Happiness then is the best, noblest, and most pleasant
thing in the world, and these attributes are not severed as in the
inscription at Delos-
Most noble is that which is justest, and best is health;
But pleasantest is it to win what we love.
For all these properties belong to the best activities; and these,
or one- the best- of these, we identify with happiness.
Yet evidently, as we said, it needs the external goods as well;
for it is impossible, or not easy, to do noble acts without the proper
equipment. In many actions we use friends and riches and political
power as instruments; and there are some things the lack of which
takes the lustre from happiness, as good birth, goodly children,
beauty; for the man who is very ugly in appearance or ill-born or
solitary and childless is not very likely to be happy, and perhaps a
man would be still less likely if he had thoroughly bad children or
friends or had lost good children or friends by death. As we said,
then, happiness seems to need this sort of prosperity in addition; for
which reason some identify happiness with good fortune, though
others identify it with virtue.
9
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.
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