But if pleasure and virtue were truly inseparable, we wouldn't see what we actually see every day. Some things feel good but are wrong. Other things are deeply right but difficult and painful to achieve. Plus, pleasure shows up in the worst kinds of lives. Virtue cannot exist alongside evil. Yet some miserable people still have plenty of pleasure — in fact, pleasure is often what makes them miserable in the first place. This couldn't happen if pleasure and virtue were connected. Virtue often exists without pleasure and never needs it.
Yet, if they were entirely inseparable, we should not see some things to be pleasant, but not honourable, and others most honourable indeed, but hard and only to be attained by suffering. Add to this, that pleasure visits the basest lives, but virtue cannot co-exist with an evil life; yet some unhappy people are not without pleasure, nay, it is owing to pleasure itself that they are unhappy; and this could not take place if pleasure had any connexion with virtue, whereas virtue is often without pleasure, and never stands in need of it.