Page:Aristotle (Grant).djvu/125

 ‘Ethics’ of Aristotle which we have not already summarised is his disquisition on Pleasure in Book X. There was a good deal of abstract questioning in the time of Aristotle as to whether Pleasure could be “the chief good,” or whether it could be considered a good at all. The Platonists were disposed to be hard upon Pleasure. But all this turned a good deal upon the prior question, “What Pleasure is?” Aristotle showed that an erroneous definition had been taken up by the Platonic school, who considered pleasure to be a sense of restoration,—a sense of our powers, after exhaustion, being brought up to their normal state. Kant has given a very similar definition, saying that “pleasure is the sense of that which promotes life, pain of that which hinders it.” Aristotle says that this is wrong; that it applies only to eating and drinking, and such things, and that Pleasure is not “the sense of what promotes life,” but the sense of life itself; the sense of the vital powers, the sense that any faculty whatsoever has met its proper object. Pleasure, then, according to the Platonists, was the accompaniment of an imperfect condition, like recovery after illness. According to Aristotle it was, except in the case of certain spurious pleasures, the play and action of that which is healthy in us. From this point of view it is obvious that Pleasure must in itself be a good, and that when it consists in the exercise of the highest faculties (see above, p. 102) it becomes identical with the highest happiness. Lest it be thought that this exaltation of Pleasure might have dangerous results from a moral point of view, we will mention one safeguard which accom-