ceived as absolute and unchangeable, and then the abstract idea of
pleasure will be equally unchangeable with that of knowledge. But when
we come to view either as phenomena of consciousness, the same defects
are for the most part incident to both of them. Our hold upon them is
equally transient and uncertain; the mind cannot be always in a state of
intellectual tension, any more than capable of feeling pleasure always.
The knowledge which is at one time clear and distinct, at another seems
to fade away, just as the pleasure of health after sickness, or of
eating after hunger, soon passes into a neutral state of unconsciousness
and indifference. Change and alternation are necessary for the mind as
well as for the body; and in this is to be acknowledged, not an element
of evil, but rather a law of nature. The chief difference between
subjective pleasure and subjective knowledge in respect of permanence is
that the latter, when our feeble faculties are able to grasp it, still
conveys to us an idea of unchangeableness which cannot be got rid of.

3. In the language of ancient philosophy, the relative character of
pleasure is described as becoming or generation. This is relative to
Being or Essence, and from one point of view may be regarded as the
Heraclitean flux in contrast with the Eleatic Being; from another,
as the transient enjoyment of eating and drinking compared with the
supposed permanence of intellectual pleasures. But to us the distinction
is unmeaning, and belongs to a stage of philosophy which has passed
away. Plato himself seems to have suspected that the continuance or life
of things is quite as much to be attributed to a principle of rest as
of motion (compare Charm. Cratyl.). A later view of pleasure is found
in Aristotle, who agrees with Plato in many points, e.g. in his view of
pleasure as a restoration to nature, in his distinction between bodily
and mental, between necessary and non-necessary pleasures. But he is
also in advance of Plato; for he affirms that pleasure is not in the
body at all; and hence not even the bodily pleasures are to be spoken of
as generations, but only as accompanied by generation (Nic. Eth.).

4. Plato attempts to identify vicious pleasures with some form of error,
and insists that the term false may be applied to them: in this he
appears to be carrying out in a confused manner the Socratic doctrine,
that virtue is knowledge, vice ignorance. He will allow of no
distinction be