The Difference Between the Removal of Pain, and Positive Pleasure
WE shall carry this proposition yet a step farther. We shall venture
to propose, that pain and pleasure are not only not necessarily dependent
for their existence on their mutual diminution or removal, but that,
in reality, the diminution or ceasing of pleasure does not operate
like
positive pain; and that the removal or diminution of pain, in its
effect, has very little resemblance to positive pleasure. [1] The
former of these
propositions will, I believe, be much more readily allowed than the
latter; because it is very evident that pleasure, when it has run
its career,
sets us down very nearly where it found us. Pleasure of every kind
quickly satisfies; and when it is over, we relapse into indifference,
or rather
we fall into a soft tranquillity, which is tinged with the agreeable
colour of the former sensation. I own it is not at first view so
apparent, that the removal of a great pain does not resemble positive
pleasure;
but let us recollect in what state we have found our minds upon escaping
some imminent danger, or on being released from the severity of some
cruel pain. We have on such occasions found, if I am not much mistaken,
the temper of our minds in a tenor very remote from that which attends
the presence of positive pleasure; we have found them in a state
of much sobriety, impressed with a sense of awe, in a sort of tranquillity
shadowed
with horror. The fashion of the countenance and the gesture of the
body on such occasions is so correspondent to this state of mind,
that any
person, a stranger to the cause of the appearance, would rather judge
us under some consternation, than in the enjoyment of anything like
positive pleasure.
[Greek]
Iliad. [Greek]. 480.
As when a wretch, who, conscious of his crime,
Pursued for murder from his native clime,
Just gains some frontier, breathless, pale, amazed;
All gaze, all wonder!
This striking appearance of the man whom Homer supposes to have
just escaped an imminent danger, the sort of mixed passion of
terror and surprise, with which
he affects the spectators, paints very strongly the manner in which
we
find ourselves affected upon occasions any way similar.
For when we have suffered from any violent
emotion, the mind naturally continues in something like the same
condition, after the cause which first produced it has ceased
to operate.
The tossing of the sea
remains after the storm; and when this remain of horror has entirely
subsided, all the passion, which the accident raised, subsides
along with it; and
the mind returns to its usual state of indifference. In
short, pleasure (I mean anything
either in the inward sensation, or in the outward appearance, like
pleasure from a positive cause) has never, I imagine, its origin
from the
removal of pain or
danger.
Note 1. Mr. Locke
[Essay on the Human Understanding, l. ii. c. 20, sect. 16] thinks
that the
removal or lessening of a pain is considered and operates
as
a pleasure, and the loss or diminishing of pleasure as a pain.
It is this opinion which we consider here.
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