[72] From the "Phædo." Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Probably the "Phædo" is, of all Plato's writings, the most famous. Its importance is ascribed by Mahaffy not only to what is said of immortality, in passages which have "fascinated the thoughtful men of all ages," but to the touching story of the last hours of Socrates.
[73] Echecrates seems to have been the Locrian philosopher to whom Plato is believed to have gone for some of his early instruction.
ARISTOTLE
Born in Stagira in 384 b.c.; died at Chalcis in Eubœa in 322; the most famous of Greek philosophers; went to Athens in his eighteenth year as a pupil of Plato and remained there for twenty years; in 343 went to the Court of Macedon, where he undertook the education of Alexander the Great, then thirteen years old; in 335 returned to Athens and produced the greater part of his writings; afterward forced to flee from Athens to Chalcis during an uprising against the Macedonians; his numerous writings deal with all branches of science known to his times; the first edition of the Greek text, that of Aldus Manutius, published in 1495-98.[74]
I
WHAT THINGS ARE PLEASANT[75]
Let it be laid down by us, that pleasure is a certain motion of the soul, and a settlement of it, at once rapid and perceptible, into its own proper nature; and that pain is the contrary. If then pleasure be a thing of this nature, it is plain that whatever is productive of the disposition I have described is pleasant; while everything of a nature to destroy it, or produce a disposition the opposite to it, is painful.
Generally speaking, therefore, it is necessary, both that the being in progress toward a state conformable to nature should be pleasant; and that, in the highest degree, when those feelings, whose original is conformable to it, shall have recovered that their nature; and habits, because that which is habitual becomes by that time natural, as it were; for, in a certain way, custom is like nature, because the idea of frequency is proximate to that of always; now nature belongs to the idea of always, custom to that of often. What is not compulsory, also, is pleasant; for compulsion is contrary to nature. Wherefore acts of necessity are painful; and it has been truly remarked, "Every act of necessity is in its nature painful." It must be also that a state of sedulous attention, anxiety, the having the mind on the stretch, are painful, for they all are acts of necessity, and constrained, unless they have become habitual; but it is custom which, under such circumstances, renders them pleasant. The contraries of these must also be pleasant; wherefore, relaxation of mind, leisure, listlessness, amusements, and intervals of rest, rank in the class of things pleasant; for none of these has anything to do with necessity. Everything of which there is an innate appetite, is pleasant; for appetite is a desire of what is pleasant.