and be a source of true enjoyment. With the average Greek citizen, however, the case was necessarily different, seeing that his "work," so far as he had any, necessarily consisted to a large extent of the ordinary business of domestic or civic administration ; and though the exercise of the virtues concerned in these must always form a constituent element in happiness, Aristotle would have denied that they could ever be co-extensive with it. Different though the state of society which Aristotle had in view was from that with which we are familiar, there is little doubt that his ideal, implying as it does, in addition to the activities that are exercised in gaining a livelihood, the need for leisure and opportunity for the exercise of the higher faculties, is the truer one of the two. It is certainly true that under modern conditions of specialized labour, full play is denied to many of the higher human faculties, for the exercise of which we are driven to look more and more to the opportunities afforded by increase of leisure and access to the higher forms of enjoyment. It is one of the chief merits of Aristotle's definition that, though formulated in view of the aristocratic society of the Greek city, it is in harmony, mutatis mutandis, with the ideal which reformers have put forward as the only one which it is possible to accept for modern industrial communities.

§ 3. Happiness and Prosperity.

[I. c. viii. §§ 15-17; ix. § 7.]

2. In these sections Aristotle deals with the everrecurring question of the relation between the internal

*

and the external in happiness. He has already shown that, as essentially an exercise of faculty, happiness must rank primarily as internal good. Happiness by its very nature is something intrinsic to the soul; as we should say, it is spiritual good. It consists not in what we have, but in what we are and do. So far is it from being true that happiness depends on good fortune, that no amount of evil fortune can make a good man really unhappy, no amount of good fortune can make the bad man really happy.

But although external goods are not happiness, nor any part of happiness, yet it is characteristic of Aristotle's view that they stand in a close relation to it. The two passages which throw most light on this point are chap. viii. §§ 15 and 16: "There are many things that can be done only through the instrumentality of friends and wealth and political influence. Moreover, there are some things the absence of which casts a stain upon perfect happiness, e.g. birth, fine children, good looks;" and chap. ix. § 7, where "other goods" are divided into "those that are necessary as conditions of happiness, and those that are useful as aids and instruments." Taken together, these passages give us three degrees of relationship corresponding to the degree of their responsiveness to the action of mind and will.

(a) First, as the most remote from happiness, we have things which when they are present add a lustre to happiness, when absent cast a stain upon

* C. viii. § 2.

it, but cannot be said to be necessary to or even an element in it, eg. noble ancestors, good children. (b) There are things that are aids to happiness, as his tools are to the workman, eg. friends, wealth, public influence. They may even be said to be necessary for the complete fruition of human happiness. We shall see hereafter how friends are so in a peculiar sense, being required by the happy even more than by the unhappy. But they are not indispensable conditions. The highest form of happiness-that which we ascribe to God - is independent of them. (c) Finally, we have things so closely related to happiness, that, though not elements in it, they are conditions of it. To this class Aristotle would have assigned bodily health, sound intelligence, membership of a civilized community, time. These are not elements in happiness, any more than rain and earth are elements in the plant, yet they are the natural soil out of which happiness springs.

Leaving for the moment the last of the conditions here mentioned, viz. that of time, which raises difficulties of its own, the modern reader is not likely to deny that happiness depends to a large extent on favourable circumstances. It is true that the asceticism latent in Christian ethics has always been suspicious of external prosperity, and has even stigmatized it as a hindrance to the good life. The experience, however, which our own age has accumulated of the value of increased power over external nature in extending the range of man's faculties and

opening new sources of social and intellectual enjoyment, is working a rapid change. What, for instance, could be more in the spirit of Aristotle than the following passage, taken almost at random from the current teaching of Christianity upon the place of wealth and leisure as contributing to happiness? "A genius here and there may rise above these depressing conditions (i.e. poverty and drudgery); and though he may be a stronger man because he has risen, he may also be a harder man because he has had to go through so much. The hero is the man who rises despite his surroundings, and there will always be scope for heroic virtue; but the good man is called to make the most of his opportunities, and the greater his opportunities the fuller and richer may his personal life become. The man with many opportunities who makes the most of them is not more meritorious than the man with few opportunities who makes the most of them; but though not a more meritorious man, he is in many respects a better man-more richly endowed and more highly cultivated." *

The change here indicated contains the implicit recognition of the truth that underlies Aristotle's teaching on this head, viz. that the current distinction between internal and external, character and circumstances, is a fallacious one. "Circumstances are the medium in which will and character (in the exercise of which happiness consists) realize themselves, and are no more capable of being separated from them than space and matter are from the laws *The Rev. Dr. Cunningham, Use and Abuse of Money, p. 41.

of nature which express themselves through them, or than the non-ego or object is from the subject or ego, which manifests itself in it. The question is not whether external circumstances are necessary to happiness or not, but in what degree of connexion any particular class of circumstances stands to happiness. This, as Aristotle's classification suggests, depends upon the degree in which they can be made to respond to the action of will and character; in other words, to the degree of their adaptability to moral ends.

§ 4. Time as an Element in Happiness.

[I. c. vii. § 16; ix. § 10; x. § 15.]

3. What Aristotle says about length of days as a condition of happiness is apt to cause a difficulty, as it might seem to be in contradiction to the general spirit of the definition. If happiness consists in performance of function, it would seem as though it depended on the quality rather than the quantity of our days.

"How long we live, not years but actions tell." *

* Cf. Ben Jonson's

"It is not growing like a tree

In bulk, doth make man better be,

Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall at last dry, bald, and sere.

A lily of a day

Is fairer far in May,

Although it fall and die that night—
It was the plant and flower of Light.

In small proportions we just beauties see,
And in short measures life may perfect be."

E