now say, they present us with nothing worthy the
name of philosophy, while they leave the refuse of pleasure in their
wise man's mind, as if it could be a lodging for bodies; but that it is
impossible such things as these should make a man live pleasurably, I
think is abundantly manifest from hence.

For it will not perhaps seem strange if I assert, that the memory of
pleasure past brings no pleasure with it if it appeared but little in
the very enjoyment, or to men of such abstinence as to account it for
their benefit to retire from its first approaches; when even the most
amazed and sensual admirers of corporeal delights remain no longer in
their gaudy and pleasant humor than their pleasure lasts them. What
remains is but an empty shadow and dream of that pleasure that hath now
taken wing and is fled from them, and that serves but for fuel to foment
their untamed desires. Like as in those that dream they are a-dry or in
love, their unaccomplished pleasures and enjoyments do but excite the
inclination to a greater keenness. Nor indeed can the remembrance of
past enjoyments afford them any real contentment at all, but must serve
only, with the help of a quick desire, to raise up very much of outrage
and stinging pain out of the remains of a feeble and befooling pleasure.
Neither doth it befit men of continence and sobriety to exercise their
thoughts about such poor things, or to do what one twitted Carneades
with, to reckon, as out of a diurnal, how oft they have lain with
Hedia or Leontion, or where they last drank Thasian wine, or at what
twentieth-day feast they had a costly supper. For such transport and
captivatedness of the mind to its own remembrances as this is would show
a detestable and bestial restlessness and raving towards the present
and hoped-for acts of pleasure. And therefore I cannot but look upon
the sense of these inconveniences as the true cause of their retiring
at last to a freedom from pain and a firm state of body; as if living
pleasurably could lie in bare imagining this either past or future to
some persons. True indeed it is, "that a sound state of body and a good
assurance of its continuing must needs afford a most transcending and
solid satisfaction to all men capable of reasoning."

But yet look first what work they make, while they course this same
thing--whether it be pleasure, exemption from pain, or good health--up
and down, first from the body to the mind, and then back again from the