than pleasure; no one would be content to go through life with a child's intellect, even if it were
pleasant to do so. Each animal has its proper pleasure, and the proper pleasure of man is
connected with reason.
This leads on to the only doctrine in the book which is not mere common sense. Happiness lies in
virtuous activity, and perfect happiness lies in the best activity, which is contemplative.
Contemplation is preferable to war or politics or any other practical career, because it allows
leisure, and leisure is essential to happiness. Practical virtue brings only a secondary kind of
happiness; the supreme happiness is in the exercise of reason, for reason, more than anything else,
is man. Man cannot be wholly contemplative, but in so far as he is so he shares in the divine life.
"The activity of God, which surpasses all others in blessedness, must be contemplative." Of all
human beings, the philosopher is the most godlike in his activity, and therefore the happiest and
best:
He who exercises his reason and cultivates it seems to be both in the best state of mind and most
dear to the gods. For if the gods have any care for human affairs, as they are thought to have, it
would be reasonable both that they should delight in that which was best and most akin to them
(i.e. reason) and that they should reward those who love and honour this most, as caring for the
things that are dear to them and acting both rightly and nobly. And that all these attributes belong
most of all to the philosopher is manifest. He, therefore, is the dearest to the gods. And he who is
that will presumably be also the happiest; so that in this way too the philosopher will more than
any other be happy ( 1179a).
This passage is virtually the peroration of the Ethics; the few paragraphs that follow are concerned
with the transition to politics. Let us now try to decide what we are to think of the merits and
demerits of the Ethics. Unlike many other subjects treated by Greek philosophers, ethics has not
made any definite advances, in the sense of ascertained discoveries; nothing in ethics is known in
a scientific sense. There is therefore no reason why an ancient treatise on it should be in any
respect inferior to a modern one. When Aristotle talks about astronomy, we can say definitely that
he is wrong; but when he talks about ethics we cannot say, in the same sense, either that he is
wrong or that he is right. Broadly speaking, there are three