ABSTRACT
In this last case, we should have to say that neither pleasant feeling nor thought is, by itself, the good for man, but we should still have to say that whichever of the two is most akin to the complete good for man is the better of them (11e). (These remarks foreshadow the coming conclusion that the "good for man" includes both components, but that thought is the more valuable of the two.)
Now " pleasure " is a word with many shades of meaning. A " life of pleasure " often means a vicious life, yet we say that the continent man finds his very continence pleasant; we talk of the " pleasures " of folly and extravagant day-dreams, but we also say that the " thinking man " finds his thinking pleasant. Thus there may be pleasures of many kinds, and we have no right to assume that all must be good (12d). You may say, as the Hedonist does, that the difference of which Socrates speaks is a difference in the sources from which pleasure is derived, not in the pleasure yielded, but this would be evading the real issue. All pleasant experiences agree in being pleasant, just as all coloured surfaces agree in being coloured. But there are more or less marked colour-contrasts also. Why then may there not be pleasure-contrasts within the genus pleasure ? If there are, this will be a reason for hesitating to ascribe the predicate good to all pleasures.
