Page:The ethics of Aristotle.djvu/318



. Pleasure is so instantaneous a sensation, that it cannot be conceived divisible or incomplete: the longest continued Pleasure is only a succession of single sparks, so rapid as to give the appearance of a stream, of light.  . A man is as effectually hindered from taking a walk by the ' of reading a novel, as by the ' of gout in the feet.  . I have thus rendered ' ('); but, though the English term does not represent the depth of the Greek one, it is some approximation to the truth to connect an earnest serious purpose with Happiness.  . Bishop Butler, contrà (Sermon ). “Knowledge is not our proper Happiness. Whoever will in the least attend to the thing will see that it is the gaining, not the having, of it, which is the entertainment of the mind.” The two statements may however be reconciled. Aristotle may be well understood only to mean, that the pursuit of knowledge will be the pleasanter, the freer it is from the minor hindrances which attend on learning.  . The clause immediately following indicates that Aristotle felt this statement to be at first sight startling, Happiness having been all the way through connected with ; but the statement illustrates and confirms what was said in note on page 6, l. 15.  . That is to say, he aims at producing not merely a happy aggregate, but an aggregate of happy individuals. Compare what is said of Legislators in the last chapter of Book and the first of Book.  . See note, page 146, l. 17. 