1819 Oct. 19

Not Paul

Consult

Ch. Paul’s Doctrine

Doctrine Asceticism

§. Utility, dictates as to Pleasure

 1. Insert before the improper mention of the proper sense of purity.

2. Add that the use of the word impurity in the sense in which moral is inferred

from physical is an act of tyranny.

3. [...?] hypocrites. Hypocrites 1. Religious. 2. Philosophical or moral.

2. As to quality, considered apart from quantity, it is in the eye of reason a

matter of perfect /the most entire/ indifference. For the sake of having it or not

having it of such or such a quality, for what reasons should any the least particle

/portion/ of the attainable quantity be given up.

To the head /consideration/ of quality belongs that of the

source from which it is derived—the instrument or instruments, interior or exterior

to the bodily or mental frame of the individual in question by which (to change the

metaphor) it is reaped.

By the ascetic principle—and this is one of the delusions by which it operates—

pleasure being [taken for] the subject the words pure and impure and pure are in use

to be employed for the designation of two opposite attributes of which it is regarded

as susceptible. In this case the groundwork of the idea is impurity alias turpitude

in the physical sense: and from the circumstance of the physical disgust which in

this case will in the instance of a number of persons more or less considerable have

place, impurity or /and/ turpitude in /on the part of/ the act by which the physical

impurity or turpitude is produced is inferred. and again from this imaginary moral

turpitude, the existence of a sort of demand for punishment to be employed either for

the torment of the offender or for the prevention of the offence, or both.

[Now /In this case/ then in plain language what is the logic that is at the bottom

of this rhetoric. It is this.]

In the shape of disgust or some other shape I for my part should feel pain were I to

perform this act; therefore if you to whom it would not be productive not of pain but

of pleasure, were to perform it you ought to be made to suffer pain under the name of

punishment.