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.
Some enquiry into the bodily Pleasures is also necessary for those who say that some Pleasures, to be sure, are highly choice-worthy (the good ones to wit), but not the bodily Pleasures; that is, those which are the object-matter of the man utterly destitute of Self-Control.
If so, we ask, why are the contrary Pains bad? they cannot be (on their assumption) because the contrary of bad is good.
May we not say that the necessary bodily Pleasures are good in the sense in which that which is not-bad is good? or that they are good only up to