Society And its Purpose
Book 4 - Psychological Laws and the End of Civil Societies
CHAPTER 30
The juncture between virtue and happiness
810. Our preceding reflections, which enable us to judge accurately the political system called `movement’, contain an obvious demonstration of the error of this system. At the same time, they lead to a conclusion of great comfort for lovers of virtue; they reassure us that virtue and happiness are more closely united even in this world than is commonly believed.
811. In fact, we saw that human unhappiness is and can only be an infinite capacity characterised as unsatisfiable and absurd. It is when we desire to satisfy it with a finite object that it remains an immense need, always increasing in intensity and always moving further from any possibility of satisfaction. This pathetic disorder is the work of the will moving the practical reason to the false judgments that serve as foundations of the various passions we have listed as destroyers of the human heart. It is obvious, therefore, that people are unhappy because they want to be unhappy. This reflection alone is enough to justify Providence fully.
812. Moreover, if the human will deceives itself by claiming that an infinite satisfaction, equal to the capacity of the spirit, must be found in some finite good, it is surely just that the will be chastened for its distortion. It merits the penalty that it seeks and manufactures with all industry and effort, and which it holds dear, so to speak, in the object it will not consent to abandon. Such a will is morally evil; indeed every moral evil is reduced to this degenerate operation of the will. The will that sins morally is the same as the will that produces the state of unhappiness with its sin. As the Bible says: `He that loves iniquity hates his own soul.’(351) On the other hand, an upright will moves the practical reason to make upright judgments about the value of things. Upright judgments give way to reasonable desires, to capacities that can be contented because they are always commensurate with their object. Virtuous people, therefore, never lack contentment of spirit. It is impossible to conceive a more intimate union than that between virtue and happiness, and between vice and unhappiness.
813. This does not mean that the vicious person has no pleasures, or the virtuous person no sorrows. We must remember what has already been demonstrated: pleasure and contentment are different things, just as pain and unhappiness are different things. Human beings can enjoy things, yet still be discontent; they can suffer and be happy. The contradiction is only apparent; the truth of what we are saying is seen every day. Whether vice is crowned with roses, or virtue with thorns, we still maintain that the roses crowning the furrowed brow of the vicious person offer him no happiness, while the thorns marring the beautiful face of virtue do not detract in any way from the substantial happiness possessed by virtue and hidden like a treasure in the depths of the heart.
814. This contentment is never lacking in the case of virtue because it is essential to virtue to exclude every desire that cannot be fulfilled, and to limit its desires proportionately to objects which it can attain. Resignation is an indispensable element of virtue to such an extent that a person’s degree of virtue is finally that which makes him tranquil and content; his degree of restlessness on the other hand shows how far he has departed from virtue.
Notes
(351) Ps 10: 6 [Douai].