Note 38 — Chapter XXXII · PHILEBUS.

Plato, Philêbus, p. 36 A-B.

This analysis of desire is in the main just: antecedent to all gratification, it is simple uneasiness: gratification having been supplied, the memory thereof remains, and goes along with the uneasiness to form the complex mental state called desire.

But there is another case of desire. While tasting a pleasure, we desire the continuance of it: and if the expectation of its continuance be assured, this is an additional pleasure: two sources of pleasure instead of one. In this last case, there is no such conjunction of opposite states, pain and pleasure, as Plato pointed out in the former case.