The Complete Works, vol 3: Essays and Miscellanies | Page 6

his fancy what
he either ate or drank yesterday, that he may have recourse to that when
he wants fresh fare. See now how much more temperate the Cyrenaics
are, who, though they have drunk out of the same bottle with Epicurus,
yet will not allow men so much as to practise their amours by
candlelight, but only under the covert of the dark, for fear seeing should
fasten too quick an impression of the images of such actions upon the
fancy and thereby too frequently inflame the desire. But these
gentlemen account it the highest accomplishment of a philosopher to
have a clear and retentive memory of all the various figures, passions,
and touches of past pleasure. We will not now say, they present us with
nothing worthy the name of philosophy, while they leave the refuse of
pleasure in their wise man's mind, as if it could be a lodging for bodies;
but that it is impossible such things as these should make a man live
pleasurably, I think is abundantly manifest from hence. For it will not
perhaps seem strange if I assert, that the memory of pleasure past
brings no pleasure with it if it appeared but little in the very enjoyment,
or to men of such abstinence as to account it for their benefit to retire
from its first approaches; when even the most amazed and sensual
admirers of corporeal delights remain no longer in their gaudy and
pleasant humor than their pleasure lasts them. What remains is but an
empty shadow and dream of that pleasure that hath now taken wing and
is fled from them, and that serves but for fuel to foment their untamed
desires. Like as in those that dream they are a-dry or in love, their
unaccomplished pleasures and enjoyments do but excite the inclination
to a greater keenness. Nor indeed can the remembrance of past
enjoyments afford them any real contentment at all, but must serve only,
with the help of a quick desire, to raise up very much of outrage and

stinging pain out of the remains of a feeble and befooling pleasure.
Neither doth it befit men of continence and sobriety to exercise their
thoughts about such poor things, or to do what one twitted Carneades
with, to reckon, as out of a diurnal, how oft they have lain with Hedia
or Leontion, or where they last drank Thasian wine, or at what
twentieth-day feast they had a costly supper. For such transport and
captivatedness of the mind to its own remembrances as this is would
show a detestable and bestial restlessness and raving towards the
present and hoped-for acts of pleasure. And therefore I cannot but look
upon the sense of these inconveniences as the true cause of their
retiring at last to a freedom from pain and a firm state of body; as if
living pleasurably could lie in bare imagining this either past or future
to some persons. True indeed it is, "that a sound state of body and a
good assurance of its continuing must needs afford a most transcending
and solid satisfaction to all men capable of reasoning."
But yet look first what work they make, while they course this same
thing--whether it be pleasure, exemption from pain, or good health--up
and down, first from the body to the mind, and then back again from
the mind to the body, being compelled to return it to its first origin, lest
it should run out and so give them the slip. Thus they place the pleasure
of the body (as Epicurus says) upon the complacent joy in the mind,
and yet conclude again with the good hopes that complacent joy hath in
bodily pleasure. Indeed what wonder is it if, when the foundation
shakes, the superstructure totter? Or that there should be no sure hope
nor unshaken joy in a matter that suffers so great concussion and
changes as continually attend a body exposed to so many violences and
strokes from without, and having within it the origins of such evils as
human reason cannot avert? For if it could, no understanding man
would ever fall under stranguries, gripes, consumptions, or dropsies;
with some of which Epicurus himself did conflict and Polyaenus with
others, while others of them were the deaths of Neocles and
Agathobulus. And this we mention not to disparage them, knowing
very well that Pherecydes and Heraclitus, both very excellent persons,
labored under very uncouth and calamitous distempers. We only beg of
them, if they will own their own diseases and not by noisy rants and
popular harangues incur the imputation of false bravery, either not to
take the health of the whole body for the ground of their content, or else

not to say that men under the extremities of dolors