For an activity is
intensified by its proper pleasure, since each class of things is
better judged of and brought to precision by those who engage in the
activity with pleasure; e.g. it is those who enjoy geometrical
thinking that become geometers and grasp the various propositions
better, and, similarly, those who are fond of music or of building,
and so on, make progress in their proper function by enjoying it; so
the pleasures intensify the activities, and what intensifies a thing
is proper to it, but things different in kind have properties
different in kind.
This will be even more apparent from the fact that activities are
hindered by pleasures arising from other sources. For people who are
fond of playing the flute are incapable of attending to arguments if
they overhear some one playing the flute, since they enjoy
flute-playing more than the activity in hand; so the pleasure
connected with fluteplaying destroys the activity concerned with
argument. This happens, similarly, in all other cases, when one is
active about two things at once; the more pleasant activity drives out
the other, and if it is much more pleasant does so all the more, so
that one even ceases from the other. This is why when we enjoy
anything very much we do not throw ourselves into anything else, and
do one thing only when we are not much pleased by another; e.
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