Our own definition of the Good, interested as we are not in its cause, but in its essence, is that the perfect life, that is genuine and real, consists in intelligence. The other kinds of life are imperfect. They offer no more than the image of life. They are not Life in its fulness and purity. As we have often said they are not life, rather than its contrary. In one word, since all living beings are derived from one and the same Principle, and since they do not possess an equal degree of life, this principle must necessarily be the primary Life, and perfectness. HAPPINESS MUST BE SOMETHING HUMAN. 4. If man be capable of possessing perfect Life, he is happy as soon as he possesses it. If it were otherwise, if the perfect life pertained to the divinities alone, to them alone also would happiness belong. But since we attribute happiness to men, we shall have to set forth in what that which procures it consists. I repeat, what results from our former considerations, namely, that man has perfect Life when, besides the sense-life, he possesses reason and true intelligence. But is man as such stranger to the perfect Life, and does he possess it as something alien (to his essential being)? No, for no man lacks happiness entirely, either actually or even potentially. But shall we consider happiness as a part of the man, and that he in himself is the perfect form of life? We had better think that he who is a stranger to the perfect Life possesses only a part of happiness, as he possesses happiness only potentially; but that he who possesses the perfect Life in actuality, and he who has succeeded in identifying himself with it, alone is happy. All the other things, no more than envelope him (as the Stoics would say), and could not be considered as parts of him, since they surround him in spite of himself. They would belong to him as parts of himself, if they were joined to him by the result of his will. What is the Good for a man who finds himself in this condition? By the perfect life which he possesses, he himself is his own good. The principle (the Good in itself) which is superior (to the perfect Life) is the cause of the good which is in him; for we must not confuse the Good in itself--and the good in man. WE KNOW WE HAVE REACHED HAPPINESS WHEN WE NO MORE DESIRE ANYTHING.