For clearly if we were to keep pace with his fortunes, we
should often call the same man happy and again wretched, making the
happy man out to be chameleon and insecurely based. Or is this keeping
pace with his fortunes quite wrong? Success or failure in life does
not depend on these, but human life, as we said, needs these as mere
additions, while virtuous activities or their opposites are what
constitute happiness or the reverse.
The question we have now discussed confirms our definition. For no
function of man has so much permanence as virtuous activities (these
are thought to be more durable even than knowledge of the sciences),
and of these themselves the most valuable are more durable because
those who are happy spend their life most readily and most
continuously in these; for this seems to be the reason why we do not
forget them. The attribute in question, then, will belong to the happy
man, and he will be happy throughout his life; for always, or by
preference to everything else, he will be engaged in virtuous action
and contemplation, and he will bear the chances of life most nobly and
altogether decorously, if he is 'truly good' and 'foursquare beyond
reproach'.
Now many events happen by chance, and events differing in
importance; small pieces of good fortune or of its opposite clearly do
not weigh down the scales of life one way or the other, but a
multitude of great events if they turn out well will make life happier
(for not only are they themselves such as to add beauty to life, but
the way a man deals with them may be noble and good), while if they
turn out ill they crush and maim happiness; for they both bring pain
with them and hinder many activities.
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