Book 7
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; even contemplation may on occasion be injurious to health.
