Theon then said: We may probably resume the consideration of that in the process of our discourse; in the
interim we will make use of their concessions. Now they
suppose their last good to lie about the belly and such
other conveyances of the body as let in pleasure and not
[p. 160]
pain; and are of opinion, that all the brave and ingenious
inventions that ever have been were contrived at first for
the pleasure of the belly, or the good hope of compassing
such pleasure,—as the sage Metrodorus informs us. By
which, my good friend, it is very plain, they found their
pleasure in a poor, rotten, and unsure thing, and one that
is equally perforated for pains, by the very passages they
receive their pleasures by; or rather indeed, that admits
pleasure but by a few, but pain by all its parts. For the
whole of pleasure is in a manner in the joints, nerves, feet,
and hands; and these are oft the seats of very grievous
and lamentable distempers, as gouts, corroding rheums,
gangrenes, and putrid ulcers. And if you apply to yourself the exquisitest of perfumes or gusts, you will find but
some one small part of your body is finely and delicately
touched, while the rest are many times filled with anguish
and complaints. Besides, there is no part of us proof
against fire, sword, teeth, or scourges, or insensible of
dolors and aches; yea, heats, colds, and fevers sink into
all our parts alike. But pleasures, like gales of soft wind,
move simpering, one towards one extreme of the body and
another towards another, and then go off in a vapor. Nor
are they of any long durance, but, as so many glancing
meteors, they are no sooner kindled in the body than they
are quenched by it. As to pain, Aeschylus's Philoctetes
affords us a sufficient testimony:
The cruel viper ne'er will quit my foot;
Her dire envenomed teeth have there ta'en root.
For pain will not troll off as pleasure doth, nor imitate it
in its pleasing and tickling touches. But as the clover
twists its perplexed and winding roots into the earth, and
through its coarseness abides there a long time; so pain
disperses and entangles its hooks and roots in the body,
and continues there, not for a day or a night, but for several seasons of years, if not for some revolutions of Olympiads,
[p. 161]
nor scarce ever departs unless struck out by other
pains, as by stronger nails. For who ever drank so long as
those that are in a fever are adry? Or who was ever so
long eating as those that are besieged suffer hunger? Or
where are there any that are so long solaced with the conversation of friends as tyrants are racking and tormenting?
Now all this is owing to the baseness of the body and its
natural incapacity for a pleasurable life; for it bears pains
better than it doth pleasures, and with respect to those is
firm and hardy, but with respect to these is feeble and soon
palled. To which add, that if we are minded to discourse
on a life of pleasure, these men won't give us leave to go
on, but will presently confess themselves that the pleasures
of the body are but short, or rather indeed but of a moment's continuance; if they do not design to banter us or
else speak out of vanity, when Metrodorus tells us, We
many times spit at the pleasures of the body, and Epicurus
saith, A wise man, when he is sick, many times laughs at
the very extremity of his distemper.
With what consistence then can those that account the
pains of the body so light and easy think so highly of its
pleasures? For should we allow them not to come behind
its pains either in duration or magnitude, they would not
yet have their being without them. For Epicurus hath
made the removal of all that pains the common definition
of all pleasure; as if Nature had intended to advance the
pleasurable part only to the destruction of the painful, but
would not have it improved any further in magnitude,
and as if she only diverted herself with certain useless diversifications after she hath once arrived to an abolition
of pain. But now the passage to this, conjoined with an
appetence which is the measure of pleasure, is extremely
short and soon over. And therefore the sense of their
narrow entertainment here hath obliged them to transplant
their last end from the body, as from a poor and lean soil,
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to the mind, in hopes of enjoying there, as it were, large
pastures and fair meadows of delights and satisfactions.
For Ithaca is no fit place
For mettled steeds to run a race.
1
Neither can the joys of our poor bodies be smooth and
equal; but on the contrary they must be coarse and harsh,
and immixed with much that is displeasing and inflamed.