Society And its Purpose
Book 4 - Psychological Laws and the End of Civil Societies
CHAPTER 1
The three states of the human spirit: pleasant, content, happy
509. Contentment, happiness and a pleasant state are three different things. A pleasant state can be found in a being endowed only with feeling. Contentment and happiness require intelligence.
510. A feeling being which experiences no pain and has its natural needs satisfied is in a naturally pleasant state. But because it lacks intelligence, it neither knows nor thinks about its state, which remains closed within the insuperable limits of its narrow sphere of feeling.
511. If we add intelligence to the being and suppose that it can think about itself, perceive itself and be conscious of itself, we immediately have a being that not only experiences pleasure or suffers but makes a judgment about its pleasure and suffering. It can say to itself: `I feel well; I am satisfied and content.' This is the origin of the state of contentment, which is not formed by mere feeling but arises in virtue of our judgment about what we pleasantly feel and have.
512. But we still have not arrived at a state of happiness. This is not simple contentment but perfect contentment springing from a conscious experience of our possession of a supreme, complete good. Contentment consists in awareness of a satisfying state; happiness consists in awareness of perfect satisfaction, the endless calming of all our desires.
513. To understand better the difference between happiness and contentment, we must note that human desires do not develop all at once but successively, in obedience to certain laws which for the most part correspond to norms governing the development of the intellective faculties. If desires, whenever they arise in the spirit, are satisfied in the right way, we clearly pass successively through different states: desire first, and then contentment. In other words, we are contented in different ways according to a certain order.
These states of contentment in human beings differ in kind and degree; the same cannot be said about the state of happiness. This state, although simple and one, can vary in extent and degree, but not in nature and in object, which is always absolute good. Things that are relatively good are innumerable, and cause innumerable desires, but absolute good is unique and complete, and generates one desire only. Moreover, the desire for absolute good absorbs all other desires, because its object contains all the good of every relative good. Anyone who has come to know absolute good and desires its possession, finds that every relative good ceases to be good for him. Thus, as long as desires for relative good arise in our heart and are appeased, we are content, and for a moment our heart's longing is satisfied. But this is still not happiness. Only when our actual desire for absolute good has been manifested and satisfied, do we enter into a state of happiness. Not only is our actual desire fully satisfied, but the very power of desire can neither go further nor seek a greater good; a good greater than absolute good does not exist.
514. We can conclude therefore:
1. A pleasant state can be present in human beings even before the development of our intellective faculties.
2. A state of contentment is present provided that some degree of intellectual development has taken place, and that different ways and degrees of contentment continue to be maintained as our intellectual powers develop.
3. Finally, a state of happiness presupposes an ultimate degree of intellectual development through which we rise to the knowledge and desire of absolute good, the highest object of all the possible desires of intelligent beings.(247)
515. At this point I should discuss the law of correspondence between intellective development, nascent desires and the state of contentment. But before commenting on this triple parallel progress and development of the understanding, of desire and of contentment of spirit, it will be useful to examine closely the nature of the judgment with which we say we are content and, in doing so, make ourselves content.
Notes
(247) The happiness possible in the other life must be called `beatitude', a word long-used in this sense. All the different satisfying states of the human spirit could therefore be indicated by four words which seem to me very suitable for distinguishing the four possible kinds of satisfaction:
1. pleasant state, 2. contentment, 3. happiness, 4. beatitude.