Page:The Science of Religion (1925).djvu/61

for this we pointed out in our discussion about pleasure and Bliss. We found that because of the identification of the Spiritual self with the body it has got into the habit of indulging in desires and the consequent creation of wants. These desires and wants lead to pain, if not fulfilled—and to pleasure, if fulfilled—by objects. But here occurs a fatal error on the part of man. When a want is fulfilled man gets a pleasurable excitement and fixes his eye, through a sad mistake, solely upon the objects which create this excitement, and supposes them to be the main causes of his pleasure. He entirely forgets that he had formerly an excitation in the form of desire or want in his own mind, and that later he had another excitation in his mind superseding the first one, in the form of pleasure which the coming of objects seems to produce. So, as a matter of fact, one excitation arose in the mind and was superseded by another in the same mind.