We have suggested that happiness comes with fulfillment and that fulfillment requires virtue. Virtue enables us to acquire the goods we need to become all that we might.

We have also claimed that virtue may be described as emotion moderated by reason. The virtue of temperance allows us to moderate pleasure so that we act with the future in mind and thereby focus on real rather than apparent goods. Courage enables us to endure pain and discomfort in the present so that we may have a better future. Pain and pleasure are emotions. And so are fear, sadness, envy, jealousy, anger, and so many more. But according to Aristotle, emotion is much more than feeling. Emotion involves thoughts, desire, and actions as well as feelings. We fear something because we think it may harm us. If something is harmful we of course want to avoid it. Finally, we act; we run away from that which we think can harm us. To take another example, we are sad because we know that we have suffered a loss. We desire the thing that we have lost and wish its return. And we weep over our loss, as we act upon our feeling.