I am satisfied the word is not commonly used in this appropriated signification; but I thought it better to take up a word already known, and to limit its signification, than to introduce a new one, which would not perhaps incorporate so well with the language.  I should never have presumed the least alteration in our words, if the nature of the language, framed for the purposes of business rather than those of philosophy, and the nature of my subject, that leads me out of the common track of discourse, did not in a manner necessitate me to it.  I shall make use of this liberty with all possible caution.  As I make use of the word delight to express the sensation which accompanies the removal of pain or danger, so, when I speak of positive pleasure, I shall for the most part call it simply pleasure.

SECTION V.

JOY AND GRIEF.

It must be observed, that the cessation of pleasure affects the mind three ways.  If it simply ceases after having continued a proper time, the effect is indifference; if it be abruptly broken off, there ensues an uneasy sense called disappointment; if the object be so totally lost that there is no chance of enjoying it again, a passion arises in the mind which is called grief.  Now there is none of these, not even grief, which is the most violent, that I think has any resemblance to positive pain.  The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it:  but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.  That grief should be willingly endured, though far from a simply pleasing sensation, is not so difficult to be understood.  It is the nature of grief to keep its object perpetually in its eye, to present it in its most pleasurable views, to repeat all the circumstances that attend it, even to the last minuteness; to go back to every particular enjoyment, to dwell upon each, and to find a thousand new perfections in all, that were not sufficiently understood before; in grief, the pleasure is still uppermost; and the affliction we suffer has no resemblance to absolute pain, which is always odious, and which we endeavor to shake off as soon as possible.  The Odyssey of Homer, which abounds with so many natural and affecting images, has none more striking than those which Menelaus raises of the calamitous fate of his friends, and his own manner of feeling it.  He owns, indeed, that he often gives himself some intermission from such melancholy reflections; but he observes, too, that, melancholy as they are, they give him pleasure.

[Greek:  All empes pantas men odyromenos kai acheuon, Pollakis en megaroisi kathemenos hemeteroisin, Allote men te goo phrena terpomai, allote d’ aute Pauomai; aipseros de koros kryeroio gooio]

Hom.  Od. [Greek:  D]. 100