Moral Philosophy | Page 5

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 2?, 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., _Eth._, IX., ix., 5.) This is proved from the consideration that happiness is the crown and perfection of human nature; but the perfection of a thing lies in its ultimate act, or "second act," that is, in its not merely being able to act, but acting. But action is of two sorts. One proceeds from the agent to some outward matter, as cutting and burning. This action cannot be happiness, for it does not perfect the agent, but rather the patient. There is another sort of act immanent in the agent himself, as feeling, understanding, and willing: these perfect the agent. Happiness will be found to be one of these immanent acts. Furthermore, there is action full of movement and change, and there is an act done in stillness and rest. The latter, as will presently appear, is happiness; and partly for this reason, and