leasing condition of the body, if they be
but moderate, appear to have nothing in them that is either great or
considerable; but if they be excessive, besides their being vain and
uncertain, they are also importune and petulant; nor should a man term
them either mental satisfactions or gayeties, but rather corporeal
gratifications, they being at best but the simperings and effeminacies
of the mind. But now such as justly deserve the names of complacencies
and joys are wholly refined from their contraries, and are immixed with
neither vexation, remorse, nor repentance; and their good is congenial
to the mind and truly mental and genuine, and not superinduced. Nor is
it devoid of reason, but most rational, as springing either from that in
the mind that is contemplative and inquiring, or else from that part
of it that is active and heroic. How many and how great satisfactions
either of these affords us, no one can ever relate. But to hint briefly
at some of them. We have the historians before us, which, though they
find us many and delightful exercises, still leave our desire after
truth insatiate and uncloyed with pleasure, through which even lies
are not without their grace. Yea, tales and poetic fictions, while they
cannot gain upon our belief, have something in them that is charming to
us.

For do but think with yourself, with what a sting we read Plato's
"Atlantic" and the conclusion of the "Iliad," and how we hanker and gape
after the rest of the tale, as when some beautiful temple or theatre is
shut up. But now the informing of ourselves with the truth herself is
a thing so delectable and lovely as if our very life and being were for
the sake of knowing. And the darkest and grimmest things in death are
its oblivion, ignorance, and obscurity. Whence, by Jove, it is that
almost all mankind encounter with those that would destroy the sense
of the departed, as placing the very whole of their life, being, and
satisfaction solely in the sensible and knowing part of the mind. For
even the things that grieve and afflict us yet afford us a sort of
pleasure in the hearing. And it is often seen that those that are
disordered by what is told them, even to the degree of weeping,
notwithstanding require the telling of it. So he in the tragedy who is
told,

Alas I now the very worst must tell,

replies,

I dread to hear it too, but I must hear.
(Sophocles, "Pedipus Tyrannus," 1169, 1170.)

But this may seem p