Zeuxippus then said: And do you not think then
they take the right course to begin at the body, where
they observe pleasure to have its first rise, and thence to
pass to the mind as the more stable and sure part, there to
complete and crown the whole?
They do, by Jove, I said; and if, after removing thither,
they have indeed found something more consummate than
before, they take a course too as well agreeing with nature
as becoming men adorned with both contemplative and
civil knowledge. But if after all this you still hear them
cry out, and protest that the mind of man can receive no
satisfaction or tranquillity from any thing under Heaven
but the pleasures of the body either in possession or expectance, and that these are its proper and only good, can
you forbear thinking they make use of the soul but as a
funnel for the body, while they mellow their pleasure by
shifting it from one vessel to another, as they rack wine
out of an old and leaky vessel into a new one and there
let it grow old, and then imagine they have performed
some extraordinary and very fine thing? True indeed,
time may both keep and recover wine that hath thus been
drawn off; but the mind, receiving but the remembrance
only of past pleasure, like a kind of scent, retains that
and no more. For as soon as it hath given one hiss in
the body, it immediately expires, and that little of it that
stays behind in the memory is but flat and like a queasy
fume; as if a man should lay up and treasure in his fancy
[p. 163]
what he either ate or drank yesterday, that he may have
recourse to that when he wants fresh fare. See now how
much more temperate the Cyrenaics are, who, though they
have drunk out of the same bottle with Epicurus, yet will
not allow men so much as to practise their amours by
candle-light, but only under the covert of the dark, for
fear seeing should fasten too quick an impression of the
images of such actions upon the fancy and thereby too
frequently inflame the desire. But these gentlemen account it the highest accomplishment of a philosopher to
have a clear and retentive memory of all the various
figures, passions, and touches of past pleasure. We will
not now say, they present us with nothing worthy the
name of philosophy, while they leave the refuse of pleasure in their wise man's mind, as if it could be a lodging
for bodies; but that it is impossible such things as these
should make a man live pleasurably, I think is abundantly manifest from hence.
For it will not perhaps seem strange if I assert, that the
memory of pleasure past brings no pleasure with it if it
seemed but little in the very enjoyment, or to men of such abstinence as to account it for their benefit to retire from its
first approaches; when even the most amazed and sensual
admirers of corporeal delights remain no longer in their
gaudy and pleasant humor than their pleasure lasts them.
What remains is but an empty shadow and dream of that
pleasure that hath now taken wing and is fled from them,
and that serves but for fuel to foment their untamed desires.
Like as in those that dream they are adry or in love, their
unaccomplished pleasures and enjoyments do but excite the
inclination to a greater keenness. Nor indeed can the
remembrance of past enjoyments afford them any real contentment at all, but must serve only, with the help of a
quick desire, to raise up very much of outrage and stinging
pain out of the remains of a feeble and befooling pleasure.
[p. 164]
Neither doth it befit men of continence and sobriety to exercise their thoughts about such poor things, or to do what
one twitted Carneades with, to reckon, as out of a diurnal,
how oft they have lain with Hedia or Leontion, or where
they last drank Thasian wine, or at what twentieth-day
feast they had a costly supper. For such transport and
captivatedness of the mind to its own remembrances as
this is would show a deplorable and bestial restlessness and
raving towards the present and hoped-for acts of pleasure.
And therefore I cannot but look upon the sense of these
inconveniences as the true cause of their retiring at last to
a freedom from pain and a firm state of body; as if living
pleasurably could lie in bare imagining this either past or
future to some persons. True indeed it is, ‘that a sound
state of body and a good assurance of its continuing must
needs afford a most transcending and solid satisfaction to
all men capable of reasoning.’
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