ke positive pleasure.
[Greek:
Hos d' hotan andr' ate pykine labe, host' eni patre,
Phota katakteinas, allon exiketo demon,
Andros es aphneiou, thambos d' echei eisoroontas.]
Iliad, [Greek: O]. 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.
SECTION IV.
OF DELIGHT AND PLEASURE, AS OPPOSED TO EACH OTHER.
But shall we therefore say, that the removal of pain or its diminution
is always simply painful? or affirm that the cessation or the lessening
of pleasure is always attended itself with a pleasure? By no means. What
I advance is no more than this; first, that there are pleasures and
pains of a positive and independent nature; and, secondly, that the
feeling which results from the ceasing or diminution of pain does not
bear a sufficient resemblance to positive pleasure, to have it
considered as of the same nature, or to entitle it to be known by the
same name; and thirdly, that upon the same principle the removal or
qualification of pleasure has no resemblance to positive pain. It is
certain that the former feeling (the removal or moderation of pain) has
something in it far from distressing, or disagreeable in its nature.
This feeling, in many cases so agreeable, but in all so different from
positive pleasure, has no name which I know; but that hinders not its
being a very real one, and very different from all others. It is most
certain
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