The attempted answer of Speusippus, “that Pleasure may be opposed and
yet not contrary to Pain, just as the greater portion of any magnitude
is contrary to the less but only opposed to the exact half,” will not
hold: for he cannot say that Pleasure is identical with evil of any
kind.
Again. Granting that some Pleasures are low, there is no reason why
some particular Pleasure may not be very good, just as some particular
Science may be although there are some which are low.
Perhaps it even follows, since each state may have active working
unimpeded, whether the active workings of all be Happiness or that of
some one of them, that this active working, if it be unimpeded, must be
choice-worthy: now Pleasure is exactly this. So that the Chief Good may
be Pleasure of some kind, though most Pleasures be (let us assume) low
_per se_.
And for this reason all men think the happy life is pleasant, and
interweave Pleasure with Happiness. Reasonably enough: because
Happiness is perfect, but no impeded active working is perfect; and
therefore the happy man needs as an addition the goods of the body and
the goods external and fortune that in these points he may not be
fettered. As for those who say that he who is being tortured on the
wheel, or falls into great misfortunes is happy provided only he be
good, they talk nonsense, whether they mean to do so or not. On the
other hand, because fortune is needed as an addition, some hold good
fortune to be identical with Happiness: which it is not, for even this
in excess is a hindrance, and perhaps then has no right to be called
good fortune since it is good only in so far as it contributes to
Happiness.
The fact that all animals, brute and human alike, pursue Pleasure, is
some presumption of its being in a sense the Chief Good;
(“There must be something in what most folks say,”) only as one and the
same nature or state neither is nor is thought to be the best, so
neither do all pursue the same Pleasure, Pleasure nevertheless all do.
Nay further, what they pursue is, perhaps, not what they think nor what
they would say they pursue, but really one and the same: for in all
there is some instinct above themselves. But the bodily Pleasures have
received the name exclusively, because theirs is the most frequent form
and that which is universally partaken of; and so, because to many
these alone are known they believe them to be the only ones which
exist.
It is plain too that, unless Pleasure and its active working be good,
it will not be true that the happy man’s life embodies Pleasure: for
why will he want it on the supposition that it is not good and that he
can live even with Pain? because, assuming that Pleasure is not good,
then Pain is neither evil nor good, and so why should he avoid it?
Besides, the life of the good man is not more pleasurable than any
other unless it be granted that his active workings are so too.