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THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
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which the mind puts on itself—a whim of the mind created through company. Thus desire, or the increase of conditions of “excitation” of the mind, is the source of pain or misery, and also of the mistake of seeking to fulfill wants by first creating and increasing them, and then by trying to satisfy them with objects rather than lessening them from the beginning.

It might appear that pain is sometimes produced without the presence of previous desire, for example, pain from a boil. But we should observe here that the desire to remain in a state of health which, consciously or subconsciously, is present in our mind and is crystallized into our physiological organism, is contradicted in the above case by the presence of the unhealthy state, viz., the presence of the boil. Thus when a certain exciting condition of the mind in the form of a desire is not satisfied or removed, pain results.

As desire, I have pointed out, leads to pain, so it leads also to pleasure, the only difference