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contempt those whose fear of pain prevents them from ever daring to
act in a manly fashion. What are they doing wrong if they obey their
senses, i.e., the judges of what is good and bad? For you have handed
over the decision about what is good and bad to the senses. 4. But surely
it is reason which is in charge of that matter; that is what makes the
decisions about good and bad, just as it does about the happy life, about
virtue and about the honourable. But [the hedonists] let the lowest part
[of man] make the decisions about what is better, so that judgement is
pronounced on the good by sense perception, which is blunt and lazy,
and slower in men than it is in beasts. 5. What [would we think] if
someone wanted to discriminate tiny things not by the eyes but by
touch? ...
- He says, "Just as every branch of knowledge and every craft takes
something which is obvious and is grasped by sense perception as the
starting point from which it will develop, similarly, the happy life must
take something obvious as its foundation and starting point. Surely you
say that the happy life has something obvious as its starting point." 7.
We say that those things which are in accordance with nature are happy.
And what is in accordance with nature is out in the open and immediately
apparent, just as is the case with what is healthy. I do not call the natural,
[i.e.,] what immediately affects a newborn [animal], good, but rather the
starting point of the good. You give over the highest good, i.e., pleasure,
to infancy, so that a newborn starts out from the point which a fully
accomplished man [might hope to] reach. You put the top of the tree
where the roots ought to be. 8. It would be a blatant error if someone
said that the fetus hidden in its mother's womb, still of uncertain sex,
immature, unfinished and not yet formed, were already in some good
condition. And yet, how small is the difference between one who is just
in the act of receiving life and one who lies as a hidden burden inside
its mother's body. As far as an understanding of good and bad is con-
cerned, both are equally mature; an infant is no more capable of the good
than a tree or some dumb animal! But why is the good not found in a
tree or a dumb animal? Because reason is not there either. That is also
the reason why it is missing in an infant; for infants too lack reason. It
attains the good when it attains reason. - There is such a thing as a non-rational animal; and such a thing as
an animal which is not yet rational; and one which is rational but not
yet perfect. In none of them can you find the good, which is brought
with reason. What is the difference, then, between the [kinds of animal]
I have mentioned? In the non-rational the good will never exist; in that
which is not yet rational the good cannot exist just then;
but imperfect the good is already able to, but does not. 10. I