by recruiting Nature
and supplying those parts which feed the internal heat of life by eating
and drinking, or when Nature is eased of any surcharge that oppresses it,
when we are relieved from sudden pain, or that which arises from
satisfying the appetite which Nature has wisely given to lead us to the
propagation of the species. There is another kind of pleasure that
arises neither from our receiving what the body requires, nor its being
relieved when overcharged, and yet, by a secret unseen virtue, affects
the senses, raises the passions, and strikes the mind with generous
impressions--this is, the pleasure that arises from music. Another kind
of bodily pleasure is that which results from an undisturbed and vigorous
constitution of body, when life and active spirits seem to actuate every
part. This lively health, when entirely free from all mixture of pain,
of itself gives an inward pleasure, independent of all external objects
of delight; and though this pleasure does not so powerfully affect us,
nor act so strongly on the senses as some of the others, yet it may be
esteemed as the greatest of all pleasures; and almost all the Utopians
reckon it the foundation and basis of all the other joys of life, since
this alone makes the state of life easy and desirable, and when this is
wanting, a man is really capable of no other pleasure. They look upon
freedom from pain, if it does not rise from perfect health, to be a state
of stupidity rather than of pleasure. This subject has been very
narrowly canvassed among them, and it has been debated whether a firm and
entire health could be called a pleasure or not. Some have thought that
there was no pleasure but what was 'excited' by some sensible motion in
the body. 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