In short, in all praiseworthy things the good man does plainly give to himself a larger share of the honourable. In this sense it is right to be Self-loving, in the vulgar acceptation of the term it is not.
A question is raised also respecting the Happy man, whether he will want Friends, or no?
Some say that they who are blessed and independent have no need of Friends, for they already have all that is good, and so, as being independent, want nothing further: whereas the notion of a friend’s office is to be as it were a second Self and procure for a man what he cannot get by himself: hence the saying,
“When Fortune gives us good, what need we Friends?”
On the other hand, it looks absurd, while we are assigning to the Happy man all other good things, not to give him Friends, which are, after all, thought to be the greatest of external goods.
Again, if it is more characteristic of a friend to confer than to receive kindnesses, and if to be beneficent belongs to the good man and to the character of virtue, and if it is more noble to confer kindnesses on friends than strangers, the good man will need objects for his benefactions. And out of this last consideration springs a question whether the need of Friends be greater in prosperity or adversity, since the unfortunate man wants people to do him kindnesses and they who are fortunate want objects for their kind acts.
Again, it is perhaps absurd to make our Happy man a solitary, because no man would choose the possession of all goods in the world on the condition of solitariness, man being a social animal and formed by nature for living with others: of course the Happy man has this qualification since he has all those things which are good by nature: and it is obvious that the society of friends and good men must be preferable to that of strangers and ordinary people, and we conclude, therefore, that the Happy man does need Friends.
But then, what do they mean whom we quoted first, and how are they right? Is it not that the mass of mankind mean by Friends those who are useful? and of course the Happy man will not need such because he has all good things already; neither will he need such as are Friends with a view to the pleasurable, or at least only to a slight extent; because his life, being already pleasurable, does not want pleasure imported from without; and so, since the Happy man does not need Friends of these kinds, he is thought not to need any at all.