obscure. He finds the source of the phenomenon in the nature of the
desire for bodily pleasures, which is not irrational but has something
rational in it. Such pleasures are not necessarily or inherently bad, as
has sometimes been maintained; on the contrary, they are good, but only
in certain amounts or under certain conditions, so that the will is
often misled, hesitates, and is lost.

Books VIII. and IX. (on Friendship) are almost an interruption of the
argument. The subject-matter of them was a favourite topic of ancient
writers, and the treatment is smoother and more orderly than elsewhere
in the _Ethics_. The argument is clear, and may be left without
comment to the readers. These books contain a necessary and attractive
complement to the somewhat dry account of Greek morality in the
preceding books, and there are in them profound reflections on what may
be called the metaphysics of friendship or love.

At the beginning of Book X. we return to the topic of Pleasure, which
is now regarded from a different point of view. In Book VII. the
antagonists were those who over-emphasised the irrationality or badness
of Pleasure: here it is rather those who so exaggerate its value as to
confuse or identify it with the good or Happiness. But there is offered
us in this section much more than criticism of the errors of others.
Answers are given both to the psychological question, "What is
Pleasure?" and to the ethical question, "What is its value?" Pleasure,
we are told, is the natural concomitant and index of perfect activity,
distinguishable but inseparable from it--"the activity of a subject at
its best acting upon an object at its best." It is therefore always
and in itself a good, but its value rises and falls with that of the
activity with which it is conjoined, and which it intensifies and
perfects. Hence it follows that the highest and best pleasures are those