em to me to level your foot at the very bellies of the
men, and to design to enter the list with them for their lives, whilst
you go about to rob them thus of their pleasure, and they cry out to
you,

"Forbear, we're no good boxers, sir;

no, nor good pleaders, nor good senators, nor good magistrates either;

"Our proper talent is to eat and drink."
("Odyssey," viii, 246, 248)

and to excite such tender and delicate motions in our bodies as may
chafe our imaginations to some jolly delight or gayety." And therefore
you seem to me not so much to take off (as I may say) the pleasurable
part, as to deprive the men of their very lives, while you will not
leave them to live pleasurably. Nay then, said Theon, if you approve so
highly of this subject, why do you not set in hand to it? By all means,
said I, I am for this, and shall not only hear but answer you too, if
you shall insist. But I must leave it to you to take the lead.

Then, after Theon had spoken something to excuse himself, Aristodemus
said: When we had so short and fair a cut to our design, how have you
blocked up the way before us, by preventing us from joining issue with
the faction at the very first upon the single point of propriety! For
you must grant, it can be no easy matter to drive men already possessed
that pleasure is their utmost good yet to believe a life of pleasure
impossible to be attained. But now the truth is, that when they failed
of living becomingly they failed also of living pleasurably; for to
live pleasurably without living becomingly is even by themselves allowed
inconsistent.

Theon then said: We may probably resume the consideration of that in
the process of our discourse; in the interim we will make use of their
concessions. Now they suppose their last good to lie about the belly and
such other conveyances of the body as let in pleasure and not pain; and
are of opinion, that all the brave and ingenious inventions that ever
have been were contrived at first for the pleasure of the belly, or the
good hope of compassing such pleasure,--as the sage Metrodorus informs
us. By which, my good friend, it is very plain, they found their
pleasure in a poor, rotten, and unsure thing, and one that is equally
perforated for pains, by the very passages they receive their pleasures
by; or rather indeed, that admits pleasure but by a few, but pain by
all its parts. For the whole of pleasure is in a manner in the joints,
nerves, fee