[p. 256]
|256| and still has pleasure as its purpose, but only the greater, the more manifold. Since it makes distinctions in pleasure and in general seeks the agreeable on all the different sides, it refines the raw, wild and merely animal element of pleasure and softens customs and dispositions in general. Inasmuch, then, as the understanding occupies itself with the means of satisfying needs in general, it thereby eases this satisfaction and thereby obtains the possibility of devoting itself to higher purposes. – On the other side this refinement of pleasures makes the human being softer. Since he applies his forces to so many kinds of objects and makes for himself such manifold purposes, which become ever smaller through the distinguishing of their different sides, his strength in general is weakened to direct himself with his whole spirit to the essential. When the human being makes pleasure his purpose, he sublates through this reflection the drive to go beyond it and to do something higher.
Pleasure is indeterminate with regard to content, because it can take place with all objects. No objective difference can therefore be made in it, only a quantitative one. The understanding, calculating the consequences, prefers the greater to the smaller.
Reason, on the other hand, makes a qualitative difference, i.e. a difference with regard to content. It prefers the worthy object of pleasure to the worthless. It thus engages in a comparison of the nature of the objects. To this extent it no longer considers the subjective as such, namely the agreeable feeling, but the objective. It therefore teaches what objects the human being is to desire for their own sake. In the human being, to whom, on account of his universal nature, such infinitely manifold sources of pleasure stand open, the orientation towards the agreeable is in general deceptive, and he is easily distracted by this manifoldness, i.e.
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