The Nicomachean Ethics — trans. F. H. Peters (1881)

Again, it is surely absurd to make the happy man a solitary being : for no one would choose to have all conceivable good things on condition of being alone ; for man is a social being, and by nature adapted to share his life with others. The happy man, then, must have this good, since he has whatever is naturally good for man. But it is obvious that it is better to live with friends and good people, than with strangers and casual persons. The happy man, then, must have friends.

What, then, do those who maintain the former opinion mean ? and in what sense are they right ? Is it that the generality of men think that friends means useful people ? Friends in this sense certainly the happy or blessed man will not need, as he already has

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.tever is crood. And, a<iain, he will have no need, but little need, of the friendship that is based on pleasure ; for his life is pleasant and does not require adventitious pleasure. Because he does not need these kind of friends then, people come to think he does not need friends at alL

But I think we may say that this opinion is not true. For we said at the outset that happiness is a certain exercise of our faculties ; but the exercise of our faculties plainly comes to be in time, and is not like a piece of property acquired once for all But if happiness consists in living and exercising our faculties; and if the exercise of the good man's faculties is good and pleasant in itself, as we said at the outset ; and if the sense that a thing belongs to us is one of the sources of pleasure, but it is easier to contemplate othere than onrselves, and others' acts than our own — then the acts of the good men who are his Mends are pleasant to the good man ; for they have both the natui-al sources of pleasure.* The happy or blessed man, then, will need such friends, since he desires to contemplate acts that are good and belong to him, and such are the acts of a good man who is his friend.

Again, it is thought that the happy man's life must be pleasant. Now, if he is solitary, life is hard for him ; for it is very diflBcult to be continuously active by one's self, but not so difficult along with others, and in relation to others. With friends, then, the exercise of his faculties will be more continuous, being pleasant in itself. And this is what ought * (1) They are good, (2) they belong to him.

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to be the case with the blessed man ; for the good man, as such, delights in acts of virtue and is vexed by acts of vice, just as a musician is pleased by good music and pained by bad.

Again, he would get a sort of practice in virtue by living with good men, as Theognis says.*

But if we look a little deeper into the nature of things, a good friend appears to be naturally desirable to the good man : —

What is naturally good, we have already said, is good and pleasant in itself to the good man.

Now, life is defined in the case of animals by the power of feeling, in the case of man by the power of feeling or thought : but the power involves reference to its exercise ; and it is in this exercise that the reality lies : life, then, in its reality, seems to be feeling or thinking.

Life, again, is one of the things that are good and pleasant in themselves ; for it is determinate or formed, and the determinate or formed is of the nature of the good ; but that which is naturally [or in itself] good is good to the good man. (And hence life seems to be pleasant to all men. But by life we must not understand a bad or corrupt life, or a life of pain ; for such a life is formless, as are aU its constituents. We shall endeavour, presently, to throw some light on the nature of pain.)