St. Thomas asks in this Article whether human acts “receive their species” from their ends – whether their ends are what make them the species, or kinds, of acts that they are. If so, then these ends are the proper basis for defining and classifying them. This part of the Treatise on Happiness and Ultimate Purpose is more elliptical than most, for it assumes that the reader knows certain things about the structure of human action, which St. Thomas explains only elsewhere in the Summa. As the Thomist philosopher Christopher Kaczor points out, St. Thomas analyzes every complete human action by using at least the following elements, though the agent is not necessarily thinking of each of them explicitly.

It may seem as though fame or glory is the same as honors, which were considered in the previous Article. Not so: One may be granted honors without being famous or renowned, and one may be famous or renowned without being granted honors. As we see below, to have fame is simply to be clearly known and praised by others.

Even readers who are predisposed to think that happiness is connected with God often have difficulty taking some of the queries in Question 3 seriously. Isn’t it obvious that happiness is something we feel – how could it be something the mind is doing? Even if it is something the mind is doing, isn’t contemplation boring? And why even bother asking about angels? One may as well drag in fairies!

It might seem to follow as a matter of course that if the body is required for supreme happiness, then so are the external goods the body needs. However, several other things complicate the question. We must distinguish between the essence of happiness and the means to it; between what is needed and what is fitting; between complete and incomplete happiness; and between the conditions of our bodies in the next life and in this one.

From a Thomistic point of view, those who say that happiness is not the ultimate purpose, or that happiness is not an end in itself, are usually making at least one of two mistakes. Either they are confusing happiness with pleasure, and saying that pleasure is not an end in itself, which is true; why pleasure cannot be our ultimate purpose is explained in Question 2, Article 6. Or else they are failing to distinguish the ultimate purpose in the sense of the thing itself that is to be attained (which is God) with the ultimate purpose in the sense of the attainment or enjoyment of that thing; this distinction is discussed in Question 1, Article 8, Question 2, Article 7, and Question 3, Article 1.

We saw in the previous Article that in one sense happiness requires the vision of God, and in another sense it requires the delight of this vision. Even though they are inseparable, it makes sense to ask which is more fundamental – and so we do. In the Discussion, we consider some of the reasons why this question is so important.

The theoretical sciences include all that has been called philosophy, all that has been called science, and much that has been called scholarship, from ancient times to the present. The question, then, is whether supreme happiness lies in pursuing these studies – in doing what “scientists” do. Are they the truly happy ones?

We are not God. We are not the same as God, we are not a part of Him, and we are not a “splinter” of Him. Nor will we ever be. He does not depend on anything else, because He is what everything else depends on. He cannot be explained by anything else, because He is what everything else must be explained by. There is no one like Him. He is utterly above us. He is what He is, and there was never a time when He was not.