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for the runner does not merely travel along a certain line but travels along a line that is in a certain place, and this line is in a different place from that)—however, for a full treatment of the subject of motion I must refer to another work,1 but it appears that a motion is not perfect at every moment, but the many movements which make up the whole are imperfect; and different from each other in kind, inasmuch as the terminal points of a movement constitute a specific quality. [4] The specific quality of pleasure on the contrary is perfect at any moment. It is clear therefore that pleasure is not the same as motion, and that it is a whole and something perfect.

This may also be inferred from the fact that a movement necessarily occupies a space of time, whereas a feeling of pleasure does not, for every moment of pleasurable consciousness is a perfect whole.

These considerations also show that it is a mistake to speak of pleasure as the result of a motion or of a process of generation. For we cannot so describe everything, but only such things as are divided into parts and are not wholes. Thus an act of sight, a geometrical point, an arithmetical unit are not the result of a process of generation (nor is any of them a motion or process2). Pleasure therefore also is not the result of a motion or process; for pleasure is a whole. [5]

Again, inasmuch as each of the senses acts in relation to its object, and acts perfectly when it is in good condition and directed to the finest of the and objects that belong to it (for this seems to be the best description of perfect activity, it being assumed to make no difference whether it be the sense itself that acts or the organ in which the sense resides), it follows that the activity of any of the senses is at its best when the sense-organ being in the best condition is directed to the best of its objects; and this activity will be the most perfect and the pleasantest. For each sense has a corresponding pleasure, as also have thought and speculation, and its activity is pleasantest when it is most perfect, and most perfect when the organ is in good condition and when it is directed to the most excellent of its objects; and the pleasure perfects the activity. [6] The pleasure does not however perfect the activity in the same way as the object perceived and the sensory faculty, if good, perfect it; just as health and the physician are not in the same way the cause of being healthy. [7]

(It is clear that each of the senses is accompanied by pleasure, since we apply the term pleasant to sights and sounds3; and it is also clear that the pleasure is greatest when the sensory faculty is both in the best condition and acting in relation to the best object; and given excellence in the perceived object and the percipient organ, there will always be pleasure when an object to cause it and a subject to feel it are both present.) [8]

But the pleasure perfects the activity, not as the fixed disposition does, by being already present in the agent, but as a supervening perfection, like the bloom of health in the young and vigorous.

So long therefore as both object thought of or perceived, and subject discerning or judging, are such as they should be,

1 Physics, 6-8.

2 This parenthesis is perhaps an interpolation.

3 As well as to tastes, scents, and contacts, which are more obviously pleasant.

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