essimist, lays down
the allied maxim, "All pleasure is negative, that is, it consists in
getting rid of a want or pain,"[13-1] a principle expressed before his
time in the saying "the highest pleasure is the relief from pain."

Consistently with this, Buddhism holds out as the ultimate of hope the
state of Nirvana, in which existence is not, where the soul is "blown
out" like the flame of a candle.

But physiology demolishes the corner-stone of this edifice when it shows
that pain, so far from being inseparable from existence, has merely
become, through transmitted experience, nearly inseparable from the
progressive cessation of existence. While action and reaction are equal
in inorganic nature, the principle of life modifies the operation of
this universal law of force by bringing in _nutrition_, which, were it
complete, would antagonize reaction. In such a case, pleasure would be
continuous, pain null; action constant, reaction hypothetical. As,
however, nutrition in fact never wholly and at once replaces the
elements altered by vital action, both physicians and metaphysicians
have observed that pleasure is the fore-runner of pain, and has the
latter as its certain sequel.[14-1]

Physiologically and practically, the definition of pleasure is, _maximum
action with minimum waste_.

This latter generalization is the explanation of the esthetic emotions.
The modern theory of art rests not on a psychological but a
physiological, and this in turn on a physical basis. Helmholtz's theory
of musical harmony depends on the experimental fact that a continued
impression gives a pleasant, a discontinuous an unpleasant sensation.
The mechanics of muscular structure prove that what are called graceful
motions are those which are the mechanical resultant of the force of
the muscle,--those which it can perform at least waste. The pleasure we
take in curves, especially "the line of beauty," is because our eyes can
follow them with a minimum action of its muscles of attachment. The
popular figure called the Grecian figure or the walls of Troy, is
pleasant because each straight line is shorter, and at right angles to
the preceding one, thus giving the greatest possible change of action to
the muscles of the eye.

Such a mechanical view of physiology presents other suggestions. The
laws of vibratory motion lead to the inference that action in accordance
with those laws gives maximum intensity and minimum waste. Hence the
pleasure th