[11] Pleasure is so instantaneous a sensation, that it cannot be
conceived divisible or incomplete; the longest continued Pleasure is
only a succession of single sparks, so rapid as to give the appearance
of a stream, of light.
[12] A man is as effectually hindered from taking a walk by the [Greek:
allotria haedouae] of reading a novel, as by the [Greek: oikeia lupae]
of gout in the feet.
[13] I have thus rendered [Greek: spoudae (ouk agnoon to
hamartanomenon)]; but, though the English term does not represent the
depth of the Greek one, it is some approximation to the truth to
connect an earnest serious purpose with Happiness.
[14] Bishop Butler, _contra_ (Sermon XV.).
“Knowledge is not our proper Happiness. Whoever will in the least
attend to the thing will see that it is the gaining, not the having, of
it, which is the entertainment of the mind.” The two statements may
however be reconciled. Aristotle may be well understood only to mean,
that the pursuit of knowledge will be the pleasanter, the freer it is
from the minor hindrances which attend on _learning_.
[15] The clause immediately following indicates that Aristotle felt
this statement to be at first sight startling, Happiness having been
all the way through connected with [Greek: energeia], but the statement
illustrates and confirms what was said in note on page 6, 1. 15.
[16] That is to say, he aims at producing not merely a happy aggregate,
but an aggregate of happy individuals. Compare what is said of
Legislators in the last chapter of Book I and the first of Book II.
[17] See note, page 146, 1. 17.