[
5]
Also the
activity of contemplation may be held to be the only activity that is loved for its own
sake: it produces no result beyond the actual act of contemplation, whereas from practical
pursuits we look to secure some advantage, greater or smaller, beyond the action itself.
[
6]
Also happiness is thought to involve leisure; for we do
business in order that we may have leisure, and carry on war in order that we may have
peace. Now the practical virtues are exercised in politics or in warfare; but the pursuits
of politics and war seem to be unleisured—those of war indeed entirely so, for
no one desires to be at war for the sake of being at war, nor deliberately takes steps to
cause a war: a man would be thought an utterly bloodthirsty character if he declared war
on a friendly state for the sake of causing battles and massacres. But the activity of the
politician also is unleisured, and aims at securing something beyond the mere
participation in politics—positions of authority and honor, or, if the happiness
of the politician himself and of his fellow-citizens, this happiness conceived as
something distinct from political activity （indeed we are clearly investigating
it as so distinct）.
1
[
7]
If then among practical pursuits displaying the virtues,
politics and war stand out preeminent in nobility and grandeur, and yet they are
unleisured, and directed to some further end, not chosen for their own sakes: whereas the
activity of the intellect is felt to excel in serious worth,
2 consisting as it does in contemplation, and to aim at no end beyond itself, and also to contain a
pleasure peculiar to itself, and therefore augmenting its activity
3: 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:4 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 thoughts5 and a mortal
the thoughts of mortality,6 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,
