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 come
to be utterly destitute of Self-Mastery, i.e.
low and bad.
But those Pleasures which are unconnected with Pains
do not admit of excess: i.e. such as belong
to objects which are naturally pleasant and not merely
as a matter of result: by the latter class I mean
such as are remedial, and the reason why these are
thought to be pleasant is that the cure results from
the action in some way of that part of the constitution
which remains sound. By “pleasant naturally”
I mean such as put into action a nature which is pleasant.
The reason why no one and the same thing is invariably
pleasant is that our nature is, not simple, but complex,
involving something different from itself (so far
as we are corruptible beings). Suppose then that
one part of this nature be doing something, this something
is, to the other part, unnatural: but, if there
be an equilibrium of the two natures, then whatever
is being done is indifferent. It is obvious that
if there be any whose nature is simple and not complex,
to such a being the same course of acting will always
be the most pleasurable.
For this reason it is that the Divinity feels Pleasure
which is always one, i.e. simple: not
motion merely but also motionlessness acts, and Pleasure
resides rather in the absence than in the presence
of motion.
The reason why the Poet’s dictum “change
is of all things most pleasant” is true, is
“a baseness in our blood;” for as the bad
man is easily changeable, bad must be also the nature
that craves change, i.e. it is neither simple
nor good.
We have now said our say about Self-Control and its
opposite; and about Pleasure and Pain. What each
is, and how the one set is good the other bad.
We have yet to speak of Friendship.
