Pagina 408 di 1391

Both in Plato and Aristotle we note the illusion under which the

ancients fell of regarding the transience of pleasure as a proof

of its unreality, and of confounding the permanence of the

intellectual pleasures with the unchangeableness of the knowledge

from which they are derived. Neither do we like to admit that the

pleasures of knowledge, though more elevating, are not more

lasting than other pleasures, and are almost equally dependent on

the accidents of our bodily state (Introduction to Philebus).