sua qui bona norint!_

One cannot reasonably doubt the existence of pain among animals; but it
seems as if their pleasures and their pains are not so keen as they are in
man: for animals, since they do not reflect, are susceptible neither to the
grief that accompanies pain, nor to the joy that accompanies pleasure. Men
are sometimes in a state approaching that of the beasts, when they act
almost on instinct alone and simply on the impressions made by the
experience of the senses: and, in this state, their pleasures and their
pains are very slight.

251. But let us pass from the beasts and return to rational creatures. It
is with regard to them that M. Bayle discusses this question: whether there
is more physical evil than physical good in the world? (_Reply to the
Questions of a Provincial_, vol. II, ch. 75.) To settle it aright, one must
explain wherein these goods and evils lie. We are agreed that physical evil
is simply displeasure and under that heading I include pain, grief, and
every other kind of discomfort. But does physical good lie solely in
pleasure? M. Bayle appears to be of this opinion; but I consider that it
lies also in a middle state, such as that of health. One is well enough
when one has no ill; it is a degree of wisdom to have no folly:

_Sapientia prima est,_
_Stultitia caruisse_.

In the same way one is worthy of praise when one cannot with justice be
blamed:

_Si non culpabor, sat mihi laudis erit_.

That being the case, all the sensations not unpleasing to us, all the
exercises of our powers that do not incommode us, and whose prevention
would incommode us, are physical goods, even when they cause us no
pleasure; for privation of them is a physical evil. Besides we only
perceive the good of health, and other like goods, when we are deprived of
them. On those terms I would dare to maintain that even in this life goods
exceed evils, that our comforts exceed our discomforts, and that M.
Descartes was justified in writing (vol. I, Letter 9) 'that natural reason
teaches us that we have more goods than evils in this life'.

[282]
252. It must be added that pleasures enjoyed too often and to excess would
be a very great evil. There are some which Hippocrates compared to the
falling sickness, and Scioppius doubtless only made pretence of envying the
sparrows in order to be agreeably playful in a learned and far from pl