its nature and causes; for some take to be elements in happiness what are merely its indispensable conditions.
3
To examine then all the views held about happiness is superfluous, for children, sick people, and the insane all have views, but no sane person would dispute over them; for such persons need not argument but years in which they may change, or else medical or political correction—for medicine, no less than stripes, is a correction. Similarly we have not to consider the views of the multitude (for they talk without consideration about almost everything, and most about happiness); for it is absurd to apply argument
to those who need not argument but suffering. But since every study has its special problems, evidently there are such relating to the best life and best existence; the opinions then that put these difficulties it is well to examine, for a disputant's refutation of what is opposed to his argument is a demonstration of the argument itself.
Further, it is proper not to neglect these considerations, especially with a view to that at which all inquiry should be directed, viz. the causes that enable us to share in the good and beautiful life—if any one finds it invidious to call it the blessed life—and with a view to the hope we may have of attaining each good. For if the beautiful life consists in what is due to fortune or nature, it would be something that many cannot hope for, since its acquisition is not in their power, nor attainable by their care or activity; but if it depends on the individual and his personal acts being of a certain character, then the supreme good would be both more general and more divine, more general because more would be able to possess it, more divine because happiness would then be the prize offered to those who make themselves and their acts of a certain character.
4
Most of the doubts and difficulties raised will become clear, if we define well what we ought to think happiness to be, whether that it consists merely in having the soul of a certain character—as some of the sages and older writers28-1215* ^ = E.N. 1095=^ 28-30. 12-19 • cf. E. N. 1099^ 13-20. 22-25 : cf. E.N. 1098^ 29-1099* 7.
