or mind, in which Nature teaches us to delight, a pleasure. Thus
they cautiously limit pleasure only to those appetites to which Nature
leads us; for they say that Nature leads us only to those delights to
which reason, as well as sense, carries us, and by which we neither
injure any other person nor lose the possession of greater pleasures, and
of such as draw no troubles after them. But they look upon those
delights which men by a foolish, though common, mistake call pleasure, as
if they could change as easily the nature of things as the use of words,
as things that greatly obstruct their real happiness, instead of
advancing it, because they so entirely possess the minds of those that
are once captivated by them with a false notion of pleasure that there is
no room left for pleasures of a truer or purer kind.

"There are many things that in themselves have nothing that is truly
delightful; on the contrary, they have a good deal of bitterness in them;
and yet, from our perverse appetites after forbidden objects, are not
only ranked among the pleasures, but are made even the greatest designs,
of life. Among those who pursue these sophisticated pleasures they
reckon such as I mentioned before, who think themselves really the better
for having fine clothes; in which they think they are doubly mistaken,
both in the opinion they have of their clothes, and in that they have of
themselves. For if you consider the use of clothes, why should a fine
thread be thought better than a coarse one? And yet these men, as if
they had some real advantages beyond others, and did not owe them wholly
to their mistakes, look big, seem to fancy themselves to be more
valuable, and imagine that a respect is due to them for the sake of a
rich garment, to which they would not have pretended if they had been
more meanly clothed, and even resent it as an affront if that respect is
not paid them. It is also a great folly to be taken with outward marks
of respect, which signify nothing; for what true or real pleasure can one
man find in another's standing bare or making legs to him? Will the
bending another man's knees give ease to yours? and will the head's being
bare cure the madness of yours? And yet it is wonderful to see how this
false notion of pleasure bewitches many who delight themselves with the
fancy of their nobility, and are pleased with this conceit--that they are
descended from ancestors who have been held for some successions ri