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

This exercise of faculty must be the highest possible ; for the reason is the highest of our faculties and of all knowable things those that reason deals with are the highest. X^ Again, it is the most continuous ; for speculation can be carried on more continuously than any kind of action whatsoever.

We think too that pleasure ought to be one of th( ingredients of happiness ; but of all virtuous exerciser it is allowed that the pleasantest is the exercise o; wisdom.* At least, philosophy f is thought to hav( pleasures that are admirable in purity and steadfastness ; and it is reasonable to suppose that th( time passes more pleasantly with those who possess than with those who are seeking knowledge.

Again, what is called self-sufficiency will be mos of all found in the speculative life. The necessarie of life, indeed, are needed by the wise man as wel as by the just man and the rest; but, when thesi have been provided in due quantity, the just mai further needs persons towards whom, and along witl whom, he may act justly ; and so does the temperat and the courageous man and the rest; while th^7, 2-7] CONCLUSION. 339 wise man is able to speciJate even by himself, and the wiser he is the more is he able to do this. He could speculate better, we may confe.ss, if he had others to help him, but nevertheless he is more self-sufficient than anybody else.

* ri Kara t^j/ aoipiav iyepyna, the contemplation of absolato truth + The search for this truth.

Again, it would seem that this life alone is desired solely for its own sake ; for it yields no result beyond the contemplation itself, while from all actions we get something more or less besides the action itself

^jkgoio., happiness is thought to imply leisure ; for we toil in order that we may have leisure, as we make war in order that we may enjoy peace. Now, the practical virtues are exercised either in politics or in war; but these do not seem to be leisurely occupations : —

War, indeed, seems to be quite the reverse of leisurely; for no one chooses to fight for fighting's sake, or arranges a war for that purpose : he would be deemed a bloodthii-sty villain who should set friends at enmity in order that battles and slaughter might ensue.

But the politician's life also is not a leisurely occupation, and, beside the practice of politics itself, it brings power and honours, or at least happiness, to himself and his fellow-citizens, which is something different jfrom politics ; for we [who are asking what happiness is] also ask what politics is, evidently ipaplying that it is something different from happi-

The life of the statesman and of the soldier, then, iwough they surpass aU other virtuous exercises in nobility and grandeur, are not leisurely occupations.

p. 340

and aim at some ulterior end, and are not desired merely for themselves. ''^..^^But the exercise of the reason seems to be superioi in seriousness (since it contemplates truth), and tc aim at no end beside itself, and to have its propei pleasure (which also helps to increase the exercise) and its exercise seems further to be self-sufficient, an(3 leisurely, and inexhaustible (as far as anything humar can be), and to have all the other characteristics thai are ascribed to happiness.

This, then, will be the complete happiness of man i.e. when a complete term of days is added; foi nothing incomplete can be admitted into our idea o: happiness. ^ But a life which realized this idea would be some thing more than human; for it would not be th( expression of man's nature, but of some divine elemem in that nature — the exercise of which is as far supe rior to the exercise of the other kind of virtue [i.e practical or moral virtue], as this divine element if superior to our compound human nature.*

If then reason be divine as compared with man the life which consists in the exercise of reason wil also be divine in comparison with human life. Never theless, instead of listening to those who advise us as men and mortals not to lift our thoughts above whai is human and mortal, we ought rather, as far as possible, to put off our mortality and make every effor to live in the exercise of the highest of our faculties for though it be but a small part of us, yet in powei and value it far surpasses all the rest.