But this is a high
ground and a keen upper air, where few can tread and breathe.
2. A man has more complacency in himself upon attaining to some
intellectual delight than upon a sensual satisfaction: he is prouder
to have solved a problem than to have enjoyed his dinner. Also, he
would rather forego the capacity of sensual enjoyment than that of
intellectual pleasure; rather lose his sense of taste than his science
or his scholarship, if he has any notable amount of either. Again, put
sensual delight in one scale, and in the other the intellectual
delight of honour, no worthy specimen of a man will purchase the
pleasure at the price of honour. The disgrace attaching to certain
modes of enjoyment is sufficient to make men shun them, very pleasant
though they be to sense. Again, sensual delight is a passing thing,
waxing and waning: but intellectual delight is steady, grasped and
held firmly as a whole. But sensual delight comes more welcome of the
two in this that it removes a pre-existing uneasiness, as hunger,
weariness, nervous prostration, thus doing a medicinal office: whereas
no such office attaches in the essential nature of things to
intellectual delight, as that does not presuppose any uneasiness; and
though it may remove uneasiness, the removal is difficult, because the
uneasiness itself is an obstacle to the intellectual effort that must
be made to derive any intellectual delight.
Pages:
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96