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7.
But if happiness consists in activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonable that it
should be activity in accordance with the highest virtue; and this will be the virtue of
the best part of us. Whether then this be the intellect, or whatever else it be that is
thought to rule and lead us by nature, and to have cognizance of what is noble and divine,
either as being itself also actually divine, or as being relatively the divinest part of
us, it is the activity of this part of us in accordance with the virtue proper to it that
will constitute perfect happiness; and it has been stated already1 that this activity is the activity of contemplation.
[2]
And that happiness consists in contemplation may be accepted as agreeing both with the
results already reached and with the truth. For contemplation is at once the highest form
of activity (since the intellect is the
highest thing in us, and the objects with which the intellect deals are the highest things
that can be known) , and also it is the most continuous, for we can reflect more
continuously than we can carry on any form of action.
[3]
And
again we suppose that happiness must contain an element of pleasure; now activity in
accordance with wisdom is admittedly the most pleasant of the activities in accordance
with virtue: at all events it is held that philosophy or the pursuit of wisdom contains
pleasures of marvellous purity and permanence, and it is reasonable to suppose that the
enjoyment of knowledge is a still pleasanter occupation than the pursuit of it.
[4]
Also the activity of contemplation will be found to possess in the
highest degree the quality that is termed self-sufficiency; for while it is true that the
wise man equally with the just man and the rest requires the necessaries of life, yet,
these being adequately supplied, whereas the just man needs other persons towards whom or
with whose aid he may act justly, and so likewise do the temperate man and the brave man
and the others, the wise man on the contrary can also contemplate by himself, and the more
so the wiser he is; no doubt he will study better with the aid of fellow-workers, but
still he is the most self-sufficient of men.
[5]
Also the
activity of contemplation may be held to be the only activity that is loved for its own
sake: it produces no result beyond the actual act of contemplation, whereas from practical
pursuits we look to secure some advantage, greater or smaller, beyond the action itself.
[6]
Also happiness is thought to involve leisure; for we do
business in order that we may have leisure, and carry on war in order that we may have
peace. Now the practical virtues are exercised in politics or in warfare; but the pursuits
of politics and war seem to be unleisured—those of war indeed entirely so, for
no one desires to be at war for the sake of being at war, nor deliberately takes steps to
cause a war: a man would be thought an utterly bloodthirsty character if he declared war
on a friendly state for the sake of causing battles and massacres. But the activity of the
politician also is unleisured, and aims at securing something beyond the mere
participation in politics—positions of authority and honor, or, if the happiness
of the politician himself and of his fellow-citizens, this happiness conceived as
something distinct from political activity (indeed we are clearly investigating
it as so distinct).2
[7]
If then among practical pursuits displaying the virtues,
politics and war stand out preeminent in nobility and grandeur, and yet they are
unleisured, and directed to some further end, not chosen for their own sakes: whereas the
activity of the intellect is felt to excel in serious worth,3 consisting as it does in contemplation, and to aim at no end beyond itself, and also to contain a
pleasure peculiar to itself, and therefore augmenting its activity4: and if accordingly the attributes of this
activity are found to be self-sufficiency, leisuredness, such freedom from fatigue as is
possible for man, and all the other attributes of blessedness: it follows that it is the
activity of the intellect that constitutes complete human happiness—provided it
be granted a complete span of life, for nothing that belongs to happiness can be
incomplete.
[8]
Such a life as this however will be higher than the human level:5 not in virtue of his
humanity will a man achieve it, but in virtue of something within him that is divine; and
by as much as this something is superior to his composite nature, by so much is its
activity superior to the exercise of the other forms of virtue. If then the intellect is
something divine in comparison with man, so is the life of the intellect divine in
comparison with human life. Nor ought we to obey those who enjoin that a man should have
man's thoughts6 and a mortal
the thoughts of mortality,7 but we ought so far as possible to achieve immortality,
and do all that man may to live in accordance with the highest thing in him; for though
this be small in bulk, in power and value it far surpasses all the rest.
[9]
It may even be held that this is the true self of each,8 inasmuch as it is the dominant and better part;
and therefore it would be a strange thing if a man should choose to live not his own life
but the life of some other than himself.
Moreover what was said before will apply here also: that which is best and most pleasant
for each creature is that which is proper to the nature of each; accordingly the life of
the intellect is the best and the pleasantest life9 for man, inasmuch as the intellect more than anything else is man;
therefore this life will be the happiest.
1 This does not appear to have been stated exactly, but in Book 6 (see esp. 5.3, 13.8) it was shown that σοφία, the virtue of the higher part of the intellect, is the highest of the virtues.
2 Probably the sentence should be curtailed to run ‘or in fact the happiness of himself and his fellow-citizens; and happiness we are clearly investigating as something distinct from the art of politics [whose object it is].’
3 This should almost certainly be emended to ‘excel in leisuredness.’
4 A reminder of 5.2.
5 This section and 8.7 and 13 interpret 1.9.3.
6 Euripides, fr. 1040.
8 Cf. 9.4.3, 4; 8.6.
9 Cf. 1.8.14.