Kitap 7
2
Again (ii.) , the good is either an activity or a state. Now the pleasures that restore us to our natural state are only accidentally pleasant; while the activity of desire is the activity of that part of us which has remained in the natural stateCf. 14.7.: for that matter, there are some pleasures which do not involve pain or desire at all (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.
