246
Aristotle's Ethics
Book X.
As then the Workings are different so are their Pleasures; now Sight differs from Touch 1176a in purity, and Hearing and Smelling from Taste; therefore, in like manner, do their Pleasures; and again, Intellectual Pleasures from these Sensual, and the different kinds both of Intellectual and Sensual from one another.
It is thought, moreover, that each animal has a Pleasure proper to itself, as it has a proper Work; that Pleasure of course which is attendant on the Working. And the soundness of this will appear upon particular inspection: for horse, dog, and man have different Pleasures; as Heraclitus says, an ass would sooner have hay than gold; in other words, provender is pleasanter to asses than gold. So then the Pleasures of animals specifically different are also specifically different, but those of the same, we may reasonably suppose, are without difference.
Yet in the case of human creatures they differ not a little: for the very same things please some and pain others: and what are painful and hateful to some are pleasant to and liked by others. The same is the case with sweet things: the same will not seem so to the man in a fever as to him who is in health: nor will the invalid and the person in robust health have the same notion of warmth. The same is the case with other things also.
Now in all such cases that is held to be which impresses the good man with the notion of being such and such; and if this is a second maxim (as it is usually held to be), and Virtue, that is, the Good man, in that he is such, is the