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(for instance, the pleasure of contemplation),
being experienced without any deficiency from the normal having occurred. That restorative
pleasures are only accidentally pleasant is indicated by the fact that we do not enjoy the
same things while the natural state is being replenished as we do after it has been
restored to the normal; in the normal state we enjoy things that are absolutely pleasant,
but during the process of replenishment we enjoy even their opposites; for instance, sour
and bitter things, none of which are naturally or absolutely pleasant, so that the
pleasures we get from them are not naturally or absolutely pleasant either, since there is
the same distinction between various pleasures as there is between the pleasant things
from which they arise.
[3]
Again (iii.) , it does not follow, as some argue, that as the end is
better than the process towards it, so there must be something better than pleasure. For
pleasures are not really processes, nor are they all incidental to a process: they are
activities, and therefore an end; nor do they result from the process of acquiring our
faculties, but from their exercise; nor have they all of them some end other than
themselves: this is only true of the pleasures of progress towards the perfection of our
nature. Hence it is not correct to define pleasure as a ‘conscious
process’ ; the term should rather be ‘activity of our natural
state,’ and for ‘conscious’ we must substitute
‘unimpeded.’ Some thinkers hold that pleasure is a process on the
ground that it is good in the fullest sense, because in their view an activity is a
process; but really an activity is different from a process.
[4]
To argue (2) (b) that pleasures are bad because some
pleasant things are detrimental to health is the same as to argue that health is bad
because some healthy things are bad for the pocket. Both pleasant things and healthy
things can be bad in a relative sense, but that does not make them really bad;