Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 edition. Excerpt: ... We had better return to the difficulty we raised first; for it may perhaps throw some light on the present question. If it is right to "look to the end," if we should then call a man happy, not because he is happy then, but because he was so before, it is strange if we are not to ba allowed to tell the truth about him at the time when he is so. This is because we do not wish to call the living happy in view of possible vicissitudes, and because we conceive of happiness as something permanent, something not subject to vicissitudes, and because the same person may have many turns of fortune's wheel. Clearly, if we follow these changes of fortune we shall often have to call the same person happy and again miserable, thus making the happy man a sort of chameleon and resting his happiness on shaky foundations. Does not all this point to the conclusion that it is quite wrong to follow the vicissitudes of fortune1? It is not on these that the goodness or badness of a life depends. It is true, as we have said, that human life stands in need of such things; but the decisive elements in happiness are the activities according to goodness, and of unhappiness activities of the opposite kind. The difficulty we have just discussed is evidence of our statement . There is no human function that has so great an element of solidity as activities according to goodness; they are more permanent even than the sciences. Further, it is just the most precious of them that are the most permanent; for it is in these that the happy man chiefly spends his life and most continuously. That is apparently the cause of their not being liable to be lost through forgetfulness. We shall, then, find what we are looking for in the happy man, and he will have this character all...
