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Eliphas Levi on Pleasure - (805)

Introduction

This is one passage from Eliphas Levi is one that at least I found myself understanding, rather than the perplexed feeling (going straight over my head) I get when reading Eliphas Levi. I found it very illuminating actually concerning the nature of pleasure.
The following excerpt comes from a book a very good friend gave or lent me (have to ask him – maybe he only lent it to me) titled “The Great Secret” by Eliphas Levi. The excerpt is the first four paragraphs of chapter III.

Excerpt

“Pleasure is a foe which is fated to become either our slave or our master. To possess it we must fight it, and before we can enjoy pleasure it has to be conquered.

Pleasure makes a charming slave but a cruel, pitiless and murderous master. It tires, exhausts and kills everyone it owns; after cheating all their desires and betraying all their hopes. Servitude to some pleasure is called a passion. Domination over some pleasure is called a power.

Nature has partnered pleasure with duty; if we divorce it from duty it festers and poisons us. If we devote ourselves to duty, pleasure will no longer be divorced from duty but will follow us and be our reward. Pleasure is inseparable from goodness. The upright man may suffer, it is true, but a tremendous pleasure emerges for him out of his sufferings. Job on his dunghill was visited by God who consoled and relieved him; while Nebuchadnezzar on his throne fell beneath a fatal hand which deprived him of his reason and transformed him into a beast. Jesus gave a shout of triumph as He died on the cross, as if he could feel His imminent resurrection; whereas Tiberius, in the midst of his criminal pleasures on Capri, laid bare the agonies of his soul in a letter to the senate in which he wrote that he felt he died every day!

Evil only gets a grip on us through our vices and through the fear with which it inspires us. The Devil hunts down those who are frightened of him, and flees from those who resist him boldly. The art of chaining up demons is to do good and fear nothing.”


Conclusion

The main point for me there is that the real happiness or pleasure is joined by nature to duty.

End (805).

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