[133] Aristotle’s theory is, briefly, that every normal sense-perception or rational activity has its correspondent pleasure, and that the most perfect is the most pleasant: the most perfect in the case of any faculty being the exercise of the faculty in good condition on the best object. The pleasure follows the activity immediately, giving it a kind of finish, “like the bloom of youth.” Pleasures vary in kind, as the activities that constitute life vary: the best pleasures are those of the philosophic life.
[134] See Bouillier, _Du plaisir et de la douleur_, chap. iii.; L. Dumont, _Théorie scientifique de la sensibilité_, chap. iii.; as well as Stout, _Analytic Psychology_, chap. xii.--to which I refer later.
[135] _Lectures on Metaphysics_, vol. ii. Lect. xlii.
[136] In Aristotle’s exposition of this theory--which with him is only a theory of pleasure--the ethical motive of exhibiting the philosophic life as preferable to that of the sensualist, in respect of the pleasures it affords, is quite unmistakable.
[137] _Analytic Psychology_, chap. xii. 2.
[138] The physiological theory which Mr. Stout puts forward, as at once correspondent and supplementary to his psychological generalisation, will be noticed later.
[141] It may be added that in the case of emotional pains and pleasures, the notion of _quantitative_ difference between the cerebral nerve-processes, antecedent respectively to the one and the other, seems altogether unwarrantable: the pains of shame, disappointed ambition, wounded love, do not appear to be distinguishable from the pleasures of fame, success, reciprocated affection, by any difference of intensity in the impressions or ideas accompanied by the pleasures and pains respectively.
[142] See Wundt, _Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie_, chap. x.
[144] I say “appreciably” because the controverted psychological question whether there are any _strictly_ neutral or indifferent modifications of consciousness seems to me unimportant from a practical point of view. See Sully, _Human Mind_, chap. xiii. § 2.
[145] See Stout, _Analytic Psychology_, _l.c._
[146] _Physiological Æsthetics_, chap. ii.
[147] See Stout, _Analytic Psychology_, chap. xii. § 4.
[149] _Principles of Psychology_, § 125, and _Data of Ethics_, § 33.