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ARISTOTLE'S MORALS AND POLITICS 7
of ethical philosophers. Aristotle is an advocate of what
may be called the by-product theory of pleasure. 1 Pleasure,
he avers, must not be pursued for itself; it comes un-
sought to grace activities undertaken for their own sake.
When our best faculties, tuned up to concert pitch, are
being actively employed on an appropriate subject matter
which is worthy of, and suitable to, their exercise, then,
Aristotle says, we shall experience pleasure. Pleasure, in
short, is a sign of something else; namely, the healthy
functioning of mind and body in relation to a suitable
subject matter.
To say that the good for man is pleasure or happiness
is, however, to say very little. We want to know what kind
of life deserves to be called happy, and how that life is
to be achieved. Each of these questions must be answered
separately, and to each the answer, despite a certain
difference of form, is essentially the answer of Plato.
Aristotle's answers to these two questions will afford a
second illustration of his general endorsement of the salient
doctrines of Plato's ethics and politics.
II. THAT VIRTUE IS TO BE FOUND
IN ADHERENCE TO A MEAN
Our first question is,
"
What kind of life deserves to be
called happy?" If happiness is the good for man, it will
be achieved by men of good character, that is to say,
by men of moral excellence. Moral excellence is expressed
in activity, just as aesthetic excellence is expressed in
creation. Just as we should never call an artist great who
never created, so we should not call a man good who
never acted. Aristotle, therefore, defines human well-being
as "an active life in accord with excellence, or, if there
are more forms of excellence than one, in accord with the
best and completest of them". What, then, is the distinguishing
mark of the acts in which a good- character
1 See Chapter XI, pp. 402-409 for a development of this theory of
pleasure.
DM