Book 10
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(v) Also anybody can enjoy the pleasures of the body, a slave no less than the noblest of mankind; but no one allows a slave any measure of happiness, any more than a life of his own.Cf. Aristot. Pol. 1280a 32 Slaves and lower animals are not members of the state, because they do not participate in happiness nor in purposeful life. Therefore happiness does not consist in pastimes and amusements, but in activities in accordance with virtue, as has been said already.
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But if happiness consists in activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonable that it should be activity in accordance with the highest virtue; and this will be the virtue of the best part of us. Whether then this be the intellect, or whatever else it be that is thought to rule and lead us by nature, and to have cognizance of what is noble and divine, either as being itself also actually divine, or as being relatively the divinest part of us, it is the activity of this part of us in accordance with the virtue proper to it that will constitute perfect happiness; and it has been stated alreadyThis does not appear to have been stated exactly, but in Book 6 (see esp. 5.3, 13.8) it was shown that σοφία, the virtue of the higher part of the intellect, is the highest of the virtues. that this activity is the activity of contemplation.
