Politics

(For living well also requires some external equipment, and of this, less for those who are better situated, but more for those who are worse), but some, right from the start, do not seek happiness in the right way, even though they have the capability. And since our proposed task is to see the best constitution, and this is the one under which a city would be best governed, and it would be best governed under the one in which it is most possible for the city to be happy, it is clear that we must not be ignorant of what happiness is. Now we say (and we have defined it in the Ethics, if there is any utility in those discussions) that happiness is the complete activity and employment of virtue, and this not conditionally but absolutely. By ‘conditionally’ I mean necessary actions, and by ‘absolutely’ I mean what is noble. For example, in the case of just actions, just retributions and punishments do indeed proceed from virtue, but they are necessary, and they possess what is noble only out of necessity (for it is more desirable that neither individual man nor city should need any of such things), whereas actions directed toward honors and prosperity are absolutely the most noble actions. For the former is the removal of some evil, but the latter actions are the opposite: for they are establishments and generations of goods. And the excellent man would use even poverty and disease and other bad fortunes well; but blessedness lies in their opposites (for this also has been defined in the ethical treatises, that the excellent man is such that, owing to his virtue, the things that are absolutely good are good for him, and it is clear that his employments of these must also be excellent and noble absolutely); hence men also think that the causes of happiness are external goods, just as if they were to attribute brilliant and beautiful cithara-playing to the lyre rather than to the art. Therefore, it follows from what has been said that some things must already be present, and others the legislator must provide. Therefore, for the constitution of the city, we pray that we may obtain those things over which fortune is sovereign (for we assume that she is sovereign); but that the city should be excellent is no longer the work of fortune, but of knowledge and choice. But surely a city is excellent by virtue of the citizens who share in the constitution being excellent; and in our case, all the citizens share in the constitution. This, then, must be considered: how a man becomes excellent. For even if it is possible for all to be excellent without each of the citizens being so, the latter way is more desirable; for ‘all’ follows from ‘each’. But surely men become good and excellent through three things. And these three are nature, habit, and reason. For one must first be born as something, for instance as a human being and not some other of the animals; and then also with a certain quality of body and soul. But for some things, being born is of no benefit,