Hence every animal takes pleasure in what nature needs and...

Hence every animal takes pleasure in what nature needs and nature also needs that which brings pleasure. For instance, a woman is equipped with organs and glands required for child bearing and nursing and she finds pleasure in these acts. The animal that lays eggs takes pleasure in that act, and an animal that gives birth to a child takes pleasure in child bearing. There exists a strong harmony between them.

It is wrong to think that purposive movement is confined to conscious beings only When it is said that nature has certain ends, some people may raise doubts as to whether unconscious nature may have ends. In fact ends are related to that very unconscious nature and the conscious mind has ends which are incidental to the ends of nature. The end of nature is to move. towards its perfection. As remarked by Ibn Sinn, the possession of consciousness does not make puposive a being that lacks purpose.

Purposiveness is related to the essence of a thing. Sometimes a thing is aware of its end and sometimes it is not. Q: There is not always a harmony between pleasure and natural need. Many pleasures are harmful for nature and injurious to its perfection. A: Deviant cases are not to be taken into consideration, particularly in die case of human being who act according to reason. What I mean is that there is a general harmony that exists to such an extent that it cannot be accidental.

Exceptional cases, like that of the sick person who needs medicine without feeling any pleasure in taking it, arise out of a kind of difference between two exigencies, a topic which has its own details. An animal takes pleasure in eating its medicine because it acts according to instinct, while the human being, who acts according to his reason, does not take pleasure in it. Allamah Tabataba i says that the world of normative concepts begins here.

The way he explains the issue it appears as if all animate beings including man and animals possess such ideas. But I do not agree with this generalization. According to him there is a necessary relation between nature and ends, like the concrete, objective and philosophical relation between cause and effect.

Now in the world of conception man takes the objective relation of necessity-as opposed to the relation of contingency-between two things in nature and applies that relation to two things between which there is no such real relation. For example, he applies the term `lion' to a brave man.