But this
opinion has been long ago excluded from among them; so that now they
almost universally agree that health is the greatest of all bodily
pleasures; and that as there is a pain in sickness which is as opposite
in its nature to pleasure as sickness itself is to health, so they hold
that health is accompanied with pleasure. And if any should say that
sickness is not really pain, but that it only carries pain along with
it, they look upon that as a fetch of subtlety that does not much alter
the matter. It is all one, in their opinion, whether it be said that
health is in itself a pleasure, or that it begets a pleasure, as fire
gives heat, so it be granted that all those whose health is entire have
a true pleasure in the enjoyment of it. And they reason thus:—‘What is
the pleasure of eating, but that a man’s health, which had been
weakened, does, with the assistance of food, drive away hunger, and so
recruiting itself, recovers its former vigour? And being thus refreshed
it finds a pleasure in that conflict; and if the conflict is pleasure,
the victory must yet breed a greater pleasure, except we fancy that it
becomes stupid as soon as it has obtained that which it pursued, and so
neither knows nor rejoices in its own welfare.’ If it is said that
health cannot be felt, they absolutely deny it; for what man is in
health, that does not perceive it when he is awake? Is there any man
that is so dull and stupid as not to acknowledge that he feels a
delight in health? And what is delight but another name for pleasure?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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