Besides, the life of the good man is not more pleasurable
than any other unless it be granted that his active
workings are so too.
Some inquiry into the bodily Pleasures is also necessary
for those who say that some Pleasures, to be sure,
are highly choiceworthy (the good ones to wit), but
not the bodily Pleasures; that is, those which are
the object-matter of the man utterly destitute of
Self-Control.
If so, we ask, why are the contrary Pains bad? they
cannot be (on their assumption) because the contrary
of bad is good.
May we not say that the necessary bodily Pleasures
are good in the sense in which that which is not-bad
is good? or that they are good only up to a certain
point? because such states or movements as cannot have
too much of the better cannot have too much of Pleasure,
but those which can of the former can also of the
latter. Now the bodily Pleasures do admit of
excess: in fact the low bad man is such because
he pursues the excess of them instead of those which
are necessary (meat, drink, and the objects of other
animal appetites do give pleasure to all, but not in
right manner or degree to all). But his relation
to Pain is exactly the contrary: it is not excessive
Pain, but Pain at all, that he avoids [which makes
him to be in this way too a bad low man], because only
in the case of him who pursues excessive Pleasure is
Pain contrary to excessive Pleasure.
It is not enough however merely to state the truth,
we should also show how the false view arises; because
this strengthens conviction. I mean, when we
have given a probable reason why that impresses people
as true which really is 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.
[Sidenote: 1154b] But some Pleasures result when
natural states are being perfected: these therefore
are good as a matter of result.
