57. [not in early editions]

58.  Why men choose what makes them miserable.

What has been said may also discover to us the reason why men in this world prefer different things, and pursue happiness by contrary courses.  But yet, since men are always constant and in earnest in matters of happiness and misery, the question still remains, How men come often to prefer the worse to the better; and to choose that, which, by their own confession, has made them miserable?

59.  The causes of this.

To account for the various and contrary ways men take, though all aim at being happy, we must consider whence the various uneasinesses that determine the will, in the preference of each voluntary action, have their rise:—­

1.  From bodily pain.

Some of them come from causes not in our power; such as are often the pains of the body from want, disease, or outward injuries, as the rack, etc.; which, when present and violent, operate for the most part forcibly on the will, and turn the courses of men’s lives from virtue, piety, and religion, and what before they judged to lead to happiness; every one not endeavouring, or not being able, by the contemplation of remote and future good, to raise in himself desires of them strong enough to counterbalance the uneasiness he feels in those bodily torments, and to keep his will steady in the choice of those actions which lead to future happiness.  A neighbouring country has been of late a tragical theatre from which we might fetch instances, if there needed any, and the world did not in all countries and ages furnish examples enough to confirm that received observation:  Necessitas COGIT ad TURPIA; and therefore there is great reason for us to pray, ’Lead us not into temptation.’

2.  From wrong Desires arising from wrong Judgments.

Other uneasinesses arise from our desires of absent good; which desires always bear proportion to, and depend on, the judgment we make, and the relish we have of any absent good; in both which we are apt to be variously misled, and that by our own fault.

60.  Our judgment of present Good or Evil always right.

In the first place, I shall consider the wrong judgments men make of future good and evil, whereby their desires are misled.  For, as to present happiness and misery, when that alone comes into consideration, and the consequences are quite removed, a man never chooses amiss:  he knows what best pleases him, and that he actually prefers.  Things in their present enjoyment are what they seem:  the apparent and real good are, in this case, always the same.  For the pain or pleasure being just so great and no greater than it is felt, the present good or evil is really so much as it appears.  And therefore were every action of ours concluded within itself, and drew no consequences after it, we should undoubtedly never err in our choice of good:  we should always infallibly prefer the best.  Were the pains of honest industry, and of starving with hunger and cold set together before us, nobody would be in doubt which to choose:  were the satisfaction of a lust and the joys of heaven offered at once to any one’s present possession, he would not balance, or err in the determination of his choice.