Book 1
16
also there are certain external advantages, the lack of which sullies supreme felicity, such as good birth, satisfactory children, and personal beauty: a man of very ugly appearance or low birth, or childless and alone in the world, is not our idea of a happy man, and still less so perhaps is one who has children or friendsPerhaps or friends is slipped in because of alone in the world just above, but friends should not be mentioned here among the indispensable conditions of happiness, as they were included just above among its instruments (see 8.2, first note). that are worthless, or who has had good ones but lost them by death.
17
As we said therefore, happiness does seem to require the addition of external prosperity, and this is why some people identify it with good fortune (though some identify it with virtueThis irrelevant addition looks like an interpolation.).
1
It is this that gives rise to the question whether happiness is a thing that can be learnt, or acquired by training, or cultivated in some other manner, or whether it is bestowed by some divine dispensation or even by fortune.
2
(1) Now if anything that men have is a gift of the gods, it is reasonable to suppose that happiness is divinely given—indeed of all man’s possessions it is most likely to be so, inasmuch as it is the best of them all.
3
This subject however may perhaps more properly belong to another branch of study.i.e., theology, but Aristotle does not reopen the question in the Metaphysics or elsewhere. Still, even if happiness is not sent us from heaven, but is won by virtue and by some kind of study or practice, it seems to be one of the most divine things that exist. For the prize and end of virtue must clearly be supremely good—it must be something divine and blissful.
4
(2) And also on our view it will admit of being widely diffused, since it can be attained through some process of study or effort by all persons whose capacity for virtue has not been stunted or maimed.
