XIII. The Value of Life (Optimism and Pessimism)

The satisfaction of a desire causes pleasure and its non-satisfaction causes pain. But we have no right to infer from this fact that pleasure is the satisfaction of a desire, and pain its non-satisfaction. Both pleasure and pain may be experienced without being the consequence of desire. Illness is pain not preceded by any desire. If anyone were to maintain that illness is unsatisfied desire for health, he would commit the error of regarding the inevitable and unconscious wish not to fall ill as a positive desire. When someone receives a legacy from a rich relative of whose existence he had not the faintest idea, he experiences a pleasure without having felt any preceding desire.