XXII. My first position is, that he who enjoys the most delights, is
the man who enjoys the fewest; and I might even say, he enjoys none
at all; but although this is another enigma more puzzling than the
first, I shall easily extricate myself from the difficulty of solving
both the one and the other. I ask in the first place, can meat or
drink afford pleasure or gratification to a man, who eats without
being hungry, and drinks without being thirsty? every one will readily
acknowledge, little or none; but in this manner, do such opulent men
as hold a loose rein on their appetites, enjoy delectable objects.
The objects anticipate the desires. Hunger does not await the food,
thirst the drink, nor lust the concupiscence. How then? do they make
use of that for which they have no inclination? in the beginning, no;
in the progress and the end, yes. The opulent man, who gives himself
up to pleasure, begins very early in his course, to acquire a habit of
gluttony in all his passions; by which means, in a very short time,
the least glimpse of desire attracts him to the object. Even though
his passion has been quite stifled by the antecedent enjoyment, new
craving scarce begins to revive in embryo, when he gives himself up
to fresh satiety; and as at such a crisis, concupiscence must be very
languid, the enjoyment of course can be but insipid. This habit, by the
immense repetition of acts, goes on every day, acquiring more and more
force, till it excites men at last to drink of the forbidden liquor,
when they are not the least stimulated by thirst. Here you see a man
arrived at a state, in which, without tasting pleasure, or being able
to experience gratification, he continues to destroy his health, and
shorten his life.
XXIII. But I have not yet explained all the evil. The worst is, that
hunger and satiety come to be joined together. If I say that the rich
man who is filled, is as sensible of hunger as the poor man who is
really hungry; it will be thought that I am propounding a new paradox,
or at least a new riddle. But this shall not deter me from speaking
the truth. The hungry poor man hungers after food, the hungry rich one
hungers after hunger itself. He who is distressed, and in want of what
is precisely necessary, craves for aliment. The glutton, who after
having filled his belly, sees his table covered with dainties, craves
for an appetite. The first is unhappy, because he wants what is needful
for him, the other, because he can’t enjoy what he has. There is little
difference in point of pain or uneasiness, between him who is really
in want of water, and him who is oppressed with a dropsical thirst.
XXIV. This depraved craving, this flame, which raises itself upon the
ashes of another fire, worst or last disease of concupiscence, or of
the concupiscence of the superior part of the soul, oppresses those
much, who, when they attain the pinnacle of power, arrive at the summit
of perverseness; whose whole pursuit, has been seeking provocations
for the appetite, dainties to feed their sensuality, and extravagant
incentives to inflame desire. In looking for the exquisite, they found
the monstrous. Heliogabalus went so far, as to make a banquet, all
composed of the combs of cocks. Nero exercised his lust, cloathed
in the skins of wild beasts, which was a habit, well suited to the
character of that brute. So extravagant were the abominations of other
Emperors, that neither the course of so many ages, nor the fragrance
of such number of saints as have lived since, have dissipated at Rome,
the stink of the Princes of those times. But with all their solicitude,
what did they obtain? Nothing; they only augmented the violence of
a bad habit, and caused it to exert itself in loathing. Pleasure
in the mean while fled away, like the water of Tantalus, which,
notwithstanding he seemed to have it always within his reach, his
excessive anticipation of laying hold of it, was the occasion of his
not being able to obtain it. These people, with all their toil, only
acquired anxieties of mind, sickness, and bodily pain. And it is worthy
of remarking, that those who gave themselves up to gluttony and lust,
became melancholy, peevish, and disagreeable; and it may be from this
cause, that we have rarely heard of a Prince, who was lascivious and a
glutton, in whom cruelty was not joined to those vices. Some of them
came to be tired of themselves, for instance, the second Apicius, who,
after gorging two millions and a half, deprived himself of life with a
halter. What was this, but finding vanity and vexation of spirit, among
the greatest: endowments of fortune? Do even the miserably poor, think
you, lead so unsavoury and tiresome lives?