as they are contrasted; but I think I can discern clearly
that there are positive pains and pleasures, which do not at all depend
upon each other. Nothing is more certain to my own feelings than this.
There is nothing which I can distinguish in my mind with more clearness
than the three states, of indifference, of pleasure, and of pain. Every
one of these I can perceive without any sort of idea of its relation to
anything else. Caius is afflicted with a fit of the colic; this man is
actually in pain; stretch Caius upon the rack, he will feel a much
greater pain: but does this pain of the rack arise from the removal of
any pleasure? or is the fit of the colic a pleasure or a pain just as we
are pleased to consider it?

SECTION III.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE REMOVAL OF PAIN AND POSITIVE PLEASURE.

We shall carry this proposition yet a step further. 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.[10] 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 color 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 li