11. _The act of contemplation cannot be steadily carried on, as is necessary to happiness, except in the midst of easy surroundings_. Human nature is not self-sufficient for the work of contemplation. There is need of health and vigour, and the means of maintaining it, food, warmth, interesting objects around you, leisure, absence of distracting care or pain. None would call a man happy upon the rack, except by way of maintaining a thesis. The happiness of a disembodied spirit is of course independent of bodily conditions, but it would appear that there are conditions of environment requisite for even a spirit's contemplation. 12. _Happiness must endure to length of days_. Happiness is the perfect good of man. But no good is perfect that will not last. One swallow does not make a summer, nor does one fine day: neither is man made blessed and happy by one day, nor by a brief time. The human mind lighting upon good soon asks the question, Will this last? If the answer is negative, the good is not a complete good and there is no complete happiness coming of it. If the answer is affirmative and false, once more that is not a perfect happiness that rests on a delusion. The supreme good of a rational being is not found in a fool's paradise. We want an answer affirmative and true: _This happiness shall last_. 13. We now sum up and formulate the definition of happiness as follows: _Happiness is a bringing of the soul to act according to the habit of the best and most perfect virtue, that is, the virtue of the speculative intellect, borne out by easy surroundings, and enduring to length of days--[Greek: energeia psychaes kat aretaen taen aristaen kai teleiotataen en biph teleio.] (Ar., _Eth._, I., vii., 15, 16.) 14. Man is made for society. His happiness must be in society, a social happiness, no lonely contemplation. He must be happy in the consciousness of his own intellectual act, and happy in the discernment of the good that is in those around him, whom he loves. Friends and dear ones are no small part of those _easy surroundings_ that are the condition of happiness. 15. Happiness--final, perfect happiness--is not in fighting and struggling, in so far as a struggle supposes evil present and imminent; nor in benevolence, so far as that is founded upon misery needing relief. We fight for the conquest and suppression of evil; we are benevolent for the healing of misery. But it will be happiness, _in the limit_, as mathematicians speak, to wish well to all in a society where it is well with all, and to struggle with truth for its own sake, ever grasping, never mastering, as Jacob wrestled with God. _Readings_.--Ar., _Eth._, I., vii. viii., 5 to end; I., x., 8 to end; I., v., 6; VII., xiii., 3; IX., ix.; X., vii.; X., viii., 1-10; Ar., _Pol._, IV. (al. VII.), i., 3-10; IV., iii., 7, 8; St. Thos., la 2ae, q. 3, art. 2; _ib._, q. 3, art. 5. in corp., ad 3; _ib._, q. 2, art. 6. SECTION III.--_Happiness open to man_.