If activities are, as we said, what gives life its character, no
happy man can become miserable; for he will never do the acts that are
hateful and mean. For the man who is truly good and wise, we think,
bears all the chances life becomingly and always makes the best of
circumstances, as a good general makes the best military use of the
army at his command and a good shoemaker makes the best shoes out of
the hides that are given him; and so with all other craftsmen. And
if this is the case, the happy man can never become miserable;
though he will not reach blessedness, if he meet with fortunes like
those of Priam.

  Nor, again, is he many-coloured and changeable; for neither will
he be moved from his happy state easily or by any ordinary
misadventures, but only by many great ones, nor, if he has had many
great misadventures, will he recover his happiness in a short time,
but if at all, only in a long and complete one in which he has
attained many splendid successes.

  When then should we not say that he is happy who is active in
accordance with complete virtue and is sufficiently equipped with
external goods, not for some chance period but throughout a complete
life? Or must we add 'and who is destined to live thus and die as
befits his life'? Certainly the future is obscure to us, while
happiness, we claim, is an end and something in every way final. If
so, we shall call happy those among living men in whom these
conditions are, and are to be, fulfilled- but happy men. So much for
these questions.

                                11

  That the fortunes of descendants and of all a man's friends should
not affect his happiness at all seems a very unfriendly doctrine,
and one opposed to the opinions men hold; but since the events that
happen are numerous and admit of all sorts of difference, and some
come more near to us and others less so, it seems a long- nay, an
infinite- task to discuss each in detail; a general outline will
perhaps suffice. If, then, as some of a man's own misadventures have a
certain weight and influence on life while others are, as it were,
lighter, so too there are differences among the misadventures of our
friends taken as a whole, and it makes a difference whether the
various suffering befall the living or the dead (much more even than
whether lawless and terrible deeds are presupposed in a tragedy or
done on the stage), this difference also must be taken into account;
or rather, perhaps, the fact that doubt is felt whether the dead share
in any good or evil. For it seems, from these considerations, that
even if anything whether good or evil penetrates to them, it must be
something weak and negligible, either in itself or for them, or if
not, at least it must be such in degree and kind as not to make
happy those who are not happy nor to take away their blessedness
from those who are. The good or bad fortunes of friends, then, seem to
have some effects on the dead, but effects of such a kind and degree
as neither to make the happy unhappy nor to produce any other change
of the kind.

                                12

  These questions having been definitely answered, let us consider
whether happiness is among the things that are praised or rather among
the things that are prized; for clearly it is not to be placed among
potentialities. Everything that is praised seems to be praised because
it is of a certain kind and is related somehow to something else;
for we praise the just or brave man and in general both the good man
and virtue itself because of the actions and functions involved, and
we praise the strong man, the good runner, and so on, because he is of
a certain kind and is related in a certain way to something good and
important. This is clear also from the praises of the gods; for it
seems absurd that the gods should be referred to our standard, but
this is done because praise involves a reference, to something else.
But if if praise is for things such as we have described, clearly what
applies to the best things is not praise, but something greater and
better, as is indeed obvious; for what we do to the gods and the
most godlike of men is to call them blessed and happy. And so too with
good things; no one praises happiness as he does justice, but rather
calls it blessed, as being something more divine and better.

  Eudoxus also seems to have been right in his method of advocating
the supremacy of pleasure; he thought that the fact that, though a
good, it is not praised indicated it to be better than the things that
are praised, and that this is what God and the good are; for by
reference to these all other things are judged. Praise is
appropriate to virtue, for as a result of virtue men tend to do
noble deeds, but encomia are bestowed on acts, whether of the body
or of the soul. But perhaps nicety in these matters is more proper
to those who have made a study of encomia; to us it is clear from what
has been said that happiness is among the things that are prized and
perfect. It seems to be so also from the fact that it is a first
principle; for it is for the sake of this that we all do all that we
do, and the first principle and cause of goods is, we claim, something
prized and divine.

                                13

  Since happiness is an activity of soul in accordance with perfect
virtue, we must consider the nature of virtue; for perhaps we shall
thus see better the nature of happiness. The true student of politics,
too, is thought to have studied virtue above all things; for he wishes
to make his fellow citizens good and obedient to the laws. As an
example of this we have the lawgivers of the Cretans and the Spartans,
and any others of the kind that there may have been. And if this