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If he abstains from taking the pleasure in question as we suppose him to do, it is I suppose on the four accounts following, some or all of them. 1\TstT\ Because he thinks God may be displeased with him. 2. Because he thinks the Law may punish him 3. Because he thinks he may lose the esteem and good-will of his acquaintance. 4. Because he thinks he may lose to the good-will of his wife herself. To each /every one/ of these events, pain is or at least may naturally /does probably/ appear to him to be annexed: and that a pain originating ultimately in the body. If the 1\TstT\ of these be the consideration that governed him, it is plain that the pleasure he finds in fulfilling his duty in this behalf is not /consists not in/ the bare reflection that he is fulfilling his duty, but in his reflecting on the pains he avoids by not violating it: viz: such pains whether in the world or in the next, that he might apprehend from the displeasure of the Deity, at the same time that he reflects on the pleasures that he secures; by such a conduct will secure him. viz: such pleasures as he expects from the favour of the Deity. Another observation might here be made. If the pains a man has to apprehend from the displeasure of the Deity are not pains of the body; as the Scriptures seem to intimate, they are at least pains, which men could have no notion of, nor therefore be influenced by, if it were not for the pains of the body. If it be the 2\TdT\ that governed him, it is plain according to our authors own account that the pleasure he enjoys is a pleasure originating in the body: for the pleasure of thinking that he exempts himself from the pains inflicted by the Law. Now all these pains are without dispute referable to the body. If it be either the 3\TdT\ or 4\TthT\, it is the pleasure of reflecting that he has escaped a pain: the pain of forfeiting the esteem, or if another word pleases better the good will of those about him. Now what is it that esteem is good for? is it good of itself,+ or for something it procures? That it is good of itself, one may allow him after he has told us how much pleasure a man would find in the esteem of a set of beings he had neither good nor harm to apprehend from; the inhabitants of Saturn for example (supposing there are any) or the inhabitants of a drop or two of stale vinegar? If I ask him what riches or power are good for, he agrees with us, and has his answer ready - he [...?] that they afford pleasure in virtue of the physical enjoyments of which they are /may procure him/ the pledges and the physical sufferances against which they are /may ensure him/ a defence. to these objects at least, he says it is but too common for men to refer exclusively the benfits of these means as he calls them their riches and their power. They are valuable therefore as means only - for in no other light does he speak of them - And what else they are valuable as means to he does not tell us, nor on what other account they are valued, for when they are valued as he seems to intimate they may be on another besides this that he has mentioned. If they are valuable on account of any thing else besides the pleasures of the body they are means to, it must be the pleasures of the mind. But these he has himself reduced to two the two we have just mentioned above - namely the pleasure of thinking that one is fulfulling one's duty which is that we are now considering: and that of the face[?] of truth, or of being satisfied with the evidence of things as they appear to us. The last mentioned of these pleasures we are to come to by and by. As to the other, it would hardly Maupertuis
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Identifier: | JB/096/130/001"JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 96. |
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legislation |
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130 |
maupertuis iii |
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jeremy bentham |
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31134 |
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