Book 9: Friendship or Love—Continued.
Chapter 9: Why a happy man needs friends.
Another disputed question is whether a happy man needs friends or not.
It is said that those who are blessed and self-sufficient have no need of friends; for they are already supplied with good things: as self-sufficient, then they need nothing more, while a friend is an alter ego who procures for you what you cannot procure yourself; whence the saying—
“When the god favours you, what need of friends?”
But it seems strange, while endowing the happy man with all good things, to deny him friends, which are thought to be the greatest of all external goods.
And if it is more characteristic of a friend to confer than to receive benefits, and if it is characteristic of a good man and a virtuous character to do good to others, and if it is nobler to confer benefits on friends than on strangers, the good man will need friends to receive benefits from him.
And so people ask whether friends are more needed in prosperity or adversity, considering that in adversity we want some one to help us, and in prosperity some one that we may help.
Again, it is surely absurd to make the happy man a solitary being: for no one would choose to have all conceivable good things on condition of being alone; for man is a social being, and by nature adapted to share his life with others. The happy man, then, must have this good, since he has whatever is naturally good for man. But it is obvious that it is better to live with friends and good people, than with strangers and casual persons. The happy man, then, must have friends.
What, then, do those who maintain the former opinion mean? and in what sense are they right? Is it that the generality of men think that friends means useful people? Friends in this sense certainly the happy or blessed man will not need, as he already has whatever is good. And, again, he will have no need, or but little need, of the friendship that is based on pleasure; for his life is pleasant and does not require adventitious pleasure. Because he does not need these kind of friends then, people come to think he does not need friends at all.
But I think we may say that this opinion is not true. For we said at the outset that happiness is a certain exercise of our faculties; but the exercise of our faculties plainly comes to be in time, and is not like a piece of property acquired once for all. But if happiness consists in living and exercising our faculties; and if the exercise of the good man’s faculties is good and pleasant in itself, as we said at the outset; and if the sense that a thing belongs to us is also a source of pleasure, but it is easier to contemplate others than ourselves, and others’ acts than our own—then the acts of the good men who are his friends are pleasant to the good man (for both the natural sources of pleasure are united in them). The happy or blessed man, therefore, will need such friends, since he desires to contemplate acts that are good and be