While giving up Schopenhauer's doctrine of the merely negative character of pleasure, Hartmann yet contends that "eternal limits" are set by the very nature of volition, which make it impossible to have a world with more pleasure in it than pain. But his arguments[169] come very far short of proving his case. For, in the first place, to say that the stimulation and wearying of the nerves imply the necessity of a cessation of pleasure as well as of pain, is to confuse complete states of consciousness with the subjective feeling which accompanies each state. It is not true that one ever becomes weary of pleasure: to talk as if there were one class of nerves for pleasure, and another for pain, is absurd. But every mental state, however pleasurable to start with, tends to become monotonous, wearisome, or painful. Pleasure thus requires a change from one mental state to another: to say that it requires a change from pleasure to something else is a contradiction in terms. It is the objects or activity that require to be varied, not the feeling of pleasure. Again, in the second place, it is true that pleasure is to be regarded as indirect _in so far as_ it is entirely due to the cessation of a pain, and not to instantaneous satisfaction of will. But it does not do to regard the pleasure as altogether indirect when, although the cessation of a pain is necessary for its production, it is itself something more than this cessation. The inhibition of will often prevents the realisation of an object which is very much more than a recompense in pleasurable quality for the pain of the restraint; and although the pleasure only arises from the removal of this painful state of inhibition, there is a direct and positive gain over and above the gratification of having pain removed. In the third place, Hartmann argues that the satisfaction of will is often unconscious, whereas pain is _eo ipso_ conscious. But, even admitting the reality of unconscious will or desire, which this argument involves, it does not follow that pleasure and pain are differently affected in regard to it. If pain is _eo ipso_ conscious, so also is pleasure; if the satisfaction of unconscious desire gives no pleasure, neither does the absence of such satisfaction give pain.[170] It is true, as Hartmann adds in the fourth place, that desire is often long and the joy of satisfaction fleeting; but this refers not so much to mental pleasures as to those connected with physical appetite. Of them it is true that "These violent delights have violent ends, And in their triumph die." But in the higher pleasures with more permanent objects of pursuit, although the desire may be long-continued, the pleasure does not disappear in the moment of gratification.