IX. Pleasure as Second-in-Command

Pleasure follows good character; it does not lead.

The man overcome by pleasure cannot resist toil, danger, or death. How will he bear the sight of pain? How will he endure the ordinary roughness of life, the thousand active threats that surround every human existence, if he has already been conquered by something as soft as pleasure?

He will do whatever pleasure tells him to do. Think about what that means. Pleasure is a bad general. She gives orders that lead toward weakness, distraction, the gradual surrender of everything that makes a human being strong.

Good character must lead. Pleasure may follow. If it wants to hang about like a shadow, let it. We will not push it away. We will simply not take orders from it.

The man who puts pleasure in command has neither good character nor real pleasure. He is tortured by absence when pleasure is not there, and choked by excess when it is. He is like a man trapped in a coastal shoal, sometimes left stranded on dry ground, sometimes overwhelmed by the surge. He never finds solid footing because he chose a foundation that does not hold still.