ABSTRACT
The nature of pleasure ( khwushī) and pain (dard) must first be disclosed. Ordinarily we say that whatever is not perceptible (yāft) can be neither pleasure nor pain. It follows that that which is either pleasure or pain must first be perceptible. And we experience two kinds of perceptions: one is a sense external (bīrun) to us, whereas the other is an imagination (wahmī) or cognition (intelligence; ‘aqlī) which is internal. Each of these is of three kinds. One is a perception which is both compatible (sāzwār) and harmonious with the power of (quwwa) the faculty of the perceiver; another is incompatible, harmful, and disagreeable to him; and the third, an intermediate kind (mīyāna), is neither the former not the latter. Accordingly, pleasure is the perception of agreeable things, and pain is the perception of that which is disagreeable. But in that perception in which there is neither the former nor the latter, there is neither pleasure nor pain. And agreeable to each faculty is that which is receptive to its action without harming it in any way. For instance, to anger corresponds victory, to lust taste, and to thought hope. And, by the same analogy, to the senses of touch, smell, and sight corresponds respectively that which is agreeable to each.
