1818 Jan y 1

Not Paul

III. Doctrine Asceticism

Ch. Asceticism

The pleasures of the table, it has been seen, so obstinately

do they adhere to life can not be struck out by the ascetic, because in that case

pains would be struck out /go out along with them/, pains which it is his object to

accumulate.

With the pleasures of the bed he finds himself more at liberty: they may be struck

out altogether /life may be cleared of them/. Take any individual whatever—deprive

him of all pleasure in this shape, life remains notwithstanding. To be sure if indeed

you were to go so far as to extend the proscription /extirpation/ to every individual

life would within a limited time be extirpated along with it: and thus pain the only

object which in his view is worth preserving the object to which in his eyes life is

indebted for all its value pain would likewise be at and end. Therefore to keep on

foot /the capacity/ so many receptacles of pain, human beings must be kept alive the

population must be kept up: and to the number of those in whose instance life is

purified of all pleasure in this shape, must be limited /limits must somehow or other

be set/.

But the number of breeders necessary to keep up the greatest number of non-breeders

being ascertained, then it is that the number of persons from whose existence

pleasure in this shape is excluded ought to be as great as possible. In the character

of /As being/ the best security for the accomplishment of so holy /desirable/ an

object, a physical cause of exclusion castration so it be early enough might seem

/present/ itself as preferable to /still more advantageous than/ any moral one. But

the inconvenience /here the objection/ is that along with the pleasures are excluded

certain pains—the pains of unsatisfied desire. Whereas when the means of exclusion

/recourse employed/ are /is/ confined to the use of moral means, the pleasures alone

are excluded the stock of pains remains pure and unadulterated.