The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

goods, and of goods the greater is always more desirable.
Happiness, then, is something final and self-sufficient, and is the
end of action.
    Presumably, however, to say that happiness is the chief good
seems a platitude, and a clearer account of what it is still
desired. This might perhaps be given, if we could first ascertain
the function of man. For just as for a flute-player, a sculptor, or
an artist, and, in general, for all things that have a function or
activity, the good and the ‘well’ is thought to reside in the
function, so would it seem to be for man, if he has a function.
Have the carpenter, then, and the tanner certain functions or
activities, and has man none? Is he born without a function? Or as
eye, hand, foot, and in general each of the parts evidently has a
function, may one lay it down that man similarly has a function
apart from all these? What then can this be? Life seems to be
common even to plants, but we are seeking what is peculiar to man.
Let us exclude, therefore, the life of nutrition and growth. Next
there would be a life of perception, but it also seems to be common
even to the horse, the ox, and every animal. There remains, then,
an active life of the element that has a rational principle; of
this, one part has such a principle in the sense of being obedient
to one, the other in the sense of possessing one and exercising
thought. And, as ‘life of the rational element’ also has two
meanings, we must state that life in the sense of activity is what
we mean; for this seems to be the more proper sense of the term.
Now if the function of man is an activity of soul which follows or
implies a rational principle, and if we say ‘so-and-so-and ‘a good
so-and-so’ have a function which is the same in kind, e.g. a lyre,
and a good lyre-player, and so without qualification in all cases,
eminence in respect of goodness being idded to the name of the
function (for the function of a lyre-player is to play the lyre,
and that of a good lyre-player is to do so well): if this is the
case, and we state the function of man to be a certain kind of
life, and this to be an activity or actions of the soul implying a
rational principle, and the function of a good man to be the good
and noble performance of these, and if any action is well performed
when it is performed in accordance with the appropriate excellence:
if this is the case, human good turns out to be activity of soul in
accordance with virtue, and if there are more than one virtue, in
accordance with the best and most complete.
    But we must add ‘in a complete life.’ For one swallow does not
make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short
time, does not make a man blessed and happy.
    Let this serve as an outline of the good; for we must presumably
first sketch it roughly, and then later fill in the details. But it
would seem that any one is capable of carrying on and articulating
what has once been well outlined, and that time is a good
discoverer or partner in such a work; to which facts the advances
of the arts are due; for any one can add what is lacking. And we
must also remember what has been said before, and not look for
precision in all things alike, but in each class of things such
precision as accords with the subject-matter, and so much as is
appropriate to the inquiry. For a carpenter and a geometer
investigate the right angle in different ways; the former does so
in so far as the right angle is useful for his work, while the
latter inquires what it is or what sort of thing it is; for he is a
spectator of the truth. We must act in the same way, then, in all
other matters as well, that our main task may not be subordinated
to minor questions. Nor must we demand the cause in all matters
alike; it is enough in some cases that the fact be well
established, as in the case of the first principles; the fact is
the primary thing or first principle. Now of first principles we
see some by induction, some by perception, some by a certain
habituation, and others too in other ways. But each set of
principles we must try to investigate in the natural way, and we
must take pains to state them definitely, since they have a great
influence on what follows. For the beginning is thought to be more
than half of the whole, and many of the questions we ask are
cleared up by it.
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8
    We must consider it, however, in the light not only of our
conclusion and our premisses, but also of what is commonly