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Sight excels touch in purity,
and hearing and smell excel taste; and similarly the pleasures of the intellect excel in
purity the pleasures of sensation, while the pleasures of either class differ among
themselves in purity.
[8]
And it is thought that every animal has its own special pleasure, just as it has its own
special function: namely, the pleasure of exercising that function. This will also appear
if we consider the different animals one by one: the horse, the dog, man, have different
pleasures—as Heracleitus says, an ass would prefer chaff to gold, since to asses
food gives more pleasure than gold. Different species therefore have different kinds of
pleasures. On the other hand it might be supposed that there is no variety among the
pleasures of the same species.
[9]
But as a matter of fact in
the human species at all events there is a great diversity of pleasures. The same things
delight some men and annoy others, and things painful and disgusting to some are pleasant
and attractive to others. This also holds good of things sweet to the taste: the same
things do not taste sweet to a man in a fever as to one in good health; nor does the same
temperature feel warm to an invalid and to a person of robust constitution. The same holds
good of other things as well.
[10]
But we hold that in all such cases the thing really is what it appears to be to the good
man. And if this rule is sound, as it is generally held to be, and if the standard of
everything is goodness, or the good man, qua good, then the
things that seem to him to be pleasures are pleasures, and the things he enjoys are
pleasant. Nor need it cause surprise that things
disagreeable to the good man should seem pleasant to some men; for mankind is liable to
many corruptions and diseases, and the things in question are not really pleasant, but
only pleasant to these particular persons, who are in a condition to think them so.
[11]
It is therefore clear that we must pronounce the admittedly disgraceful pleasures not to
be pleasures at all, except to the depraved.
But among the pleasures considered respectable, which class of pleasures or which
particular pleasure is to be deemed the distinctively human pleasure? Perhaps this will be
clear from a consideration of man's activities. For pleasures correspond to the activities
to which they belong; it is therefore that pleasure, or those pleasures, by which the
activity, or the activities, of the perfect and supremely happy man are perfected, that
must be pronounced human in the fullest sense. The other pleasures are so only in a
secondary or some lower degree, like the activities to which they belong. 6.
Having now discussed the various kinds of Virtue, of Friendship and of Pleasure, it
remains for us to treat in outline of Happiness, inasmuch as we count this to be the End
of human life. But it will shorten the discussion if we recapitulate what has been said
already.
[2]
Now we stated1 that happiness is not
a certain disposition of character; since if it were it might be possessed by a man who
passed the whole of his chosen life asleep, living the life of a vegetable, or by one who
was plunged in the deepest misfortune.
1 See 1.8.9.