The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

in addition; for which reason some identify happiness
with good fortune, though others identify it with virtue.
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    For this reason also the question is asked, whether happiness is
to be acquired by learning or by habituation or some other sort of
training, or comes in virtue of some divine providence or again by
chance. Now if there is any gift of the gods to men, it is
reasonable that happiness should be god-given, and most surely
god-given of all human things inasmuch as it is the best. But this
question would perhaps be more appropriate to another inquiry;
happiness seems, however, even if it is not god-sent but comes as a
result of virtue and some process of learning or training, to be
among the most godlike things; for that which is the prize and end
of virtue seems to be the best thing in the world, and something
godlike and blessed.
    It will also on this view be very generally shared; for all who
are not maimed as regards their potentiality for virtue may win it
by a certain kind of study and care. But if it is better to be
happy thus than by chance, it is reasonable that the facts should
be so, since everything that depends on the action of nature is by
nature as good as it can be, and similarly everything that depends
on art or any rational cause, and especially if it depends on the
best of all causes. To entrust to chance what is greatest and most
noble would be a very defective arrangement.
    The answer to the question we are asking is plain also from the
definition of happiness; for it has been said to be a virtuous
activity of soul, of a certain kind. Of the remaining goods, some
must necessarily pre-exist as conditions of happiness, and others
are naturally co-operative and useful as instruments. And this will
be found to agree with what we said at the outset; for we stated
the end of political science to be the best end, and political
science spends most of its pains on making the citizens to be of a
certain character, viz. good and capable of noble acts.
    It is natural, then, that we call neither ox nor horse nor any
other of the animals happy; for none of them is capable of sharing
in such activity. For this reason also a boy is not happy; for he
is not yet capable of such acts, owing to his age; and boys who are
called happy are being congratulated by reason of the hopes we have
for them. For there is required, as we said, not only complete
virtue but also a complete life, since many changes occur in life,
and all manner of chances, and the most prosperous may fall into
great misfortunes in old age, as is told of Priam in the Trojan
Cycle; and one who has experienced such chances and has ended
wretchedly no one calls happy.
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    Must no one at all, then, be called happy while he lives; must
we, as Solon says, see the end? Even if we are to lay down this
doctrine, is it also the case that a man is happy when he is dead?
Or is not this quite absurd, especially for us who say that
happiness is an activity? But if we do not call the dead man happy,
and if Solon does not mean this, but that one can then safely call
a man blessed as being at last beyond evils and misfortunes, this
also affords matter for discussion; for both evil and good are
thought to exist for a dead man, as much as for one who is alive
but not aware of them; e.g. honours and dishonours and the good or
bad fortunes of children and in general of descendants. And this
also presents a problem; for though a man has lived happily up to
old age and has had a death worthy of his life, many reverses may
befall his descendants—some of them may be good and attain the life
they deserve, while with others the opposite may be the case; and
clearly too the degrees of relationship between them and their
ancestors may vary indefinitely. It would be odd, then, if the dead
man were to share in these changes and become at one time happy, at
another wretched; while it would also be odd if the fortunes of the
descendants did not for some time have some effect on the happiness
of their ancestors.
    But we must return to our first difficulty; for perhaps by a
consideration of it our present problem might be solved. Now if we
must see the end and only then call a man happy, not as being happy
but as having been so before, surely this is a paradox, that when
he is happy the attribute that belongs to him is not to be truly
predicated of him because we do not wish to call living men happy,
on