PLEASURE, (Encycl.) Pleasure and pain are no other than engines in nature's hand, whereby we are directed to consult our own preservation, and avoid our ruin. To things that may contribute to the one, as food, venery, &c. she has annexed pleasure; and to those that may conduce to the other, as hunger, diseases, &c. pain. She durst not leave it to our discretion, whether we would preserve and propagate the species or not; but, as it were, constrains us to both. Were there no pleasure in eating, nor pain in hunger, what numbers would be starved through negligence, forgetfulness, or sloth? What is it induces people to the office of generation, but pleasure? Without this the world had scarce subsisted to this time.
Among the multiplicity of things to be done, and to be avoided, for the preservation of animal life, &c. how should we have distinguished between the one and the
Pleasure the other, but for the sensation of pleasure and pain ?
Point. These are not only spurs to urge us on, but also guides to direct us whither we are to go. Wherever nature has fixed a pleasure, we may take it for granted she there enjoins a duty; and something is to be there done, either for the individual, or for the species.
Hence it is, that our pleasures vary at different stages of life; the pleasures, e. g. of a child, a youth, a grown man, an old man, &c. all tending to those particular things required by nature in that particular state of life, either for the preservation simply, or jointly for that and propagation, &c.
Hence, from the different constitutions of the body, at different ages, it were very easy to account for all the particular tastes and pleasures thereof: not by deducing the pleasures mechanically from the disposition of the organs in that state, but by considering what is necessary for the perfection and well-being of the individual in that state, and what is to contribute to that of the species. In a child, e. g. mere preservation in the present state is not enough; it must likewise grow: to bring this to pass, nature has made the returns of hunger, &c. more frequent, as well as more acute, and the pleasures of feeding more exquisite. And that the excess of aliment, in proportion to the bulk of the body, may be dispensed with, she has made one of the great pleasures of this state to consist in a series of sportive exercises; by means whereof the parts of the body come to be opened and expanded, and arrive at maturity. This done, the pleasures that conduced thereto disappear; and others, suited to the new state, succeed.