Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/471

416 moralists, the great end of man. This is the highest good, the summum bonum, the end for which all beings live, the object which they all pursue. But Aristotle's standard of happiness is high and noble. It consists in the satisfaction, not of the inferior propensities, but of the loftier principles and capacities of our nature. The pleasures which arise when any of our lower desires are gratified, are satisfactions which man shares in common with the brutes. These, therefore, are not peculiar to man. In these human happiness, the happiness which is proper to man, is not to be found. The felicity appropriate to man is to be looked for only in the satisfactions which are aimed at not by a mere animal, but by an intelligent and rational existence. Now, all intelligence seeks and finds its happiness in the unimpeded energies of a life devoted either to action or to contemplation. Human happiness, therefore, consists in a wellbeing of the reason, which finds scope for the unrestrained exercise of its power in a life either of practical action, or of speculative contemplation, both of which lives are states both of wellbeing and of welldoing. In short, Aristotle keeps in view the two ends which I have set forth as constituting the proper goal of all human action, both the  and the . We must first of all live, according to our true nature; we must fulfil the proper law of our being. We must preserve our status as rational beings, as, manly characters; and then, this being secured, we may draw as largely as we can upon the sources of external happiness.