of stupidity rather than of pleasure. This subject has been very
narrowly canvassed among them, and it has been debated whether a firm and
entire health could be called a pleasure or not. Some have thought that
there was no pleasure but what was 'excited' by some sensible motion in
the body. But this opinion has been long ago excluded from among them;
so that now they almost universally agree that health is the greatest of
all bodily pleasures; and that as there is a pain in sickness which is as
opposite in its nature to pleasure as sickness itself is to health, so
they hold that health is accompanied with pleasure. And if any should
say that sickness is not really pain, but that it only carries pain along
with it, they look upon that as a fetch of subtlety that does not much
alter the matter. It is all one, in their opinion, whether it be said
that health is in itself a pleasure, or that it begets a pleasure, as
fire gives heat, so it be granted that all those whose health is entire
have a true pleasure in the enjoyment of it. And they reason thus:--'What
is the pleasure of eating, but that a man's health, which had been
weakened, does, with the assistance of food, drive away hunger, and so
recruiting itself, recovers its former vigour? And being thus refreshed
it finds a pleasure in that conflict; and if the conflict is pleasure,
the victory must yet breed a greater pleasure, except we fancy that it
becomes stupid as soon as it has obtained that which it pursued, and so
neither knows nor rejoices in its own welfare.' If it is said that
health cannot be felt, they absolutely deny it; for what man is in
health, that does not perceive it when he is awake? Is there any man
that is so dull and stupid as not to acknowledge that he feels a delight
in health? And what is delight but another name for pleasure?

"But, of all pleasures, they esteem those to be most valuable that lie in
the mind, the chief of which arise out of true virtue and the witness of
a good conscience. They account health the chief pleasure that belongs