Page:The ethics of Aristotle.djvu/208

 not true, it gives them a stronger conviction of the truth. And so we must now explain why the bodily Pleasures appear to people to be more choiceworthy than any others.

The first obvious reason is, that bodily Pleasure drives out Pain; and because Pain is felt in excess men pursue Pleasure in excess, i.e. generally bodily Pleasure, under the notion of its being a remedy for that Pain. These remedies, moreover, come to be violent ones; which is the very reason they are pursued, since the impression they produce on the mind is owing to their being looked at side by side with their contrary.

And, as has been said before, there are the two following reasons why bodily Pleasure is thought to be not-good.

1. Some Pleasures of this class are actings of a low nature, whether congenital as in brutes, or acquired by custom as in low bad men.

2. Others are in the nature of cures, cures that is of some deficiency; now of course it is better to have [the healthy state] originally than that it should accrue afterwards.

But some Pleasures result when natural states are being perfected: these therefore are good as a matter of result.

Again, the very fact of their being violent causes them to be pursued by such as can relish no others: such men in fact create violent thirsts for themselves (if harmless ones then we find no fault, if harmful then it is bad and low) because they have no other things to take pleasure in, and the neutral state is distasteful to some people constitutionally; for toil of some kind is inseparable from life, as physiologists testify, telling us that the acts of seeing or hearing are painful, only that we are used to the pain and do not find it out.

Similarly in youth the constant growth produces a state much like that of vinous intoxication, and youth is pleasant. Again, men of the melancholic temperament constantly need some remedial process (because the body, from its temperament, is constantly being worried), and they are in a chronic state of violent desire. But Pleasure drives out Pain; not only such Pleasure as is directly contrary to Pain but even any Pleasure provided it be strong: and this is how men