There seem to be no special states of aversion, determined by bodily
causes, and related to certain pains as our appetites to their
correspondent pleasures; but most persons are liable to be thrown by
the prospect of certain pains into the state of passionate aversion
which we call fear, and to be thereby led to estimate such pains as
worse than they would be judged to be in a calmer mood.
Further, when feeling any kind of pain or uneasiness we seem liable
to underrate pain of a very dissimilar kind: thus in danger we value
repose, overlooking its _ennui_, while the tedium of security makes
us imagine the mingled excitement of past danger as almost purely
pleasurable. And again when we are absorbed in any particular pleasant
activity, the pleasures attending dissimilar activities are apt to be
contemned: they appear coarse or thin, as the case may be: and this
constitutes a fundamental objection to noting the exact degree of
a pleasure at the time of experiencing it. The eager desire, which
often seems an indispensable element of the whole state of pleasurable
activity, generally involves a similar bias: indeed any strong
excitement, in which our thought is concentrated on a single result or
group of results--whether it be the excitement of aversion, fear, hope,
or suspense--tends to make us inappreciative of alien pleasures and
pains alike. And, speaking more generally, we cannot imagine as very
intense a pleasure of a kind that at the time of imagining it we are
incapable of experiencing: as (_e.g._) the pleasures of intellectual
or bodily exercise at the close of a wearying day; or any emotional
pleasure when our susceptibility to the special emotion is temporarily
exhausted. On the other hand, it is not easy to guard against error, as
philosophers have often thought, by making our estimate in a cool and
passionless state. For there are many pleasures which require precedent
desire, and even enthusiasm and highly wrought excitement, in order to
be experienced in their full intensity; and it is not likely that we
should appreciate these adequately in a state of perfect tranquillity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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