There were many beings. The king chose that the type of activity in each should be a routine. In that way he could calculate on the activity, and hold it in his mind as a settled process on whose operation he could count. But as the routines of the beings proceeded they came into contact with one another, and made, even by their simple co-existence, something different from what a routine by itself was. They interwove in various ways. Then, in order to take advantage of the combinations of these routines, or to modify them, it was necessary to set going other routines.
In order to be able to originate these connected routines the king adopted the following plan.
In the first action AB he separated the creatures’ apathy into 1000 pleasure and 1000 pain, bearing 2 of the pain himself. The creature thus went through 1000 of pleasure and 998 of pain. In the next action AB he did not separate the beings’ apathy up into so much pleasure and pain. He separated it up into 980 pleasure and 980 pain, that is, each moment of feeling was 20 less in sensation than the moments of feeling were in the first action.
Now it is obvious that if the bearing 2 of pain will make it worth while for a being to go through 1000 pleasure and 998 pain, then the bearing on the king’s part of 1 of pain would make it worth while for the being to go through 500 pleasure and 499 of pain.
And a similar relation would hold for different amounts of pleasure and pain. Thus clearly for the being to go through 980 of pleasure and the corresponding amount of pain, it would not be necessary for the king to bear so much as when the being went through 1000 of pleasure and the corresponding amount of pain.
Consequently when the king divided the beings’ apathy into 980 pleasure and 980 pain, it would not be necessary for him to bear 2 of pain to make it worth the beings’ while to go through the action. The king would not bear so much as 2 of pain, and thus he would have some of his pain-bearing power set free. He would have exactly as much as would enable him to make it worth a being’s while to go through an action with the moments of 20 of pleasure and 20 of pain.
And this—with a correction which will come later—is what the king did. He employed the pain-bearing power thus set free in starting other routines. Thus in the routine AB, AB, AB there would be first of all the action AB. Then along with the second action AB, the king (with the pain-bearing power set free) started an action CD—the beginning of a routine CD, CD, CD. Thus as the first routine went on and came into connection with other routines, new and supplementary routines sprang up which regulated and took advantage of the combinations of the old routines.