If anyone asks me I will name the author and the text. It is not lifted from my SCI notes.
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Robin Carlsen" <maskedzebra@...> wrote: > > Happiness is another name for God. God is happy by nature; he does not attain > happiness or receive it from another. But men become happy by receiving a > share in God's happiness, something God creates in them. And this created > happiness is a life of human activity in which their human powers are > ultimately fulfilled: for the goal of anything is fulfilment in activity. > > True, to exist is already to live, but to exist is not yet to be happy, > except in God's case. When we speak of leading a life of action or > contemplation or pleasure, we mean by life an exercise of our existent powers > in some form of fulfilling activity; and this is also the way in which our > ultimate goal is said to be eternal life. > > Now *this is eternal life: to know you, the only true god*. There are two > sorts of activity: one is exercised outside the doer, like cutting down and > burning, and realizes and fulfils the thing it is done to rather than the > doer; so happiness cannot be that sort of activity. The other sort of > activity, like sensing and understanding and willing, is exercised within the > doer and fulfils and realizes him; and such activity can be happiness. > > God's happiness is God: for him his very existence is an activity by which he > is fulfilled from within and not from without; but man's ultimate fulfilment > comes by cleaving to God. In our present life we cannot do this by a single > continuous activity but only by many interrupted acts; God however has > promised us perfect happiness in heaven, and in that happy state man's spirit > will be joined to God in one unbroken everlasting activity. > > The more we approach such unbroken activity in this life the more we can call > ourselves happy, and so a life of action, occupied by many things, offers > less happiness than a life of contemplation, engaged in the one activity of > gazing at the truth. And if at times a man is not actually so engaged, > nevertheless because he is ever open and ready and turns his very breaks in > contemplation, due to sleep or natural business, to its service, his > contemplation seems as if it were unbroken. > > Happiness, because it cleaves to the uncreated good who cannot be seen or > touched, is not activity of our senses. But sense-activity, since it is a > pre-condition of understanding, is also a pre-condition of whatever partial > happiness we can achieve in our present life. In the perfect happiness we > hope for in heaven after the resurrection, happiness will redound from our > soul into our body and fulfil our bodily senses; so that sense-activity will > follow from happiness, even though the activity by which we cleave to God > will not require it as a pre-condition. > > The activity of happiness is an exercise of understanding, not of willing. > For willing a goal is not the same as achieving it: the will can desire > absent goals just as much as it can enjoy achieved ones. Something else than > an act of will is needed to make the goal present. This is obvious in the > case of tangible goalsif money could be got by willing, the needy man would > straightway have as much as he wantedand it is also true of spiritual goals. > > From the start the will wants to achieve it; but to be achieved it must > become present to us in an act of understanding, after which the will can > rest and rejoice in the goal already achieved. > > Happiness, then*joy in truth*, as Augustine calls itis essentially an > activity of our understanding, with consequent joy of will. Put another way, > willing is not the primary thing we will, just as seeing is not the primary > thing we see but has its own seen object; and so the very fact that happiness > is the will's primary object guarantees that it is not the will's own > activity. Goals are first apprehended as such by the mind, not the will; but > tending to the goal starts in the will; and that is why the final > consequences of achieving the goal, namely our pleasure and enjoyment, is > attributed to the will. > > So although love outranks knowledge on route to the goal, love presupposes > knowledge on arrival. > > Man's highest activity engages his highest power with its highest object. > Man's intelligence is his highest power, and its highest object the good that > is God, an object of contemplative not practical intelligence. So happiness > is above all the activity of contemplating the things of God. The practical > mind pursues knowledge not for its own but for action's sake, and actions in > turn pursues goals. So practical knowledge and the life of action with which > it is concerned cannot be our ultimate goal. Nevertheless, though the > complete happiness to which we look forward in the life to come is entirely a > life of contemplation, and the incomplete happiness we can have here is first > and foremost contemplation, this latter happiness consists secondarily in > knowing how to order our actions and our passions in practice. > > Contemplative of God is not achieved by way of the speculative sciences. The > first premises of speculative science are based on sense-experience, and so > all speculative science is restricted to truth derivable from experience of > the sensible world. But the ultimate happiness which is to fulfil man cannot > be knowledge of the sensible world. Nothing can be fulfilled by what is > inferior to it unless that too shares in something higher, and then what is > derivative must be traced back to what is original. Man must find his final > fulfilment in knowledge of something higher than his own mind. > > Speculative science is but an anticipation of true and complete happiness. > The complete happiness of man then lies in what will essentially fulfil his > mind; and the complete fulfilment of any power comes form achieving something > which fully realizes the nature of its object. > > Now the proper object of mind is truth, and God alone is essentially true > (things are true in the same way in which they exist); so it is contemplation > of God [the source of all being and light], that makes us completely happy. > To know something with the mind is to understand what it is; so the mind is > fulfilled to the degree to which it knows what things are. If from the > understanding of some effect we deduce only that it has a cause without > understanding exactly what that cause is, then we are left with a natural > desire to know more. > > We call it wonder and it drives us to investigate until we are satisfied with > our understanding of what that cause is. For complete happiness then the mind > wants to know the nature of the first cause of everything. Happiness is > cleaving to God as the mind's all-fulfilling object. >
