Aquinas Ethicus Author:Thomas Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Article VII. § 3. Happiness itself, being a perfection of the soul, is a good inherent in the soul: but that in which happiness consists, or the object that m... more »akes one happy, is something outside the soul. Article VIII.—Does man's happiness consist in any created good ? R. It is impossible for the happiness of man to be in any created good. For happiness is perfect good, which entirely appeases .tfesire otherwise it would not be the last end, if something still remained to be desired. But the object of the will is universal good, as the object of the intellect is universal truth. Hence it is clear that nothing can set the will of man at rest but universal good, which is not found in anything created, but in God alone. Hence God alone can fill the heart of man. § 3. Created good is not less than what a man is capable of as a good intrinsic to and inherent in him; but it is less than the good that he is capable of as an object, for that is infinite. QUESTION III. WHAT IS HAPPINESS ? Article I.—7s happiness something uncreated? R. The word end has two meanings. In one meaning it stands for the thing itself which we desire to gain : thus the miser's end is money. In another meaning it stands for the near attainment, or possession, or use, or enjoyment of the thing desired, as if one should say that the possession of money is the miser's end, or the enjoyment of something pleasant the end of the sensualist. In the first meaning of the word, therefore, the end of man is the Uncreated Good, namely God, who alone of His infinite goodness can perfectly satisfy the will of man. But according to the second meaning the last end of man is something created, existing in himself, which is nothing else than the attainment or enjoyment of the last end. Now the last end is ca...« less