Secondly, there are the diversities on all subjects which, to pass from animals in general, we find also in men in particular.
[176] Not only do their judgements on the same objects vary at different times, but different persons receive different impressions of pleasure or its reverse from the same things. For what is disliked by some is enjoyed by others, and contrariwise what some receive with open arms as acceptable and agreeable to their nature is utterly scouted by others as alien and repugnant.
[177] For example, I have often when I chanced to be in the theatre noticed the effect produced by some single tune sung by the actors on the stage or played by the musicians. Some of the audience are so moved, that in their excitement they cannot help raising their voices in a chorus of acclamation. Others are so unstirred that, as far as this is concerned, you might suppose them on a level of feeling with the senseless benches on which they sit. Others, again, are so repelled that they are off and away from the performance, and indeed, as they go, block their ears with both hands for fear that some echo of the music should remain to haunt them and produce a sense of discomfort to irritate and pain their souls.
[178] But it is needless to quote such cases as these. Every single individual in his own person is subject, extraordinary though it be, to numberless changes and variations in body and soul, and chooses at one time and rejects at another things which do not change, but retain the natural constitution which they have had throughout.
[179] The same feelings are not experienced in health as in sickness, in wakefulness as in sleep, in youth as in age. And people receive different mental impressions according as they are standing or moving, confident or affrighted, sad or joyful, loving or hating.
[180] And why tediously pursue the subject? For to put it shortly, our bodies and souls are in a state of motion, natural or unnatural, which considered as a whole produces that ceaseless change in the mental pictures presented to us which makes us the victim of conflicting and incongruous dreams.