The Love of Pleasure in Relation to Morals

The preceding 3 chapters spoke of the inclination we have for the preservation of our being, and how it causes us to fall into several errors.

I now speak of that which we have for well-being—that is, for pleasures and for all things that make us happier and more content, or that we believe capable of this—and we shall try to discover the errors that arise from this inclination.

There are philosophers who try to persuade men that pleasure is not a good, and that pain is not an evil; that one can be happy in the midst of the most violent pains, and that one can be unhappy in the midst of the greatest pleasures. As these philosophers are very pathetic and very imaginative, they soon carry away weak minds that allow themselves to be influenced by the impression that speakers produce in them; for the Stoics are somewhat visionary, and visionaries are vehement; thus they easily imprint upon others the false sentiments with which they are prejudiced. But since there is no conviction against experience and against our inner feeling, all these pompous and magnificent reasons, which stun and dazzle men’s imagination, vanish with all their brilliance as soon as the soul is touched by some pleasure or some perceptible pain; and those who have placed all their confidence in this false persuasion of their minds find themselves without wisdom and without strength at the least attack of vice; they feel that they have been deceived and that they are defeated.

Pleasure must be fled, although it makes one happy

If philosophers cannot give their disciples the strength to conquer their passions, at least they should not seduce them nor persuade them that they have no enemies to fight. Things must be said as they are: pleasure is always a good, and pain always an evil; but it is not always advantageous to enjoy pleasure, and it is sometimes advantageous to suffer pain.

But to make well understood what I mean to say, one must know:

1° That God alone is powerful enough to act in us and to make us feel pleasure and pain: for it is evident to every man who consults his reason and disregards the reports of his senses, that it is not the objects we feel that effectively act in us, since the body cannot act on the mind; and that it is not our soul either that causes in itself its pleasure and pain on their occasion, for if it depended on the soul to feel pain, it would never suffer it;

2° That ordinarily one should give some good only to cause some good action or to reward it; and one should ordinarily cause some evil to suffer only to turn one away from a wicked action or to punish it: and thus God always acting with order and according to the rules of justice, every pleasure in its institution leads us to some good action or rewards us for it; and every pain turns us away from some evil action or punishes us for it.

3° That there are actions which are good in one sense and bad in another. It is, for example, a bad action to expose oneself to death when God forbids it; but it is also a good action to expose oneself to it when God commands it. For all our actions are good or bad only because God has commanded or forbidden them, either by the eternal law, which every reasonable man can consult by entering into himself; or by the written law, exposed to the senses of sensible and carnal man, who since the sin is not always in a state to consult reason.

Pleasure is always good, but that it is not always advantageous to taste it.

1. Because instead of attaching us to Him who alone is capable of causing it, it detaches us from Him to unite us to what falsely seems to cause it; it detaches us from God to unite us to a vile creature. It is always advantageous to taste the pleasure that refers to the true cause and is the perception of it. For as one can love only what one perceives, this pleasure can excite only a just love, the love of the true cause of happiness. But it is at least very dangerous to taste pleasures that refer to sensible objects and are the perception of them; because these pleasures lead us to love what is not the cause of our present happiness. For although those enlightened by true philosophy sometimes think that pleasure is not caused by external objects, and this may in some manner lead them to recognize and love God in all things: nevertheless since the sin, man’s reason is so weak, and his senses and imagination have so much power over his mind, that they soon corrupt his heart, when one does not deprive oneself, according to the counsel of the Gospel, of all things that do not lead to God by themselves; for the best philosophy cannot cure the mind nor resist the disorders of voluptuousness.

2° Because pleasure being a reward, it is an injustice to produce in one’s body movements that oblige God, in consequence of His first will or the general laws of nature, to make us feel pleasure when we do not deserve it; either because the action we do is useless or criminal; or because, being full of sins, we should not ask Him for reward. Man before his sin could with justice taste sensible pleasures in his regulated actions; but since the sin there are no longer entirely innocent sensible pleasures, or which are not capable of wounding us when we taste them, for often it suffices to taste them to become their slave.

3° Because God being just, it cannot be that He will not one day punish the violence done to Him, when one obliges Him to reward with pleasure criminal actions committed against Him. When our soul will no longer be united to our body, God will no longer have the obligation He imposed on Himself to give us the sensations that must correspond to the traces of the brain, and He will always have the obligation to satisfy His justice; thus that will be the time of His vengeance and His anger. Then, without changing the order of nature, and remaining always immutable in His first will, He will punish by pains that will never end the unjust pleasures of the voluptuous.

4° Because the certainty that one has in this life that this justice must be done agitates the mind with mortal anxieties and throws it into a kind of despair that makes the voluptuous miserable even in the midst of the greatest pleasures.

5° Because there are almost always troublesome remorse that accompany the most innocent pleasures, because we are sufficiently convinced that we do not deserve them; and these remorse deprive us of a certain inner joy that is found even in the pain of penitence.

Thus, although pleasure is a good, one must agree that it is not always advantageous to taste it, for all these reasons; and by other similar reasons that are very useful to know and very easy to deduce from these, it is almost always very advantageous to suffer pain, although it is effectively an evil.

Nevertheless every pleasure is a good, and makes happy in actuality the one who tastes it, in the instant he tastes it and to the extent he tastes it; and every pain is an evil and makes unhappy in actuality the one who suffers it, in the instant he suffers it and to the extent he suffers it. One can say that the just and the saints are in this life the unhappiest of all men, and the most worthy of compassion. “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable” [7], says Saint Paul. For those who weep and suffer persecution for justice are not happy because they suffer for justice, but because the kingdom of heaven is theirs, and a great reward is reserved for them in heaven—that is, because they will one day be happy. Those who suffer persecution for justice are in this just, virtuous, and perfect, because they are in the order of God, and perfection consists in following Him; but they are not happy because they suffer. One day they will suffer no more, and then they will be happy as well as just and perfect.

However I do not deny that in this life the just are not happy in some manner by the strength of their hope and faith, which make these future goods as if present to their minds. For it is certain that when the hope of some good is strong and vivid, it brings it near to the mind and makes it taste it; thus it makes them in some manner happy, since it is the taste of good, the possession of good, pleasure that makes us happy.

One must not therefore say to men that sensible pleasures are not good and do not make happier those who enjoy them; since that is not true, and in the time of temptation they recognize it to their misfortune. One must tell them that although these pleasures are good in themselves and capable of making them in some manner happy, they must nevertheless avoid them for reasons similar to those I have given; but that they cannot avoid them by their own strength, because they desire to be happy by an inclination they cannot overcome, and these passing pleasures they must avoid satisfy it in some manner, and thus they are in a miserable necessity of losing themselves, if they are not helped by the delight of grace which counterbalances the continual effort of sensible pleasures. These things must be said to them, so that they may distinctly know their weakness and their need of a liberator.

We must speak to men as Jesus Christ spoke to them, and not as the Stoics, who knew neither the nature nor the disease of the human mind. We must tell them without ceasing that in one sense one must hate and despise oneself, and that one must not seek here below establishment and happiness; that one must every day carry one’s cross or the instrument of one’s torture, and lose one’s life now to preserve it eternally. Finally we must show them that they are obliged to do the contrary of what they desire, so that they may feel their impotence for good. For men invincibly desire to be happy, and one cannot be actually happy if one does not do what one wants. Perhaps feeling their present evils and knowing their future evils, they will humble themselves on earth. Perhaps they will cry toward heaven, they will seek a mediator, they will fear sensible objects, and they will have a salutary horror for all that flatters the senses and concupiscence. Perhaps they will thus enter into that spirit of prayer and penitence so necessary to obtain grace, without which there is no strength, no health, no salvation to hope for.

It must not lead us to love sensible goods

We are inwardly convinced that pleasure is good; and this inner conviction is not false, for pleasure is effectively good. We are naturally convinced that pleasure is the character of good, and this natural conviction is certainly true, for what causes pleasure is certainly very good and very lovable.

But we are not convinced that sensible objects nor even our soul itself are capable of producing pleasure in us; for there is no reason to believe it, and there are a thousand reasons not to believe it. Thus sensible objects are not good, they are not lovable. If they are useful for the preservation of life, we must use them; but as they are not capable of acting in us, we must not love them. The soul should love only what is good for it, what is capable of making it happier and more perfect. It should therefore love only what is above it, for it is evident that it can receive its perfection only from what is above it.

But because we judge that a thing is the cause of some effect when it always accompanies it, we imagine that it is sensible objects that act in us, because at their approach we have new sensations, and we do not see the one who truly causes them in us. We taste a fruit and at the same time we feel sweetness; we attribute this sweetness to this fruit; we judge that it causes it and even that it contains it. We do not see God as we see and touch this fruit; we do not even think of Him, nor perhaps of ourselves. Thus we do not judge that God is the true cause of this sweetness, nor that this sweetness is a modification of our soul; we attribute both cause and effect to this fruit we eat.

What I have said of sensations that relate to the body must also be understood of those that have no relation to it, such as those found in pure intelligences.

A mind considers itself; it sees that nothing is lacking to its happiness and its perfection, or it sees that it does not possess what it wishes. At the sight of its happiness it feels joy; at the sight of its unhappiness it feels sadness. It immediately imagines that it is the sight of its happiness that produces in itself this feeling of joy, because this feeling always accompanies this sight. It also imagines that it is the sight of its unhappiness that produces in itself this feeling of sadness, because this feeling follows this sight. The true cause of these feelings, which is God alone, does not appear to it; it does not even think of God, for God acts in us without our knowing it.

God rewards us with a feeling of joy when we know that we are in the state we should be in, so that we remain there, that our anxiety ceases, and that we fully taste our happiness without letting the capacity of our mind be filled with any other thing. But He produces in us a feeling of sadness when we know that we are not in the state we should be in, so that we do not remain there, and that we seek with anxiety the perfection we lack. For God drives us unceasingly toward good when we know that we do not possess it; and He holds us there firmly when we see that we fully possess it. Thus it seems evident to me that the feelings of intellectual joy or sadness, as well as the feelings of sensible joy and sadness, are not voluntary productions of the mind.

We must therefore recognize unceasingly by reason this invisible hand that fills us with goods and hides itself from our mind under sensible appearances. We must adore it; we must love it; but we must also fear it, since if it fills us with pleasures, it can also overwhelm us with pains. We must love it with a love of choice, with an enlightened love, with a love worthy of God and worthy of us. Our love is worthy of God when we love Him by the knowledge we have that He is lovable; and this love is worthy of us, because being reasonable, we must love what reason makes us know worthy of our love. But we love sensible things with a love unworthy of us and of which they are also unworthy; for being reasonable we love them without reason for loving them, since we do not clearly know that they are lovable, and we know on the contrary that they are not. But pleasure seduces us and makes us love them, the blind and disordered love of pleasure being the true cause of men’s false judgments in moral subjects.