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since we always choose it for its own sake and never as a means to something else;
whereas honor, pleasure, intelligence, and excellence in its various forms, we choose
indeed for their own sakes (since we should be glad to have each of them although
no extraneous advantage resulted from it), but we also choose them for the sake
of happiness, in the belief that they will be a means to our securing it. But no one
chooses happiness for the sake of honor, pleasure, etc., nor as a means to anything
whatever other than itself.
[6]
The same conclusion also appears to follow from a consideration of the self-sufficiency
of happiness—for it is felt that the final good must be a thing sufficient in
itself. The term self-sufficient, however, we employ with reference not to oneself alone,
living a life of isolation, but also to one's parents and children and wife, and one's
friends and fellow citizens in general, since man is by nature a social being.1
[7]
On the other hand a limit has to be assumed in these
relationships; for if the list be extended to one's ancestors and descendants and to the
friends of one's friends, it will go on ad infinitum. But
this is a point that must be considered later on; we take a self-sufficient thing to mean
a thing which merely standing by itself alone renders life desirable lacking in
nothing,2 and
such a thing we deem happiness to be.
[8]
Moreover, we think
happiness the most desirable of all good things without being itself reckoned as one among
the rest3; for if it were so reckoned, it is clear that we
should consider it more desirable when even the smallest of other good things were
combined with it, since this addition would result in a larger total of good, and of two
goods the greater is always the more desirable.
1 Lit. ‘a political thing.’ Aristot. Pol. 1253a 2 adds ζῷον, ‘a political animal.’
2 A probable emendation gives ‘renders life sufficient, that is, lacking in nothing.’
3 Sc. but as including all other good things as the end includes the means.