senses; this is a given because we are aware that there are things that we acknowledge with our senses that are called pleasant. His next criterion is also obvious in that pleasure is best when the senses are their best. Something like the smell of a flower would not be a perfect relation if the person with the nose had a cold and subsequently an impaired sense of smell. He concludes that pleasure completes the activitynot however, as the state does, by being present [in the activity], but as a sort of consequent end, like the bloom on youths (1174b32). Aquinas wrote that at this point He clarifies a previous statement about the manner in which pleasure perfects activity. For it was stated that pleasure perfects activity not efficiently but formally. Now, formal perfection is twofold. One is an intrinsic constituting a things essence, but the other is added to a thing already constituted in its species. He says first that pleasure perfects activity not as a habit that is inherent, i.e., not as a form intrinsic to the essence of the thing, but as a kind of end or supervenient perfection, like the bloom of health comes to young people not as being of the essence of youth but as following from a favorable condition of the causes of youth. Likewise pleasure follows from a favorable condition of the causes of the activity. (Aquinas, p86-7) After making clear his earlier points, Aristotle then goes on to discuss the properties of pleasure. First he looks at the duration of pleasure and acknowledges that it can not go on continuously because nothing human is capable of continuous activity, and hence, no continuous pleasure arises either, since pleasure is a consequence of activity(1175a5). Because humans would grow tired of whatever activity was bringing them pleasure, eventually they would have to stop. Were someone to keep dancing, if this were the activity that brought that person pleasure, there would come a point when physica...
