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and to aim at no end beyond itself, and also to contain a
pleasure peculiar to itself, and therefore augmenting its activity1: and if accordingly the attributes of this
activity are found to be self-sufficiency, leisuredness, such freedom from fatigue as is
possible for man, and all the other attributes of blessedness: it follows that it is the
activity of the intellect that constitutes complete human happiness—provided it
be granted a complete span of life, for nothing that belongs to happiness can be
incomplete.
[8]
Such a life as this however will be higher than the human level:2 not in virtue of his
humanity will a man achieve it, but in virtue of something within him that is divine; and
by as much as this something is superior to his composite nature, by so much is its
activity superior to the exercise of the other forms of virtue. If then the intellect is
something divine in comparison with man, so is the life of the intellect divine in
comparison with human life. Nor ought we to obey those who enjoin that a man should have
man's thoughts3 and a mortal
the thoughts of mortality,4 but we ought so far as possible to achieve immortality,
and do all that man may to live in accordance with the highest thing in him; for though
this be small in bulk,