leaps up fiercely. So is desire like fire.
It is fanned, as by a wind, by sight of the thing desired, or by a new
and luring description or comprehension of the thing desired. There lies
the temptation. It is the wind that fans the desire until it leaps up to
mastery. That's temptation. It may not fan sufficiently to make the
desire overmastering, but in so far as it fans at all, that far is it
temptation. And, as you say, it may tempt for good as well as for evil."
(Bold is mine)
