There
might be some truth in such a view if we assume that robbers and
plunderers attain the chief good. But this can never be; their
hypothesis is false. For the actions of a ruler cannot really be
honorable, unless he is as much superior to other men as a husband
is to a wife, or a father to his children, or a master to his
slaves. And therefore he who violates the law can never recover by any
success, however great, what he has already lost in departing from
virtue. For equals the honorable and the just consist in sharing
alike, as is just and equal. But that the unequal should be given to
equals, and the unlike to those who are like, is contrary to nature,
and nothing which is contrary to nature is good. If, therefore,
there is any one superior in virtue and in the power of performing the
best actions, him we ought to follow and obey, but he must have the
capacity for action as well as virtue.
If we are right in our view, and happiness is assumed to be virtuous
activity, the active life will be the best, both for every city
collectively, and for individuals. Not that a life of action must
necessarily have relation to others, as some persons think, nor are
those ideas only to be regarded as practical which are pursued for the
sake of practical results, but much more the thoughts and
contemplations which are independent and complete in themselves; since
virtuous activity, and therefore a certain kind of action, is an
end, and even in the case of external actions the directing mind is
most truly said to act.
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