Dost thou think, however, that they foolishly imagine that that thing is best deserving of all estimation which they may consider most desirable? No, no. I know that it is not to be despised. How can that be evil which the mind of every man considers to be good, and strives after, and desires to obtain? No, it is not evil; it is the highest good. Why is not power to be reckoned one of the highest goods of this present life? Is that to be esteemed vain and useless which is the most useful of all those worldly things, that is, power? Is good fame and renown to be accounted nothing? No, no. It is not fit that any one account it nothing; for every man thinks that best which he most loves. Do we not know that no anxiety, or difficulties, or trouble, or pain, or sorrow, is happiness? What more, then, need we say about these felicities? Does not every man know what they are, and also know that they are the highest good? And yet almost every man seeks in very little things the best felicities; because he thinks that he may have them all if he have that which he then chiefly wishes to obtain. This is, then, what they chiefly wish to obtain, wealth, and dignity, and authority, and this world's glory, and ostentation, and worldly lust. Of all this they are desirous because they think that, through these things, they may obtain: that there be not to them a deficiency of anything wished; neither of dignity, nor of power, nor of renown, nor of bliss. They wish for all this, and they do well that they desire it, tho they seek it variously. By these things we may clearly perceive that every man is desirous of this, that, he may obtain the highest good, if they were able to discover it, or knew how to seek it rightly. But they do not seek it in the most right way. It is not of this world. ST. THOMAS AQUINAS Born near Aquino, Italy, probably in 1225, died in 1274; entered the Dominican order; studied at Cologne under Albertus Magnus; taught at Cologne, Paris, Rome and Bologna; his chief work the "Summa Theologiæ"; his complete writings collected in 1787. A DEFINITION OF HAPPINESS[3]