If
this were wholly separated from all our outward sensations, and inward
thoughts, we should have no reason to prefer one thought or action
to another; negligence to attention, or motion to rest. And so we
should neither stir our bodies, nor employ our minds, but let our
thoughts (if I may so call it) run adrift, without any direction or
design, and suffer the ideas of our minds, like unregarded shadows, to
make their appearances there, as it happened, without attending to
them. In which state man, however furnished with the faculties of
understanding and will, would be a very idle, inactive creature, and
pass his time only in a lazy, lethargic dream. It has therefore
pleased our wise Creator to annex to several objects, and the ideas
which we receive from them, as also to several of our thoughts, a
concomitant pleasure, and that in several objects, to several degrees,
that those faculties which he had endowed us with might not remain
wholly idle and unemployed by us.
4. An end and use of pain. Pain has the same efficacy and use to set
us on work that pleasure has, we being as ready to employ our
faculties to avoid that, as to pursue this: only this is worth our
consideration, that pain is often produced by the same objects and
ideas that produce pleasure in us. This their near conjunction,
which makes us often feel pain in the sensations where we expected
pleasure, gives us new occasion of admiring the wisdom and goodness of
our Maker, who, designing the preservation of our being, has annexed
pain to the application of many things to our bodies, to warn us of
the harm that they will do, and as advices to withdraw from them.
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