Hence they concluded that the sensation in the valley was gradually running down. Less and less was being felt. After a time, which they calculated with some show of precision, all feeling will have left the inhabitants and gone off in some irrecoverable form. All the beings of the valley will sink into apathy.
Thus coming in the course of their investigations upon the action of the king, which was the continual cause of all life, they apprehended it as the gradual annihilation of life.
The small building between the two council halls remains to be noticed.
Now when the king had connected pleasure and pain with different acts to be performed by the inhabitants of the valley, he had of necessity to let the pleasant one be the one that came first in the order of its possible performance. And then by the device of the curved rays he had brought it about that the inhabitants went through the painful act consequent on the pleasurable one, the two together forming the complete action which the king had designed. But this chain was not very secure. The inhabitants had a tendency to go through the pleasurable act and leave the painful act undone.
Now in things which necessarily concerned their life, the king would, by repeatedly bearing the pain of the painful act, continually set the beings going again; for when they had performed the pleasant act they were landed in a state of torpor, until the pain of the painful act had been borne by them or for them. Now if this act of which they took the pleasant and left the painful part undone was in the main current of their lives, the king would over and over again, by bearing the pain, bring those who had shirked the painful part into a position of advantage again, so that they could begin the routine afresh with another pleasant act. And often when thus started again they would take to the routine, and bear the pain in the painful act themselves. But many, after assisting them again and again, the king was obliged to let sink into apathy, such namely as always left the painful part of the action undone.
Now the little building was the council hall or investigation chamber of the searchers out of new pleasures. And by new pleasures they meant something of the following kind. With the pleasant and painful acts which made up the main routines of their life, it was not safe to take the pleasant and leave the painful acts, for that gradually led to their sinking into apathy. But there were many routines which the king had instituted besides the main ones. And if the pleasant part of the action constituting these secondary routines were taken, then there followed no tendency to lethargy in the main current of their lives, but they simply had a pleasure the more. Of course the pain of the painful act had to be borne, but they not going through with it left it for the king to bear.
Long ago, through one of the inhabitants of the valley with whom he had communicated, the king had sent a message, asking the inhabitants not to take the pleasant part of an action without the connected painful part. But now all memory of this message was lost, and the little building had been built, as a council hall or investigation chamber for the searching out of pleasurable acts. In it all possible novelties of action were discussed. And the pleasant parts of them being described, exactly how far they were pleasurable, and in what degree they were pleasurable, the information was made public throughout the land.
CHAPTER VIII.
Besides these two principal buildings in the metropolis, there were other public buildings devoted to various purposes. And some of the most important were colleges devoted to the education of the young inhabitants.
Now there was in the college of applied sensations a student who, though outwardly as proficient as the average of his companions, was in reality the most backward of all. He learned by a kind of rote all the doctrines they understood, and he could explain apparently how one feeling caused another. But in himself he had no particle of understanding. He seemed deficient in the sense of cause and effect which the others had. Of this the following instance will suffice to show the nature.