43. Happiness and misery, good and evil, what they are.
Happiness, then, in its full extent, is the utmost pleasure
we are capable of, and misery the utmost pain; and the lowest degree of what can be called happiness is so much
ease from all pain, and so much present pleasure, as without which any one cannot be content. Now, because
pleasure and pain are produced in us by the operation of certain objects, either on our minds or our bodies, and in
different degrees; therefore, what has an aptness to produce pleasure in us is that we call good, and what is apt to
produce pain in us we call evil; for no other reason but for its aptness to produce pleasure and pain in us, wherein
consists our happiness and misery. Further, though what is apt to produce any degree of pleasure be in itself good;
and what is apt to produce any degree of pain be evil; yet it often happens that we do not call it so when it comes
in competition with a greater of its sort; because, when they come in competition, the degrees also of pleasure and
pain have justly a preference. So that if we will rightly estimate what we call good and evil, we shall find it lies
much in comparison: for the cause of every less degree of pain, as well as every greater degree of pleasure, has
the nature of good, and vice versâ.
