for that every tickling and sting which are in certain pleasures, and that seem to raise us above simple health and passiveness, that active, moving, and, I know not how, itching, and biting pleasure; even that very pleasure itself aims at nothing but insensibility as its mark. The appetite that carries us headlong to women’s embraces has no other end but only to cure the torment of our ardent and furious desires, and only requires to be glutted and laid at rest, and delivered from the fever. And so of the rest. I say, then, that if simplicity conducts us to a state free from evil, she leads us to a very happy one according to our condition. And yet we are not to imagine it so stupid an insensibility as to be totally without sense; for Crantor had very good reason to controvert the insensibility of Epicurus, if founded so deep that the very first attack and birth of evils were not to be perceived: “I do not approve such an insensibility as is neither possible nor to be desired. I am very well content not to be sick; but if I am, I would know that I am so; and if a caustic be applied, or incisions made in any part, I would feel them.” In truth, whoever would take away the knowledge and sense of evil, would at the same time eradicate the sense of pleasure, and finally annihilate man himself: Istud nihil dolere, non sine magn mercede contingit, immanitatis in animo, stuporis in corpore. “An insensibility that is not to be purchased but at the price of inhumanity in the soul, and of stupidity of the body.” Evil appertains to man of course. Neither is pain always to be avoided, nor pleasure always pursued.
‘Tis a great advantage to the honour of ignorance that knowledge itself throws us into its arms, when she finds herself puzzled to fortify us against the weight of evil; she is constrained to come to this composition, to give us the reins, and permit us to fly into the lap of the other, and to shelter ourselves under her protection from the strokes and injuries of fortune. For what else is her meaning when she instructs us to divert our thoughts from the ills that press upon us, and entertain them with the meditation of pleasures past and gone; to comfort ourselves in present afflictions with the remembrance of fled delights, and to call to our succour a vanished satisfaction, to oppose it to the discomfort that lies heavy upon us? Levationes gritudinum in avocatione a cogitand molesti, et revocation ad contemplandas voluptates, ponit; “He directs us to alleviate our grief and pains by rejecting unpleasant thoughts, and recalling agreeable ideas;” if it be not that where her power fails she would supply it with policy, and make use of sleight of hand where force of limbs will not serve her turn? For not only to a philosopher, but to any man in his right wits, when he has upon him the thirst of a burning fever, what satisfaction can it be to him to remember the pleasure he took in drinking Greek wine a month ago? It would rather only make matters worse to him:—
Che ricordarsi il ben doppia la noia.
“The thinking of pleasure doubles trouble.”
Of the same stamp is this other counsel that philosophy gives, only to remember the happiness that is past, and to forget the misadventures we have undergone; as if we had the science of oblivion in our own power, and counsel, wherein we are yet no more to seek.
Suavis laborum est prteritorum rmoria.
“Sweet is the memory of by-gone pain.”
How does philosophy, that should arm me to contend with fortune, and steel my courage to trample all human adversities under foot, arrive to this degree of cowardice to make me hide my head at this rate, and save myself by these pitiful and ridiculous shifts? For the memory represents to us not what we choose, but what she pleases; nay, there is nothing that so much imprints any thing in our memory as a desire to forget it. And ‘tis a good way to retain and keep any thing safe in the soul to solicit her to lose it. And this is false: Est situm in nobis, ut et adversa quasi perpetua oblivione obruamus, et secunda jucunde et suaviter meminerimus; “it is in our power to bury, as it were, in a perpetual oblivion, all adverse accidents, and to retain a pleasant and delightful memory of our successes;” and this is true: Memini etiam quo nolo; oblivisci non possum quo volo. “I do also remember what I would not; but I cannot forget what I would.” And whose counsel is this? His, qui se unies sapiervtem profiteri sit ausus; “who alone durst profess himself a wise man.”
Qui genus humanum ingenio superavit, et omnes
Prstinxit stellas, exortus uti thereus Sol.
“Who from mankind the prize of knowledge won,
And put the stars out like the rising sun.”
To empty and disfurnish the memory, is not this the true way to ignorance?
Iners malorum remedium ignorantia est.
“Ignorance is but a dull remedy for evils.”
We find several other like precepts, whereby we are permitted to borrow frivolous appearances from the vulgar, where we find the strongest reason will not answer the purpose, provided they administer satisfaction and comfort Where they cannot cure the wound, they are content to palliate and benumb it I believe they will not deny this, that if they could add order and constancy in a state of life that could maintain itself in ease and pleasure by some debility of judgment, they would accept it:—