ACTIVITY AND SUBSTANCE 211 



ca, on the other hand, does not essentially or 

 necessarily imply motion or change. In fact in the 

 typical case, the perfect exercise of function by the 

 senses, there is neither motion (/averts) nor change 

 (aAAot wcri?) nor passivity (7rdo&quot;%eiv} ; the appropriate 

 stimulus rouses the organ to activity and the organ 

 functions naturally in grasping it ; * when this process is 

 free from friction ( impediment ) perception is perfect and 

 accompanied by pleasure (77801/77). 



Man, unfortunately, only catches brief glimpses of this 

 happy state of things : our activity cannot be sustained, 

 because, owing to the defectiveness (Trov^pia or (/&amp;gt;aiA,or?7&amp;lt;&amp;gt;) 

 of a composite nature adulterated with matter (#A,77), we 

 grow weary and allow our attention to wander and cannot 

 be continuously active (o-fz/e^oo? evepyelv)? But God is 

 not so hampered ; his is a pure and perfect nature ; he is 

 pure Form, unimpeded by Matter, and always completely 

 and actually all that he can be. Hence the divine 

 evepyeia is kept up inexhaustibly, 3 and ever generates the 

 supreme pleasure, simple and incorruptible, of self- 

 contemplation (1/0770-4,9 vorjcretos), which constitutes the 

 divine happiness. It follows, as a matter of course, that 

 this dvepyeia is above and beyond Kivqaw ; it is evepyeia 

 aKivrjcrias or r/pe^ia. Hence in a famous passage whose 

 fame is yet unequal to its merits 4 we are told that &quot; if 

 the nature of anything were simple, the same action 

 would ever be sweetest to it. And this is the reason 

 why God always enjoys a single and simple pleasure ; for 

 there is not only an activity of motion, but also one void 

 of motion, and pleasure is rather in constancy 5 than in 

 motion. And change of all things is sweet, as the poet 

 hath it, because of a certain defect.&quot; ( 



1 Eth. Nich. x. 4, 5, 1174 b 14. 2 Ibid. x. 4, 9, 1175 a 4. 



3 This is true also of the heavenly bodies, by reason of their more perfect ij\i}. 

 Cp. Metaph. 1050 b 22. 



4 Eth. Nich. vii. 14, 8 (1154 b 25-31). 



5 ripf/jda cannot be translated rest without misleading. For rest to us = 

 non-activity, which to Aristotle is tantamount to non-existence. He uses the 

 word in order to express the steady and effortless maintenance of a perfect 

 equilibrium. Cp. An. Post. ii. 19, where the same word is used to describe the 

 emergence of the logical universal, i.e. of the constancy of meaning, out of the 

 flux of psychological ideas. 6 Cp. also Metaph. A. 7, 1072 b 16. 



