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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Dr. Mortimer J. Adler's 

Six Great Ideas

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Happiness, we now see, is a human life fulfilled by the ac-
cumulation of all the real goods that everyone needs. It is, in
addition, a life enriched by whatever apparent goods may be
innocuously sought by this or that individual according to his
or her different tastes or wants. To confirm this understanding
of happiness, we must observe a number of negative strictures.

The first has already been indicated. Happiness is not the
supreme good, the summum bonum, the highest or best among
the real goods to be sought. Instead, it is the totality of goods,
the totum bonum, the all-inclusive or -encompassing whole
comprised of all the real goods. In this sense, it is not a good,
but the good, in the same sense that the ultimate good is not an
end, but the end.

The second negative concerns the character of happiness as
the end. We usually think of an end as a terminal goal or objec-
tive that can be reached and at which, when reached, we come
to rest. The end of one's travels lies at the destination where
one's traveling terminates, where one stops moving and settles
down. The same holds for all other strivings that come to an
end when they attain what they are reaching for—all except the
striving for happiness.

Conceived as a whole life well lived, happiness is different
from all other ends that we strive for or pursue. It is not a
terminal goal that can be reached and rested in, for there is no
moment of time in which a whole life well lived exists to be
enjoyed or experienced. Every other end can be attained at
some time during the course of one's life and, as attained, its
goodness can be enjoyed or experienced. But the ultimate good
that is the end cannot be attained short of a whole life being
lived.

A whole life comes into existence only with the passage of
time. It does not exist at any interval or moment during the
time it is coming to be. When we aim at happiness as our
ultimate good, we are aiming at something we can never enjoy
or experience, as we can the goals that are terminal ends.

If the natural process of human life on earth has a terminal
end, it is death, not happiness. Only if there is the hereafter for
which religion holds out hope can there be a truly terminal end
as the ultimate good and goal of all human striving—the heav-
enly rest that is enjoyed by the saints in the presence of God. It
is certainly understandable why those who yearn and strive for
the eternal happiness that is for them the supernatural ultimate
good regard as a pale and feeble imitation of it the temporal
happiness that is the ultimate good of this earthly life.

The third negative adds a qualification to an earlier statement
that happiness as the ultimate good of human life is the same
for all human beings. That remains true to the extent that hap-
piness consists in a life fulfilled by the accumulation of all the
things that are really good for everyone. But it must also be said
that, in another respect, the happiness of one individual is not
the same as the happiness of another. Each, according to his
individual temperament, nurture, and circumstances, may
want quite different things. Consequently, the enrichment of
the individual life by the addition of those apparent goods that
are innocuous will produce a good life that is somewhat differ-
ent in its content for one individual and another.

The fourth and final negative calls attention to the fact that
happiness is not the same for all in still another respect. Hap¬
piness as the ultimate good—the goal at which everyone should
aim and toward which everyone should strive—is an ideal that
is seldom if ever completely realized.

A terminal goal that we could not reach would be an illusory
will-of-the-wisp at the end of the rainbow, Because it is not a
terminal end, happiness is not an illusory goal, even though we
can achieve it only in some measure or degree that falls short of
completeness or perfection. In this respect, one individual may
be more successful than another in the pursuit of happiness,
either through his own good choices and efforts or through
being facilitated in those efforts by the benefactions of good
fortune. Accordingly, one individual may achieve a greater
measure of happiness than another.

One question remains. We understand that temporal happi-
ness, being a whole life well lived, cannot be a terminal end—
a goal that can be reached, enjoyed, and rested in. How, then,
can it be an end at all, much less the ultimate goal of all our
striving?

The answer lies in a function that is performed by any end,
whether it is terminal or not. Given an end to be sought or
pursued, we are under an obligation to employ whatever means
are called for to achieve it, preferring of course the most effica-
cious of the means available. If we wish to achieve the end in
view, we must make use of such and such means.

The imperative here expressed is hypothetical. We must or
ought to employ certain means if —and only if—we desire the
end they serve, the goal they can help us to reach. A categorical,
not a hypothetical, obligation is imposed on us by happiness
as an end or goal. We do not say, "If we wish to achieve a good
life, we ought to do this or that." On the contrary, we acknowl-
edge that we ought to aim at a good life, consisting as it does in
the attainment of everything really good. This acknowledgment
follows from recognizing the self-evident truth that real goods
ought to be desired.

Even though it cannot be a terminal goal reached and en-
joyed, the ideal of a good life functions as all other ends do by
prescribing certain means that we must employ and proscrib-
ing other things that we must eschew in order to pursue the
ultimate good of our lives effectively. Happiness cannot be
achieved by any means whatsoever, but only by choices and
actions that add real goods to our life and that avoid apparent
goods that interfere with the attainment of real goods.

To think, as is so widely believed today, that happiness con-
sists in achieving whatever apparent goods an individual hap-
pens to desire according to his wants, without regard to the
difference between right and wrong desires, leads to opposite
conclusions all along the line. The ultimate good ceases to be
the same ideal for all human beings. It ceases to be the common
good of mankind. It functions as a terminal goal that can be
completely achieved at some moment of one's life, not just ap-
proximated in some measure or degree in the course of a whole
lifetime.

In addition, it becomes difficult if not impossible to under-
stand how a good society, through the justice of its institutions
and arrangements, can serve to promote the pursuit of happi-
ness by all its members, differing as they do in their individual
wants and more often than not brought into conflict with one
another in their effort to satisfy them. It becomes meaningless
to say that the state and its government should serve the com-
mon good of its people, for the happiness they strive for is no
longer a common good.

No government or society can undertake to fulfill the obliga-
tion expressed in the maxim "To each according to his individ-
ual wants." The pursuit of happiness can be aided and abetted
by just laws and institutions only to the extent that the state can
do whatever may be necessary to provide all its members with
the conditions requisite for fulfilling their common human
needs. Over and above this, it should also permit them to sat-
isfy their individual wants if doing so does not impede or frus-
trate others in their pursuit of happiness.

A single marvelously succinct statement by St. Augustine
puts all of this in a nutshell. "Happy is the man," Augustine
said, "who, in the course of a complete life, has everything he
desires, provided he desire nothing amiss."

That kernel of wisdom calls for some expansion to make fully
explicit the insight it contains. To desire nothing amiss is to
desire only what one ought to desire and to refrain from desir-
ing what one ought not to desire. The pursuit of happiness,
properly conceived, puts us under the categorical obligation to
seek everything that is really good for us and nothing that in-
terferes with the attainment of all the real goods that fulfill our
human needs.

To discharge this obligation, we must form the habit of
choice that consists in desiring aright and desiring nothing
amiss. We must aim at happiness, which is the ultimate good
of our lives, and choose aright the means of achieving it.

That right aim conjoined with that right habit of choice con-
stitute what the ancients called moral virtue. This is only one of
the two indispensable factors in the pursuit of happiness. The
other is the good fortune of being blessed by external circum-
stances that facilitate rather than frustrate its pursuit, especially
with regard to the goods of chance partly or wholly beyond our
control.

Aristotle's definition of happiness includes both of these fac-
tors and indicates that they are complementary:

"Happiness consists in a complete life

(i) lived in accordance with virtue and

(ii) attended by a moderate supply of external goods" (or
whatever goods depend in whole or in part on good fortune).

The individual may be a good person in the sense of being
virtuous. But a good person does not always succeed in the
pursuit of happiness—in making a good life for himself or her-
self. Virtue by itself does not suffice for the attainment of the
ultimate good. If it did, mankind would have little or no reason
to carry on its age-old struggle for a good society, with liberty,
equality, and justice for all.