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This is the reason why, when we are very much pleased with

anything whatever, we do nothing else, and it is only when we are

but moderately pleased with one occupation that we vary it with

another: people, for instance, who eat sweetmeats in the theatre

do so most when the performance is indifferent.

Since then the proper and peculiar Pleasure gives accuracy to the

Workings and makes them more enduring and better of their kind,

while those Pleasures which are foreign to them mar them, it is

plain there is a wide difference between them: in fact, Pleasures

foreign to any Working have pretty much the same effect as the

Pains proper to it,[12] which, in fact, destroy the Workings; I

mean, if one man dislikes writing, or another calculation, the

one does not write, the other does not calculate; because, in

each case, the Working is attended with some Pain: so then

contrary effects are produced upon the Workings by the Pleasures

and Pains proper to them, by which I mean those which arise upon

the Working, in itself, independently of any other circumstances.

As for the Pleasures foreign to a Working, we have said already

that they produce a similar effect to the Pain proper to it; that

is they destroy the Working, only not in like way.