But can that which is neither become both?
Again, pleasure and pain are motions, and the absence of them is rest; but if so, how can the absence of either of them be the other?
Thus we are led to infer that the contradiction is an appearance only, and witchery of the senses.

And these are not the only pleasures, for there are others which have no preceding pains.

Pure pleasure then is not the absence of pain, nor pure pain the absence of pleasure; although most of the pleasures which reach the mind through the body are reliefs of pain, and have not only their reactions when they depart, but their anticipations before they come.

They can be best described in a simile.
There is in nature an upper, lower, and middle region, and he who passes from the lower to the middle imagines that he is going up and is already in the upper world; and if he were taken back again would think, and truly think, that he was descending.

All this arises out of his ignorance of the true upper, middle, and lower regions.