The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

the last is a good pancratiast, while he who can do
all is an ‘all-round’ athlete.
    Happiness in old age is the coming of old age slowly and
painlessly; for a man has not this happiness if he grows old either
quickly, or tardily but painfully. It arises both from the
excellences of the body and from good luck. If a man is not free
from disease, or if he is strong, he will not be free from
suffering; nor can he continue to live a long and painless life
unless he has good luck. There is, indeed, a capacity for long life
that is quite independent of health or strength; for many people
live long who lack the excellences of the body; but for our present
purpose there is no use in going into the details of this.
    The terms ‘possession of many friends’ and ‘possession of good
friends’ need no explanation; for we define a ‘friend’ as one who
will always try, for your sake, to do what he takes to be good for
you. The man towards whom many feel thus has many friends; if these
are worthy men, he has good friends.
    ‘Good luck’ means the acquisition or possession of all or most,
or the most important, of those good things which are due to luck.
Some of the things that are due to luck may also be due to
artificial contrivance; but many are independent of art, as for
example those which are due to nature-though, to be sure, things
due to luck may actually be contrary to nature. Thus health may be
due to artificial contrivance, but beauty and stature are due to
nature. All such good things as excite envy are, as a class, the
outcome of good luck. Luck is also the cause of good things that
happen contrary to reasonable expectation: as when, for instance,
all your brothers are ugly, but you are handsome yourself; or when
you find a treasure that everybody else has overlooked; or when a
missile hits the next man and misses you; or when you are the only
man not to go to a place you have gone to regularly, while the
others go there for the first time and are killed. All such things
are reckoned pieces of good luck.
    As to virtue, it is most closely connected with the subject of
Eulogy, and therefore we will wait to define it until we come to
discuss that subject.
6
    It is now plain what our aims, future or actual, should be in
urging, and what in depreciating, a proposal; the latter being the
opposite of the former. Now the political or deliberative orator’s
aim is utility: deliberation seeks to determine not ends but the
means to ends, i.e. what it is most useful to do. Further, utility
is a good thing. We ought therefore to assure ourselves of the main
facts about Goodness and Utility in general.
    We may define a good thing as that which ought to be chosen for
its own sake; or as that for the sake of which we choose something
else; or as that which is sought after by all things, or by all
things that have sensation or reason, or which will be sought after
by any things that acquire reason; or as that which must be
prescribed for a given individual by reason generally, or is
prescribed for him by his individual reason, this being his
individual good; or as that whose presence brings anything into a
satisfactory and self-sufficing condition; or as self-sufficiency;
or as what produces, maintains, or entails characteristics of this
kind, while preventing and destroying their opposites. One thing
may entail another in either of two ways-(1) simultaneously, (2)
subsequently. Thus learning entails knowledge subsequently, health
entails life simultaneously. Things are productive of other things
in three senses: first as being healthy produces health; secondly,
as food produces health; and thirdly, as exercise does-i.e. it does
so usually. All this being settled, we now see that both the
acquisition of good things and the removal of bad things must be
good; the latter entails freedom from the evil things
simultaneously, while the former entails possession of the good
things subsequently. The acquisition of a greater in place of a
lesser good, or of a lesser in place of a greater evil, is also
good, for in proportion as the greater exceeds the lesser there is
acquisition of good or removal of evil. The virtues, too, must be
something good; for it is by possessing these that we are in a good
condition, and they tend to produce good works and good actions.
They must be severally named and described elsewhere. Pleasure,
again, must be a good thing, since it is the nature of all animals
to aim at it. Consequently both pleasant