in itself the quality of sweetness, derived from its material substrate. If something like this occurred without an external cause, pleasure would still be present. The same applies to objects of touch and smell, and the like.

The perfection of the irascible faculty consists in the soul’s assuming a state of anger, or a state of awareness of harm inflicted by the one with whom it is angry.

For the estimative faculty, perfection consists in assuming the form of what it hopes for or remembers. The same holds for the other faculties.”

The point is that he made the perfection of the estimative faculty consist in its assuming the quality of what it hopes for or remembers. What is hoped for lies in the future, while what is remembered lies in the past. Here, both must be things that are compatible with it and that it loves, since perfection—as they themselves have stated—comes only through apprehending what is congenial, not what is incompatible.

The estimative faculty is that by which friendship and hostility, compatibility and incompatibility are apprehended. Friendship is the bond of allegiance rooted in love, while hostility is rooted in hatred.

Thus, according to them, the estimative faculty is that by which an animal apprehends what it loves and what it hates