Ethics

Now that we have spoken about the Excellences of both kinds, and Friendship in its varieties, and Pleasures, it remains to sketch out Happiness, since we assume that to be the one End of all human things:  and we shall save time and trouble by recapitulating what was stated before.

[Sidenote:  1176b] Well then, we said that it is not a State merely; because, if it were, it might belong to one who slept all his life through and merely vegetated, or to one who fell into very great calamities:  and so, if these possibilities displease us and we would rather put it into the rank of some kind of Working (as was also said before), and Workings are of different kinds (some being necessary and choiceworthy with a view to other things, while others are so in themselves), it is plain we must rank Happiness among those choiceworthy for their own sakes and not among those which are so with a view to something further:  because Happiness has no lack of anything but is self-sufficient.

By choiceworthy in themselves are meant those from which nothing is sought beyond the act of Working:  and of this kind are thought to be the actions according to Virtue, because doing what is noble and excellent is one of those things which are choiceworthy for their own sake alone.

And again, such amusements as are pleasant; because people do not choose them with any further purpose:  in fact they receive more harm than profit from them, neglecting their persons and their property.  Still the common run of those who are judged happy take refuge in such pastimes, which is the reason why they who have varied talent in such are highly esteemed among despots; because they make themselves pleasant in those things which these aim at, and these accordingly want such men.

Now these things are thought to be appurtenances of Happiness because men in power spend their leisure herein:  yet, it may be, we cannot argue from the example of such men:  because there is neither Virtue nor Intellect necessarily involved in having power, and yet these are the only sources of good Workings:  nor does it follow that because these men, never having tasted pure and generous Pleasure, take refuge in bodily ones, we are therefore to believe them to be more choiceworthy:  for children too believe that those things are most excellent which are precious in their eyes.

We may well believe that as children and men have different ideas as to what is precious so too have the bad and the good:  therefore, as we have many times said, those things are really precious and pleasant which seem so to the good man:  and as to each individual that Working is most choiceworthy which is in accordance with his own state to the good man that is so which is in accordance with Virtue.

Happiness then stands not in amusement; in fact the very notion is absurd of the End being amusement, and of one’s toiling and enduring hardness all one’s life long with a view to amusement:  for everything in the world, so to speak, we choose with some further End in view, except Happiness, for that is the End comprehending all others.  Now to take pains and to labour with a view to amusement is plainly foolish and very childish:  but to amuse one’s self with a view to steady employment afterwards, as Anacharsis says, is thought to be right:  for amusement is like rest, and men want rest because unable to labour continuously.

Rest, therefore, is not an End, because it is adopted with a view to Working afterwards.

[Sidenote:  1177a] Again, it is held that the Happy Life must be one in the way of Excellence, and this is accompanied by earnestness and stands not in amusement.  Moreover those things which are done in earnest, we say, are better than things merely ludicrous and joined with amusement:  and we say that the Working of the better part, or the better man, is more earnest; and the Working of the better is at once better and more capable of Happiness.

Then, again, as for bodily Pleasures, any ordinary person, or even a slave, might enjoy them, just as well as the best man living but Happiness no one supposes a slave to share except so far as it is implied in life:  because Happiness stands not in such pastimes but in the Workings in the way of Excellence, as has also been stated before.