Chapter 83
Pleasure and pain; enjoyment and suffering; their place in motive and in the good.
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Pleasure and pain are perhaps the most familiar facts of experience, and for that reason among the hardest to place. Hobbes calls pleasure the appearance of good and a help to vital motion, and grief its contrary1. Locke makes pain, or the loss of pleasure, the only natural object of fear2. Rousseau counts the aversion to pain and the desire of happiness among the sentiments born in us3. If these feelings move every man, the question is whether they also measure what is good. Pope puts the stakes plainly: pleasure, rightly or wrongly understood, is our greatest good or our greatest evil4. Around that question cluster others the Harvard Classics take up again and again. What these feelings are. Whether some pleasures are higher than others. How pain is to be borne. And why we enjoy sorrow when it is shown to us in art.
The oldest observation about their nature is that the two cannot be kept apart. Socrates, rubbing his leg after the chain is removed, remarks that pleasure and pain are opposites, yet whoever pursues the one is almost forced to take the other5. Augustine generalizes the point. The greater joy follows the greater pain, as eating follows hunger and recovery follows sickness6. Pascal turns it into a law of the restless heart: we can enjoy a thing only because we would be annoyed to lose it7. The poets repeat the theme in every key. Gray finds joys brighter for sorrow’s shade8. Keats makes delight dwell with melancholy and turn to poison as it is sipped9. Emerson insists that sensual good can no more be had alone than light without shadow10. Leigh Hunt draws a gentler moral: some pain is a necessary ingredient in great pleasures, and pain does not survive in memory as pleasure does11.
Augustine also gives a physiological account. Hunger and thirst are pains, and nourishment relieves them12. The passage from emptiness to fullness is itself the pleasure, and the trouble is that what suffices for health is too little for pleasure13. Burke rejects this kind of reduction. He holds that pain and pleasure are positive simple ideas, neither consisting in the removal of the other, and that the mind usually rests in a state of indifference14. Against Locke, he argues that relief from pain does not resemble positive pleasure15. He therefore gives the relative feeling of relief its own name, Delight16. He adds that pain is the stronger of the two, and death more affecting than pain17. Milton’s fallen angel Nisroch had reached a similar verdict from experience: pleasure can be spared, but pain is perfect misery, the worst of evils18. Burke even assigns bodily mechanisms. Pain and fear alike tense the nerves19, while smooth bodies and sweet tastes please by relaxing the organs20. Kant, by contrast, sets all such questions aside as matters for empirical psychology, foreign to a pure moral inquiry21.
Berkeley uses the same facts for a metaphysical purpose. Intense heat is a great pain, and an unperceiving substance can feel no pain, so heat cannot exist in matter22,23. Sweetness and bitterness are likewise kinds of pleasure and pain24. Men find it easier to deny reality to such qualities precisely because pleasure and pain attach to them, though an indifferent sensation is no less a sensation25. Berkeley also asks whether God feels pain, and answers that God knows it without suffering it26. Rousseau, more simply, calls pain a warning given for our preservation, existing only in the feeling of the sufferer27.
The controversy over pleasure as the end of life runs through the whole set. Augustine confesses that he once thought perpetual bodily pleasure would be happiness, as Epicurus taught, yet he found the carnal life painful and blind28. Chaucer’s Franklin, a true son of Epicurus, holds pure delight to be perfect happiness and keeps a lavish table29. More’s Utopians give the doctrine its most careful form. They incline to pleasure as the chief part of felicity, but only to honest pleasure30. Nature, they say, prescribes a joyful life as the end of action31, and they refer all virtues to pleasure while excluding false pleasures against nature32. Montaigne goes further and claims that all opinions agree pleasure is the end, though virtue’s pleasure is sturdier than sensuality’s33.
The Stoics deny all this. Epictetus would make pleasure a handmaid to activity34. Marcus Aurelius argues that robbers and tyrants enjoy many pleasures, so pleasure is no mark of good35. Since the good man never repents having refused a pleasure, it is neither good nor useful36. Nature gives pleasure and pain to good and bad alike, so to pursue the one as good and flee the other as evil is impious37,38. Milton’s Michael warns Adam not to judge what is best by pleasure, natural as that seems39. The Gita assigns the opinion that pleasure is all the good there is to the unheavenly40.
The moderns revive pleasure as a standard by turning it into a calculus of consequences. Mill describes his father’s utilitarianism, which tested actions by their pleasurable and painful effects even while distrusting pleasures as over-valued and ranking intellectual ones highest41. Mill applied the same principle to classifying offences42. Shelley redefines utility by distinguishing durable, universal pleasure from transitory and particular pleasure43. Locke, though no hedonist in morals, saw the educational danger: whipping appeals only to the fear of pain and the love of pleasure, and so strengthens the root of vice44,45. He would rather make learning itself delightful46.
Nearly every author, whatever his view of the end, ranks pleasures. The Gita distinguishes three kinds: one bitter at first and sweet at last, one sweet and then bitter, and one born of sloth47. Cicero’s Cato grants that youth feels bodily pleasure more keenly, yet he prizes the pleasures of intellect above feasts48, and he observes that one does not miss what one no longer desires49. More’s Utopians place pleasures of mind and virtue highest and call eating and drinking base, since contrary griefs are mixed with them50. Penn finds the pleasures of sense low and transient, those of reason raised and enduring51. Montaigne calls virtue’s pleasure more divine and perfect52. Schiller adds that bringing form into enjoyment ennobles pleasure in its kind, not merely in its extent53.
Against true pleasures stand counterfeit ones. More’s Utopians mock delight in gowns, gems and honours54, and they think hoarding, dicing and hunting give no real delight, hunting being cruel besides55. They also deny that mere painlessness is pleasure56. Augustine’s confessions supply the darkest examples. He loved the stolen pears for the offence and not for the fruit57, and his friend Alypius drank in the savagery of the arena58. Shelley’s Cenci, sated with luxury, finds pleasure in other men’s agony59.
Even honest pleasure is fleeting. The Preacher tried mirth, wine and every delight and found these too vanity60. Burns likens pleasures to poppies and to snow falling in a river61. Keats says pleasure melts at a touch and is spoilt by use62. Pascal offers a test: if a pleasure passes, it is a river of Babylon63. Burke explains that use reduces pleasurable effects to indifference64. Mill, in his crisis, found that the pleasure of a tune faded with familiarity65. Pleasures enjoyed too early lost their charm for him, and an analytic habit of mind would not let fresh associations of pleasure form66.
The pleasures of the senses draw the most divided verdicts. Augustine wavers between the peril of music and its use in stirring devotion67,68. More thinks the pleasures of eye, ear and nose proper to man and calls ascetic self-punishment madness69. Bacon calls the garden the purest refreshment of the spirits70, and Milton celebrates the innocent delights of a country morning71. Darwin can only call the sense of beauty a peculiar pleasure whose origin is obscure72.
The warnings against bodily pleasure are as old as Plato. In the Phaedo the philosopher despises the pleasures of food and love73. Intense pleasure or pain persuades the soul that its object is most true74, and so each pleasure is a nail riveting her to the body75. Cicero reports Archytas calling sensual pleasure nature’s deadliest curse and the enemy of intellect76,77. Marcus Aurelius finds magnanimity and simplicity more agreeable than pleasure, which deceives78. Pascal adds a subtle asymmetry. Yielding to pain is no disgrace, but yielding to pleasure is, because we choose to endure pain while pleasure masters us79. He also counsels that renouncing pleasures leads to faith, not the reverse80. The Buddhist writings call the five sensual pleasures a snare for those who do not see their wretchedness81. Thomas à Kempis calls worldly pleasures short, false and bitter82. Marlowe’s Faustus laments trading eternal joy for twenty-four years of vain pleasure83, and Shakespeare’s sonnet shows lust despised as soon as it is enjoyed84.
Yet the same books overflow with celebration. Herodotus’s doomed Mycerinus turns nights into days to double his remaining years of pleasure85. Euripides praises wine as rest and forgetting for weary man86. FitzGerald’s Omar prefers wine, bread and a companion to glory and promises87, and calls the grape a blessing, adding that if it is a curse, God set it there88. Burns makes pleasure the magic wand of life’s fairyland89 and liquor the oil of its wheels90. Keats seeks wine to forget the fever and the fret91. The Thousand and One Nights repeatedly ends hardship in feasting that banishes every care92,93. Milton himself allows that a wise man may interpose such delights often94. Tennyson’s lotos-eaters find rest sweeter than the pain of wandering95.
Gentler than carousal is the gusto of small things. Stevenson’s Pepys delights in a ruled line or a new watch96, always pursues two pleasures at once97, and drives out sorrow with pleasure alone98. Andersen’s bedridden boy has more joy from one flower than a queen from her garden99. Dana savours a novel after long deprivation100 and the rest of fine weather after hard passage101. Locke and Ruskin agree that true recreation refreshes rather than dissipates102,103.
How pain should be borne divides the schools as sharply as how pleasure should be judged. Marcus Aurelius allows that sensations of pain are natural and not to be resisted, but the mind must not judge them evil104. Pain belongs to the senses and cannot impede the understanding105. If imagination adds nothing, pain is neither intolerable nor everlasting106: the intolerable kind carries us off, and the lasting kind can be borne107. Hume replies dryly that preaching universal rectitude to a man in the torments of gout would only irritate him108. Locke and Montaigne turn Stoic doctrine into pedagogy. Pain is made slight by not yielding to it109, children should be accustomed to bear it110, and the pupil should be inured even to torture111. Milton’s devils hope their torments may grow mild by habit112.
The religious authors go further and find meaning in pain. The Psalmist calls affliction good because it taught him the statutes113, and Elihu in Job sees chastening on the sickbed114. Paul finds comfort abounding with the sufferings of Christ115 and takes pleasure in his infirmities116. À Kempis teaches that suffering borne willingly lightens117 and seems smaller beside Christ’s118. Pascal prays that sickness may correct the misuse of health119. He asks for sorrow joined with consolation, the proper Christian condition120. And he holds that tribulation is overcome only by a greater pleasure121, so that even here pleasure keeps its sovereignty. Among the moderns, De Quincey’s Ladies of Sorrow plague a man so that his spirit’s capacities may unfold122. Carlyle finds divine meaning in pain123, and Emerson says defeat arms a man with secret forces124.
The Buddhists offer analysis rather than redemption. Misery has an origin and a cessation, and a path leads to its end125. The trances pass beyond both misery and happiness126. The Gita bids the devotee take pleasure and pain with equal peace127, a counsel strikingly close to the Stoic one. Humbler consolations also appear. Eumaeus finds joy in the memory of past griefs128. Shah-Zeman’s pain is lightened by another’s greater misfortune129, as Mephistophilis takes comfort in fellow sufferers130. Milton, however, denies that fellowship in pain lightens anyone’s load131.
Last comes the paradox of art. Augustine called it miserable madness that the spectator’s sorrow at tragedy should be his pleasure132. Cicero, by contrast, thought pity for others’ misfortunes is itself a source of pleasure to readers133, though the wild-beast shows gave a refined man only compassion134. Burke finds a real delight drawing us toward the contemplation of suffering135, and distinguishes what we would not choose to do from what we eagerly watch once it is done136. From pain he derives the sublime itself: no positive pleasure belongs to it137, and terror arises because pain is inflicted by a power superior to our will138,139. Shelley ties the highest pleasure to pain140. Wordsworth makes the poet’s office the giving of pleasure141: in pathetic subjects pleasure must outweigh pain142, and metre tempers the pain that accompanies passion143.
Beside these theories stand the narratives themselves. Job weighs his calamity against the sand of the sea144. Samson finds torment of mind worse than any wound145. Cellini adapts to his verminous dungeon146, and Andersen’s mermaid treads on knives gladly for love147. Manzoni’s Renzo can rest his eyes only on other miseries as great148. Haskell’s wounded at Gettysburg invoke death or bear their wounds cheerfully149. Dana finds pain and want of sleep heavier than any weather150. Burns rates toothache worse than hell151.
The questions remain open. Burke’s denial that pleasure is merely the relief of pain stands against Augustine and the poets, who bind the two together. The Stoic and Buddhist counsel of indifference stands against Pascal’s insistence that only a greater joy conquers sorrow. And the utilitarians’ calculus must still answer the ancient charge, voiced from Marcus Aurelius to Michael, that pleasure, being shared by the wicked, cannot be the measure of good.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
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