Eudemian Ethics

Now to examine all the opinions that any people hold about happiness is a superfluous task For children and the sick and insane have many opinions which no sensible man would discuss, for these persons need not argument but the former time in which to grow up and alter and the latter medical or official chastisement (treatment with drugs being chastisement just as much as flogging is).

And similarly it is also superfluous to examine the opinions of the multitude either; for they talk at random about almost everything, and especially about happiness. We ought to examine only the opinions of the wise; for it is out of place to apply reasoning to those who do not need reasoning at all, but experience.

But since every subject has special difficulties related to it, it is clear that there are such in regard to the highest life and the best mode of existence; it is then well to examine the opinions putting these difficulties, since the refutations advanced by those who challenge them are demonstrations of the theories that are opposed to them.

Moreover to notice such matters is especially advantageous with a view to the subjects to which all inquiry ought to be directed—the question what are the means that make it possible to participate in living well and finely (if blissfully is too invidious an expression)—and with a view to the hope that we may have of the things that are good in the various departments.

For if living finely depends on things that come by fortune or by nature, it would be beyond the hopes of many men, for then its attainment is not to be secured by effort, and does not rest with men themselves and is not a matter of their own conduct;

but if it consists in oneself and one’s own actions having a particular quality, the good would be more common and more divine—more common because it would be possible for more people to share it, and more divine because happiness would then be in store for those who made themselves and their actions of a particular quality.