Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/166

 HAPPINESS

132

HAPPINESS

to the nature of man. The highest happiness corre- sponds to the highest virtue; it is the best activity of the highest faculty. Though happiness does not consist in pleasure, it does not exclude pleasure. On the contrary, the highest form of pleasure is the out- come of virtuous action. But for such happiness to be complete it should be continued during a life of average length in at least moderately comfortable circumstances, and enriched by intercourse vith friends. Aristotle is distinctly human here. Virtues are either ethical or dianoetic (intellectual). The latter pertain either to the practical or to the specu- lative reason. This last is the highest faculty of all ; hence the highest virtue is a habit of the speculative reason. Consequently, for Aristotle the highest happiness is to be found not in the ethical virtues of the active life, but in the contemplative or philo- sophic life of speculation, in which the dianoetic virtues of understanding, science, and wisdom are exercised. Oewpla, or pure speculation, is the highest activity of man, and that by which he is most like unto the gods; for in this, too, the happiness of the gods consists. It is, in a sense, a Divine life. Only the few, however, can attain to it; the great majority must be content with the inferior happiness of the active life. Happiness (eMoi/xoi'/a), therefore, with Aristotle, is not identical with pleasure (^Sovi)), or even with the sum of pleasures. It has been described as the kind of well-being that consists in well-doing; and svipreme happiness is thus the well- doing of the best faculty. Pleasure is a concomitant or efflorescence of such an activity.

Here, then, is in brief Aristotle's ethical theory of eudemonism ; and in its main features it has been made the basis of the chief Christian scheme of moral phil- osophy. Constituting happiness the end of human action, and not looking beyond the present life, Aristotle's system, it has been maintained with some show of reason, approximates, after all, in sundry important respects towards ITtiHtarianism or refined Hedonism. This is not the place to determine pre- cisely Aristotle's ethical position, but we may point out "that his conception of happiness (eiSaLtxovla) is not identical with felicity — the maximum sum of pleasures — which forms the supreme end of human conduct for modern hedonistic schools. It is rather in his failure to perceive clearly the proper object of man's highest faculty, on the one hand, and, on the other, his limitation of the attainment of this proper end of man to a handful of philosophers, that the most serious deficiency in this part of his doctrine lies. It is here that the leading Schoolmen, enlightened by Christian Revelation and taking over some elements from Plato, come to complete the Peripatetic theorj*. St. Thomas teaches that beatitudo, perfect happiness, is the true supreme, subjective end of man, and is, therefore, open to all men, bvit is not attainable in this life. It consists in the best exercise of the noblest human faculty, the intellect, on the one object of infi- nite worth, it is, in fact, the outcome of the imme- diate posses.sion of God by intellectual contemplation. Scotus and some other Scholastic writers accentuate the importance of the will in the process, and insist on the love resulting from the contemplative activity of the intellect, as a main factor; but it is allowed by all Catholic schools that both faculties play their part in the operation which is to constitute at once man's highest perfection and supreme felicity. "Our heart is ill at ease till it find rest in Thee" was the cry of St. Augustine. "The possession of God is happiness essential." "To know God is life ever- lastmg." With all Christian wTiters true happiness is to come not now, but hereafter. Then the bonum perfedum quod totaliter quietat appntitum (the perfect good that completely satisfies desire) can be imme- diately enjoyed without let or hindrance, and that en- jojTnent will not be a state of inactive quiescence or

Nirvana, but of intense, though free and peacefvil, activity of the soul.

The divorce of philosophy from theologv since Descartes has, outside of Catholic schools of thought, caused a marked disinclination to recognize the im- portance in ethical theory of the future life with its rewards and punishments. Consequently, for those philosophers who constitute happiness — whether of the individual or of the community — the ethical end, the psychological analysis of the constituents of temporal felicity, has become a main problem. In general, such writers identify happiness with pleasure, though some lay considerable stress on the clifference between higher and lower pleasures, whilst others emphasize the importance of active, in opposition to passive, pleasures. The poet Pope tells us, "Happi- ness lies in three words: Peace, Health, Content". Reflection, however, suggests that these are rather the chief negative condition, than the positive constit^ uents of happiness. Paley, although adopting a species of theological Utilitarianism in which the will of God is the rule of morality, and the rewards and punisliments of the future life the chief part of the motive for moral conduct, yet has written a celebrated chapter on temporal happiness emliodying a consid- erable amount of shrewd, worldly common sense. He argues that happiness does not consist in the plea- sures of sense, whether the coarser, such as eating, or the more refined, such as music, the drama, or sports, for these pall by repetition. Intense delights disappoint and destroy relish for normal pleasures. Nor does happiness consist in exemption from pain, labour, or business; nor in the possession of rank or station, which do not exclude pain and discomfort. The most important point in the conduct of life is, then, to select pleasures that will endure. Owing to diversity of taste and individual apti- tudes, there is necessarily much variety in the ob- jects which produce human happiness. Among the chief are, he argues, the exercise of family and social affections, the activity of our faculties, men- tal and bodily, in pursuit of some engaging end, that of the next life included, a prudent constitution of our habits and good health, bodily and mental. His conclusion is that the conditions of human happi- ness are "pretty equally distributed among the dif- ferent orders of society, and that vice has at all events no advantage over virtue even with respect to this world's happiness". For Bentham, who is the most consistent among English Hedonists in his treatment of this topic, happiness is the sum of pleasures. Its value is measured by quantity: "Quantity of plea- sure being equal, push-pin is as good as poetry." Rejecting all distinctions of higher or lower quality, he formulates these tests of the worth of pleasure as an integral part of happiness: (1) its intensity, (2) duration, (3) propinquity, (4) purity, or freedom from pain, (5) fecundity, (6) range. J. Stuart Mill, whilst defining happiness as "pleasure and absence of pain", and unhappiness as "pain and privation of pleasure", insists as a most important point that " quality must be considered as well as quantity/", and some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and valuable than others on groimds other than their pleasantness. "It is better", he urges, "to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied." This is true; but it is an inconsistent admission fatal to Mill's whole position as a Hedonist, and to the Hedon- istic conception of happiness.

The aid of the evolutionist hj'pothesis here as else- where was called to the support of the Sensationist school of psychology and ethics. Pleasure must be life-giving, pain the reverse. The survival of the pleasure fittest to survive will, according to Herbert Spencer, lead to an ultimate well-being not of the indi- vidual, but of the social organism; and the perfect health of the organism will i)e the concomitant of its