If
so, we shall call happy those among living men in whom these
conditions are, and are to be, fulfilled- but happy men. So much for
these questions.
11
That the fortunes of descendants and of all a man's friends should
not affect his happiness at all seems a very unfriendly doctrine,
and one opposed to the opinions men hold; but since the events that
happen are numerous and admit of all sorts of difference, and some
come more near to us and others less so, it seems a long- nay, an
infinite- task to discuss each in detail; a general outline will
perhaps suffice. If, then, as some of a man's own misadventures have a
certain weight and influence on life while others are, as it were,
lighter, so too there are differences among the misadventures of our
friends taken as a whole, and it makes a difference whether the
various suffering befall the living or the dead (much more even than
whether lawless and terrible deeds are presupposed in a tragedy or
done on the stage), this difference also must be taken into account;
or rather, perhaps, the fact that doubt is felt whether the dead share
in any good or evil. For it seems, from these considerations, that
even if anything whether good or evil penetrates to them, it must be
something weak and negligible, either in itself or for them, or if
not, at least it must be such in degree and kind as not to make
happy those who are not happy nor to take away their blessedness
from those who are.
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