Page:An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798).djvu/385

 knowledge, or of social sympathy, that they would not relapse into listlessness, if their bodily stimulants were removed; yet it can scarcely be doubted, that these stimulants could not be withdrawn from the mass of mankind, without producing a general and fatal torpor, destructive of all the germs of future improvement.

Locke, if I recollect, says that the endeavour to avoid pain, rather than the pursuit of pleasure, is the great stimulus to action in life: and that in looking to any particular pleasure, we shall not be roused into action in order to obtain it, till the contemplation of it has continued so long, as to amount to a sensation of pain or uneasiness under the absence of it. To avoid evil, and to pursue good, seems to be the great duty and business of man; and this world appears to be