Book 1
8
Moreover, we think happiness the most desirable of all good things without being itself reckoned as one among the restSc. but as including all other good things as the end includes the means.; for if it were so reckoned, it is clear that we should consider it more desirable when even the smallest of other good things were combined with it, since this addition would result in a larger total of good, and of two goods the greater is always the more desirable.
8
Happiness, therefore, being found to be something final and self-sufficient, is the End at which all actions aim.
9
To say however that the Supreme Good is happiness will probably appear a truism; we still require a more explicit account of what constitutes happiness.
10
Perhaps then we may arrive at this by ascertaining what is man’s function. For the goodness or efficiency of a flute-player or sculptor or craftsman of any sort, and in general of anybody who has some function or business to perform, is thought to reside in that function; and similarly it may be held that the good of man resides in the function of man, if he has a function.
11
Are we then to suppose that, while the carpenter and the shoemaker have definite functions or businesses belonging to them, man as such has none, and is not designed by nature to fulfil any function? Must we not rather assume that, just as the eye, the hand, the foot and each of the various members of the body manifestly has a certain function of its own, so a human being also has a certain function over and above all the functions of his particular members?
12
What then precisely can this function be? The mere act of living appears to be shared even by plants, whereas we are looking for the function peculiar to man; we must therefore set aside the vital activity of nutrition and growth. Next in the scale will come some form of sentient life; but this too appears to be shared by horses, oxen, and animals generally.
