man has lived in blessedness to old age and died accordingly, many changes may befall him in right of his descendants; some of them may be good and obtain positions in life accordant to their merits, others again quite the contrary: it is plain too that the descendants may at different intervals or grades stand in all manner of relations to the ancestors[1]. Absurd indeed would be the position that even the dead man is to change about with them and become at one time happy and at another miserable. Absurd however it is on the other hand that the affairs of the descendants should in no degree and during no time affect the ancestors.
But we must revert to the point first raised[2], since the present question will be easily determined from that.
If then we are to look to the end and then pronounce the man blessed, not as being so but as having been so at some previous time, surely it is absurd that when he is happy the truth is not to be asserted of him,1100b because we are unwilling to pronounce the living happy by reason of their liability to changes, and because, whereas we have conceived of happiness as something stable and no way easily changeable, the fact is that good and bad fortune are constantly circling about the same people: for it is quite plain, that if we are to depend upon the fortunes of men, we shall often have to call the same man happy, and a little while after miserable, thus representing our happy man
- “Chameleon-like, and based on rottenness.”
Is not this the solution? that to make our sentence dependent on the changes of fortune, is no way right: for not in them stands the well, or the ill, but though human life needs these as accessories (which we have allowed already), the workings in the way of virtue are what determine Happiness, and the contrary the contrary.
And, by the way, the question which has been here discussed, testifies incidentally to the truth of our account of Happiness.[3] For to nothing does a stability of human
- ↑ P. 18, l. 6. The supposed pair of ancestors.
- ↑ P. 18, l. 12. Solon says, “Call no man happy till he is dead.”
He must mean
either, The man when dead is happy (a),
or, The man when dead may be said to have been happy (b).
If the former, does he mean positive happiness (α)?
or only freedom from unhappiness (β)?
We cannot allow (α),
Men’s opinions disallow (β),
We revert now to the consideration of (b). - ↑ P. 18, l. 36. The difficulty was raised by the clashing of a notion commonly held, and a fact universally experienced. Most people conceive that Happiness should be abiding, every one knows that fortune is changeable. It is the notion which supports the definition, because we have therein based Happiness on the most abiding cause.
