Page:Observations on Man 1834.djvu/87

 combinations of seven or more letters; and also, that when the several parts of these complex pleasures are sufficiently united by association, the pains which enter their composition will no longer be distinguished separately, but the resulting mixed and complex pleasures appear to be pure and simple ones, equal in quantity to the excess of pleasure above pain, in each combination. Thus association would convert a state in which pleasure and pain were both perceived by turns, into one in which pure pleasure alone would be perceived; at least, would cause the beings who were under its influence to an indefinite degree, to approach to this last state nearer than by any definite difference. Or, in other words, association, under the supposition of this corollary, has a tendency to reduce the state of those who have eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, back again to a paradisiacal one. Now, though the circumstances of mankind are not the same with those supposed in this corollary, yet they bear a remarkable resemblance thereto, during that part of our existence which is exposed to our observation. For our sensible pleasures are far more numerous than our sensible pains; and though the pains be, in general, greater than the pleasures, yet the sum total of these seems to be greater than that of those; whence the remainder, after the destruction of the pains by the opposite and equal pleasures, will be pure pleasure.

. X. The intellectual pleasures and pains are as real as the sensible ones, being, as we have seen, nothing but the sensible ones variously mixed and compounded together. The intellectual pleasures and pains are also all equally of a factitious and acquired nature. We must therefore estimate all our pleasures equally, by their magnitude, permanency, and tendency to procure others; and our pains in like manner.

. XI. The sensible pleasures and pains have a greater tendency to destroy the body, than the intellectual ones; for they are of a particular local nature, and so bear hard upon the organs which convey them. But the destruction of any one considerable part of the body is the destruction of the whole, from the sympathy of the parts; whereas the intellectual pleasures and pains, being collected from all quarters, do not much injure any organ particularly, but rather bring on an equable gradual decay of the whole medullary substance, and all the parts thereon depending.

. XII. This proposition, and its corollaries, afford some pleasing presumptions; such are, that we have a power of suiting our frame of mind to our circumstances, of correcting what is amiss, and improving what is right: that our ultimate happiness appears to be of a spiritual, not corporeal nature; and therefore that death, or the shaking off the gross body, may not stop our progress, but rather render us more expedite in the pursuit of our true end: that association tends to make us all ultimately similar; so that if one be happy, all must: and lastly, that the