1. Every Pleasure is a sensible process towards a complete state; but no such process is akin to the end to be attained: _e.g._ no process of building to the completed house. 2. The man of Perfected Self-Mastery avoids Pleasures. 3. The man of Practical Wisdom aims at avoiding Pain, not at attaining Pleasure. 4. Pleasures are an impediment to thought, and the more so the more keenly they are felt. An obvious instance will readily occur. 5. Pleasure cannot be referred to any Art: and yet every good is the result of some Art. 6. Children and brutes pursue Pleasures. In support of the second (that not all Pleasures are good), That there are some base and matter of reproach, and some even hurtful: because some things that are pleasant produce disease. In support of the third (that Pleasure is not the Chief Good), That it is not an End but a process towards creating an End. This is, I think, a fair account of current views on the matter. But that the reasons alleged do not prove it either to be not-good or the Chief Good is plain from the following considerations. First. Good being either absolute or relative, of course the natures and states embodying it will be so too; therefore also the movements and the processes of creation. So, of those which are thought to be bad some will be bad absolutely, but relatively not bad, perhaps even choice-worthy; some not even choice-worthy relatively to any particular person, only at certain times or for a short time but not in themselves choice-worthy. Others again are not even Pleasures at all though they produce that impression on the mind: all such I mean as imply pain and whose purpose is cure; those of sick people, for instance. Next, since Good may be either an active working or a state, those [κινήσεις or γενέσεις] which tend to place us in our natural state are pleasant incidentally because of that tendency: but the active working is really in the desires excited in the remaining (sound) part of our state or nature: for there are Pleasures which have no connection with pain or desire: the acts of contemplative intellect, for instance, in which case there is no deficiency in the nature or state of him who performs the acts. A proof of this is that the same pleasant thing does not produce the sensation of Pleasure when the natural state is being filled up or completed as when it is already in its normal condition: in this latter case what give the sensation are things pleasant _per se_, in the former even those things which are contrary. I mean, you find people taking pleasure in sharp or bitter things of which no one is naturally or in itself pleasant; of course not therefore the Pleasures arising from them, because it is obvious that as is the classification of pleasant things such must be that of the Pleasures arising from them.