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    Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (ed. H. Rackham)

    Book 1

    Editions and translations: Greek (ed. J. Bywater) | English (ed. H. Rackham)
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    require instruments for their performance, in the shape of friends or wealth or political power; [16] also there are certain external advantages, the lack of which sullies supreme felicity, such as good birth, satisfactory children, and personal beauty: a man of very ugly appearance or low birth, or childless and alone in the world, is not our idea of a happy man, and still less so perhaps is one who has children or friends1 that are worthless, or who has had good ones but lost them by death. [17] As we said therefore, happiness does seem to require the addition of external prosperity, and this is why some people identify it with good fortune (though some identify it with virtue2 ).

    IX. It is this that gives rise to the question whether happiness is a thing that can be learnt, or acquired by training, or cultivated in some other manner, or whether it is bestowed by some divine dispensation or even by fortune. [2] (1) Now if anything that men have is a gift of the gods, it is reasonable to suppose that happiness is divinely given--indeed of all man's possessions it is most likely to be so, inasmuch as it is the best of them all. [3] This subject however may perhaps more properly belong to another branch of study.3 Still, even if happiness is not sent us from heaven, but is won by virtue and by some kind of study or practice, it seems to be one of the most divine things that exist. For the prize and end of virtue must clearly be supremely good--it must be something divine and blissful. [4] (2) And also on our view it will admit of being widely diffused, since it can be attained through some process of study or effort by all persons whose capacity for virtue has not been stunted or maimed. [5] (3) Again, if it is better to be happy as a result of one's own exertions than by the gift of fortune, it is reasonable to suppose that this is how happiness is won; inasmuch as in the world of nature things have a natural tendency to be ordered in the best possible way, [6] and the same is true of the products of art, and of causation of any kind, and especially the highest.4 Whereas that the greatest and noblest of all things should be left to fortune would be too contrary to the fitness of things.

    [7] Light is also thrown on the question by our definition of happiness, which said that it is a certain kind of activity of the soul; whereas the remaining good things5 are either merely indispensable conditions of happiness, or are of the nature of auxiliary means, and useful instrumentally. [8] This conclusion6 moreover agrees with what we laid down at the outset; for we stated that the Supreme Good was the end of political science, but the principal care of this science is to produce a certain character in the citizens, namely to make them virtuous, and capable of performing noble actions.

    [9] We have good reasons therefore for not speaking of an ox or horse or any other animal as being happy,

    1 Perhaps ‘or friends’ is slipped in because of ‘alone in the world’ just above, but friends should not be mentioned here among the indispensable conditions of happiness, as they were included just above among its instruments (see 8.2, first note).

    2 This irrelevant addition looks like an interpolation.

    3 i.e., theology, but Aristotle does not reopen the question in the Metaphysics or elsewhere.

    4 i.e., the intelligence of man.

    5 Cf. 8.15, 16, and 8.2 note.

    6 Viz., that happiness depends on us and not on fortune, the answer implied by the foregoing arguments to the question raised in 9.1.

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    This text is based on the following book(s):
    Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 19, translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1934.
    OCLC: 39541390
    ISBN: 0674990811

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