Kitap 10
1
Now the act of sight appears to be perfect at any moment of its duration; it does not require anything to supervene later in order to perfect its specific quality. But pleasure also appears to be a thing of this nature. For it is a whole, and one cannot at any moment put one’s hand on a pleasure which will only exhibit its specific quality perfectly if its duration be prolonged.
2
It follows also that pleasure is not a form of motion.κίνησις here has its wider sense of any process of change that actualizes what is potentially; it includes generation, of which building is an instance. In its proper sense κίνησις is limited to change of quality, quantity, or place. For every motion or process of change involves duration, and is a means to an end, for instance the process of building a house; and it is perfect when it has effected its end. Hence a motion is perfect either when viewed over the whole time of its duration, or at the moment when its end has been achieved. The several motions occupying portions of the time of the whole are imperfect, and different in kind from the whole and from each other. For instance, in building a temple the fitting together of the stones is a different process from the fluting of a column, and both are different from the construction of the temple as a whole; and whereas the building of the temple is a perfect process, for nothing more is required to achieve the end proposed, laying the foundation and constructing the triglyphs are imperfect processes, since each produces only a part of the design; they are therefore specifically different from the construction of the whole, and it is not possible to lay one’s finger on a motion specifically perfect at any moment of the process of building, but only, if at all, in the whole of its duration.
