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59. The causes of this.

To account for the various and contrary ways men take, though all aim at being happy, we must consider whence the various uneasinesses that determine the will, in the preference of each voluntary action, have their rise:

(1) From bodily pain. Some of them come from causes not in our power; such as are often the pains of the body from want, disease, or outward injuries, as the rack, etc.; which, when present and violent, operate for the most part forcibly on the will, and turn the courses of men's lives from virtue, piety, and religion, and what before they judged to lead to happiness; every one not endeavouring, or, through disuse, not being able, by the contemplation of remote and future good, to raise in himself desires of them strong enough to counterbalance the uneasiness he feels in those bodily torments, and to keep his will steady in the choice of those actions which lead to future happiness. A neighbouring country has been of late a tragical theatre from which we might fetch instances, if there needed any, and the world did not in all countries and ages furnish examples enough to confirm that received observation, Necessitas cogit ad turpia; and therefore there is great reason for us to pray, "Lead us not into temptation."

(2) From wrong desires arising from wrong judgments. Other uneasinesses arise from our desires of absent good; which desires always bear proportion to, and depend on, the judgment we make, and the relish we have of any absent good; in both which we are apt to be variously misled, and that by our own fault.