SECT. VII.
XXII. My first position is, that he who enjoys the most delights, is the man who enjoys the fewest; and I might even say, he enjoys none at all; but although this is another enigma more puzzling than the first, I shall easily extricate myself from the difficulty of solving both the one and the other. I ask in the first place, can meat or drink afford pleasure or gratification to a man, who eats without being hungry, and drinks without being thirsty? every one will readily acknowledge, little or none; but in this manner, do such opulent men as hold a loose rein on their appetites, enjoy delectable objects. The objects anticipate the desires. Hunger does not await the food, thirst the drink, nor lust the concupiscence. How then? do they make use of that for which they have no inclination? in the beginning, no; in the progress and the end, yes. The opulent man, who gives himself up to pleasure, begins very early in his course, to acquire a habit of gluttony in all his passions; by which means, in a very short time, the least glimpse of desire attracts him to the object. Even though his passion has been quite stifled by the antecedent enjoyment, new craving scarce begins to revive in embryo, when he gives himself up to fresh satiety; and as at such a crisis, concupiscence must be very languid, the enjoyment of course can be but insipid. This habit, by the immense repetition of acts, goes on every day, acquiring more and more force, till it excites men at last to drink of the forbidden liquor, when they are not the least stimulated by thirst. Here you see a man arrived at a state, in which, without tasting pleasure, or being able to experience gratification, he continues to destroy his health, and shorten his life.
XXIII. But I have not yet explained all the evil. The worst is, that hunger and satiety come to be joined together. If I say that the rich man who is filled, is as sensible of hunger as the poor man who is really hungry; it will be thought that I am propounding a new paradox, or at least a new riddle. But this shall not deter me from speaking the truth. The hungry poor man hungers after food, the hungry rich one hungers after hunger itself. He who is distressed, and in want of what is precisely necessary, craves for aliment. The glutton, who after having filled his belly, sees his table covered with dainties, craves for an appetite. The first is unhappy, because he wants what is needful for him, the other, because he can’t enjoy what he has. There is little difference in point of pain or uneasiness, between him who is really in want of water, and him who is oppressed with a dropsical thirst.
XXIV. This depraved craving, this flame, which raises itself upon the ashes of another fire, worst or last disease of concupiscence, or of the concupiscence of the superior part of the soul, oppresses those much, who, when they attain the pinnacle of power, arrive at the summit of perverseness; whose whole pursuit, has been seeking provocations for the appetite, dainties to feed their sensuality, and extravagant incentives to inflame desire. In looking for the exquisite, they found the monstrous. Heliogabalus went so far, as to make a banquet, all composed of the combs of cocks. Nero exercised his lust, cloathed in the skins of wild beasts, which was a habit, well suited to the character of that brute. So extravagant were the abominations of other Emperors, that neither the course of so many ages, nor the fragrance of such number of saints as have lived since, have dissipated at Rome, the stink of the Princes of those times. But with all their solicitude, what did they obtain? Nothing; they only augmented the violence of a bad habit, and caused it to exert itself in loathing. Pleasure in the mean while fled away, like the water of Tantalus, which, notwithstanding he seemed to have it always within his reach, his excessive anticipation of laying hold of it, was the occasion of his not being able to obtain it. These people, with all their toil, only acquired anxieties of mind, sickness, and bodily pain. And it is worthy of remarking, that those who gave themselves up to gluttony and lust, became melancholy, peevish, and disagreeable; and it may be from this cause, that we have rarely heard of a Prince, who was lascivious and a glutton, in whom cruelty was not joined to those vices. Some of them came to be tired of themselves, for instance, the second Apicius, who, after gorging two millions and a half, deprived himself of life with a halter. What was this, but finding vanity and vexation of spirit, among the greatest: endowments of fortune? Do even the miserably poor, think you, lead so unsavoury and tiresome lives?