________________
they have in mind.
Good is that which we
of Pleasure.
all seek and pursue. It is that which all would possess if they could have it; but what is Philosophy good which all seek and clamour for? It is ananda-pleasure. Ananda, pleasure, is the good. The child is sensitive to ananda pleasure and the sage who denies it does with a view of the pleasure he derives in this his very act of denial. The pleasure is the watch-world of all, down from the savage upward to the sage. Such is the idea of the good in the philosophy of pleasure which unchaining all the passions, lets loose at the same time all the appetites, opens a free path-way for the senses and thus sometimes descends to shameful excesses. It is true that in freeing the passions from restraint, it acquires a certain sort of grandeur-the fierce grandeur of nature; it has even a sort of innocence-the innocence of the blind torrent which knows not whither it rushes; and finally, by the very fact of making no distinction between passions and pleasure, it sometimes gives free play to generous instincts and attains to a nobility which is lacking in cold calculation and mercenery virtue.'
501
