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

We shall meet all objections, then, if we say that a happy man is " one who exercises his faculties in accordance with perfect excellence, being duly furnished with external goods, not for any chance time, but for a full term of yeare : " to which perhaps we should add, " and who shall continue to live so, and shall die as he lived," since the fiiture is veiled to us, but happiness we take to be the end and in all ways perfectly final or complete.

If this be so, we may say that those living men are blessed or perfectly happy who both have and shall continue to have these characteristics, but happy as men only.

11. Passing now from this question to that of the cannot the

'-' ■■- _ fortunes of fortunes of descendants and of friends generally, the *"rvivors o •' ' afftct the doctrine that they do not affect the departed at all '^<^f seems too cold and too much opposed to popular opinion. But as the things that happen to them are many and differ in all sorts of ways, and some come home to them more and some less, so that to discuss them all separately would be a long, indeed an endless task, it will perhaps be enough to speak of them roughly and in general terms.

Now, as of the misfortunes that happen to a man's self, some have a certain weight and influence on his life, while others are of less moment, so is it also with

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what happens to any of his friends. And, again, it 4 always makes much more difference whether those who are affected by an occurrence are alive or dead than it does whether a terrible crime in a tragedy be enacted on the stage or merely supposed to have already taken place. We must therefore take these 5 differences into account, and still more, perhaps, the fact that it is a doubtful question whether the dead are at all accessible to good and ill. For it appears from what has been said that even if anything, whether good or evil, does come home to them, yet it is something unsubstantial and slight to them if not in itself; or if not that, yet at any rate its influence is not of that magnitude or nature that it can make happy those who are not, or take away their happiness from those that are.

It seems then — to conclude — that the prosperity, 6 and Hkewise the adversity, of friends does affect the dead, but not in such a way or to such an extent as to make the happy unhappy, or to do anything of the kind. Happiness as 12. Thesc points being settled, we may now inquire l absolute end . .

is above whether happiness is to be ranked among the goods praise. •• ^ o o that we praise, or rather among those that we revere ; for it is plainly not a mere potentiality, but an actual good.

What we praise seems always to be praised 2 as being of a certain quality and having a certain relation to something. For instance, we praise the just and the courageous man, and generally the good man, and excellence or virtue, because of what they do or produce ; and we praise also the strong or the swifti^p. 29 footed man, and so on, because he has a certain gift or faculty in relation to some good and admirable thing.

This is evident if we consider the praises bestowed on the Gods. These appear ridiculous, because they imply a reference to a human standard; and this necessarily happens, because all praise, as we said, involves a reference to some standard.

If, then, praise be proper to such things as we mentioned, it is evident that to the best things is due, not praise, but something gi'eater and better, as our usage shows ; for the Gods we call blessed and happy, and " blessed " is the teim we apply to the most godlike men.

And so with good things: no one praises happiness as he praises justice, but calls it blessed, as something better and more divine.