No doubt, in beings endowed with consciousness the gradual realization of this natural tendency, by the normal functioning and development of their activities, is accompanied by pleasurable feeling. The latter is, in fact, not an end of action itself, but rather the natural concomitant, the effect and index, of the healthy and normal activity of the conscious being: _delectatio sequitur operationem debitam_. It is the pleasure felt in tending towards the good that reveals the good to the conscious agent: that is, taking pleasure in its wide sense as the feeling of well-being, of satisfaction with one’s whole condition, activities and environment. Hence it is the anticipated pleasure, connected by past association with a certain line of action, that stimulates the conscious being to act in that way again. It is in the first instance because a certain operation or tendency is felt to be _pleasing_ that it is desired, and apprehended as _desirable_. Nor does the brute beast recognize or respond to any stimulus of action other than pleasure. But man—endowed with reason, and reflecting on the relation between his own nature and the activities whereby he duly orients his life in his environment—must see that what is pleasure-giving or “agreeable” in the ordinary sense of this term is generally so because it is “agreeable” in the deeper sense of being “suitable to his nature,” “adapted to his end,” and therefore “good”. The good, then, is whatever suits the nature of a being tending towards its end: _bonum est conveniens naturæ appetentis_. In what precisely does this suitability consist? What suits any nature _perfects_ that nature, and suits it precisely in so far as it perfects it. But whatever perfects a nature does so only because and in so far as it is _a realization of the end_ towards which this nature tends. Here we reach a new notion, that of “perfecting” or “perfection,” and one which is as essentially connected with the notion of “end” or “purpose,” as the concept of the “good” itself is. Let us compare these notions of “goodness,” “end,” and “perfection”. We have said that a watch or a soldier are good when they are adapted to their respective ends. But they are so only because the end itself is already good. And we may ask why any such end is itself good and therefore desirable. For example, why is the accurate indication of time good, or the defence of one’s country? And obviously in such a series of questions we must come to something which is good and desirable in and for itself, for its own sake and not as leading and helping towards some remoter good. And this something which is good in and for itself is a last or ultimate end—an absolute, not a relative, good. There must be such an absolute good, such an ultimate end, if goodness in things is to be made intelligible at all. And it is only in so far as things tend towards this absolute good, and are adapted to it, that they can be termed good. The