entertained such a notion), that all things are in a perpetual flux, still
these changes are often unconscious, and devoid either of pleasure or pain.
We assume, then, that there are three states--pleasureable, painful,
neutral; we may embellish a little by calling them gold, silver, and that
which is neither.

But there are certain natural philosophers who will not admit a third
state. Their instinctive dislike to pleasure leads them to affirm that
pleasure is only the absence of pain. They are noble fellows, and,
although we do not agree with them, we may use them as diviners who will
indicate to us the right track. They will say, that the nature of anything
is best known from the examination of extreme cases, e.g. the nature of
hardness from the examination of the hardest things; and that the nature of
pleasure will be best understood from an examination of the most intense
pleasures. Now these are the pleasures of the body, not of the mind; the
pleasures of disease and not of health, the pleasures of the intemperate
and not of the temperate. I am speaking, not of the frequency or
continuance, but only of the intensity of such pleasures, and this is given
them by contrast with the pain or sickness of body which precedes them.
Their morbid nature is illustrated by the lesser instances of itching and
scratching, respecting which I swear that I cannot tell whether they are a
pleasure or a pain. (1) Some of these arise out of a transition from one
state of the body to another, as from cold to hot; (2) others are caused by
the contrast of an internal pain and an external pleasure in the body:
sometimes the feeling of pain predominates, as in itching and tingling,
when they are relieved by scratching; sometimes the feeling of pleasure:
or the pleasure which they give may be quite overpowering, and is then
accompanied by all sorts of unutterable feelings which have a death of
delights in them. But there are also mixed pleasures which are in the mind
only. For are not love and sorrow as well as anger 'sweeter than honey,'