"The ultimate basis of happiness lies in the vision"

“NOW, the end of our desires is God; hence, the act whereby we are primarily joined to Him is basically and substantially our happiness. But we are primarily united with God by an act of understanding; and therefore, the very seeing of God, which is an act of the intellect, is substantially and basically our happiness. However, since this action is most perfect and most appropriate to its object, it is therefore followed by the greatest enjoyment, which adorns and perfects this operation, as beauty does youth, to quote the Ethics (X, 4). As a result, this joy which belongs to the will is a formal complement of happiness. Thus, the ultimate basis of happiness lies in the vision, while its complement consists in the fruition.”

~St. Thomas Aquinas: from Quodlibetal Questions, VIII, 9, 19. (c. Trans. V.J. Bourke)

Happiness and changes of fortune

“IF on the contrary the evils should be frequent and great, they will cause the happy man external annoyance and internal affliction, because internally they bring about sadness and externally they hinder good works. However they do not eliminate virtuous action entirely, because virtue makes good use even of misfortunes themselves. In this way the good of virtue shines forth insofar as a man gracefully endures frequent and great misfortunes, not because he may not feel the sorrow or sadness as the Stoics held but, being courageous and magnanimous, his reason does not succumb to such afflictions.

“This, in fact, was the difference between the Stoics and the Peripatetics, whose leader was Aristotle. The Stoics held that sorrow in no way afflicts a virtuous man, because, in their view, corporeal or external things are not in any sense a good of man. The Peripatetics, on the contrary, said that a virtuous man is affected by sadness, yet this does not overwhelm reason but is moderated by it. In their opinion corporeal and external things do not constitute the greatest but the least good of man and this in the degree that they help him.”

~St. Thomas Aquinas: Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. I, Lect. XVI.

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