Pleasure and pain

Pleasure and pain are equally unreal, because their purpose cannot be achieved.


Thus are they means for nothing, for they have a goal without a meaning.
And they share the lack of meaning which their purpose has.

Sin shifts from pain to pleasure, and again to pain. For either witness is the same, and carries but one message:
"You are here, within this body, and you can be hurt.

You can have pleasure, too, but only at the cost of pain."
 
These witnesses are joined by many more.
 
Each one seems different because it has a different name, and so it seems to answer to a different sound. Except for this, the witnesses of sin are all alike.

Call pleasure pain, and it will hurt.
 
Call pain a pleasure, and the pain behind the pleasure will be felt no more. Sin's witnesses but shift from name to name, as one steps forward and another back.
 
Yet which is foremost makes no difference. Sin's witnesses hear but the call of death.