Moral Philosophy | Page 5

purposes, examination for a
commission in the army, and the commission for glory. That end in
which the will rests, willing it for itself without reference to anything
beyond, is called the last end.
3. An end is either objective or subjective. The objective end is the
thing wished for, as it exists distinct from the person who wishes it.
The subjective end is the possession of the objective end. That
possession is a fact of the wisher's own being. Thus money may be an
objective end: the corresponding subjective end is being wealthy.
4. Is there one subjective last end to all the human acts of a given
individual? Is there one supreme motive for all that this or that man
deliberately does? At first sight it seems that there is not. The same
individual will act now for glory, now for lucre, now for love. But all
these different ends are reducible to one, that it may be well with him
and his. And what is true of one man here, is true of all. All the human
acts of all men are done for the one (subjective) last end just indicated.
This end is called happiness.
5. Men place their happiness in most different things; some in eating
and drinking, some in the heaping up of money, some in gambling,
some in political power, some in the gratification of affection, some in
reputation of one sort or another. But each one seeks his own speciality
because he thinks that he shall be happy, that it will be well with him,
when he has attained that. All men, then, do all things for happiness,
though not all place their happiness in the same thing.
6. Just as when one goes on a journey, he need not think of his
destination at every step of his way, and yet all his steps are directed
towards his destination: so men do not think of happiness in all they do,
and yet all they do is referred to happiness. Tell a traveller that this is
the wrong way to his destination, he will avoid it; convince a man that

this act will not be well for him, will not further his happiness, and,
while he keeps that conviction principally before his eyes, he will not
do the act. But as a man who began to travel on business, may come to
make travelling itself a business, and travel for the sake of going about;
so in all cases there is a tendency to elevate into an end that which was,
to start with, only valued as a means to an end. So the means of
happiness, by being habitually pursued, come to be a part of happiness.
Habit is a second nature, and we indulge a habit as we gratify nature.
This tendency works itself to an evil extreme in cases where men are
become the slaves of habit, and do a thing because they are got into the
way of doing it, though they allow that it is a sad and sorry way, and
leads them wide of true happiness. These instances show perversion of
the normal operation of the will.
Readings.--St. Thos., 1a 2æ, q. 1, art. 4, in corp.; ib., q. 1, art. 6, 7; ib.,
q. 5, art. 8; Ar., Eth., I., vii., 4, 5.
SECTION II.--Definition of Happiness.
1. Though all men do all things, in the last resort, that it may be well
with them and theirs, that is, for happiness vaguely apprehended, yet
when they come to specify what happiness is, answers so various are
given and acted upon, that we might be tempted to conclude that each
man is the measure of his own happiness, and that no standard of
happiness for all can be defined. But it is not so. Man is not the
measure of his own happiness, any more than of his own health. The
diet that he takes to be healthy, may prove his poison; and where he
looks for happiness, he may find the extreme of wretchedness and woe.
For man must live up to his nature, to his bodily constitution, to be a
healthy man; and to his whole nature, but especially to his mental and
moral constitution, if he is to be a happy man. And nature, though it
admits of individual peculiarities, is specifically the same for all. There
will, then, be one definition of happiness for all men, specifically as
such.
2. _Happiness is an act, not a state_. That is to say, the happiness of
man does not lie in his having something done to him, nor in his being
habitually able to do something, but in his actually doing something.

"To be up and doing," that is happiness,--[Greek: en to zaen kai
energein]. (Ar.,