202 Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path
to evaluate life properly, they have to clear away the fac-
tors that falsify ourjudgmentabout the balance of plea-
sure and pain. There are two ways that they can try to do
this.
First, they can show that our desire (drive, will) inter-
feres negatively with a sober evaluation of our feelings.
For example, while we ought to realize that sexual enjoy-
ment is a source of troubles, the power of the sexual drive
seduces us, promising greater pleasure than it delivers.
We want the enjoyment, and so do not admit to ourselves
that it makes us suffer.
Second, adherents of this view can submit feelings to a
critique and try to demonstrate, in the light of reason, that
the objects to which our feelings attach are illusory, and
that they are destroyed as soon as our ever growing intel-
ligence sees through the illusions.
In other words, they can consider the question in the
following way. If an ambitious man, for instance, wants
to know whether pleasure or pain has played the greater
part in his life thus far, he must free himself from two
sources of error in judgment. Since he is ambitious, this
fundamental character trait will make him magnify the
joys over the recognition of his achievements and dimin-
ish the humiliations caused by his setbacks. But when he
actually experienced the setbacks, he felt the humiliations
deeply, precisely because he is ambitious. In memory,
however, these setbacks appear in a milder light; while
the joys of recognition, to which he is so susceptible, en-
grave themselves all the deeper. Certainly, for the ambi-
tious man, it is a real benefit that this should be so.
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