§ 1. The happiness of individual human beings and of the whole commonwealth is the end. All seek this; in this are all the things that make one happy. There can be many who do not seek to be rich, kings, or brave; there is no one who wishes to be wretched or does not wish to be happy. The ancients believed Happiness to be a goddess—almost truly, for Lucullus was the first to establish a temple for her. But no one who worships the gifts of God in place of God can be happy.
§ 2. All therefore seek to be happy; but in what thing does happiness consist? For if it consists in riches, pleasures, freedom from pain, or honors, the commonwealth must be directed toward those goods; if in virtue, the minds of human beings must be exercised toward this. The commonwealth must therefore stand or fall with this judgment. For τὸ τέλος, “the end,” is the target, cynosure, and norm by which all public and private plans are directed. What must be sought so greatly in life as what its end is—what is the final and ultimate thing to which all counsels for living well and acting rightly must be referred? Seneca, Epistle 71: “Whenever you wish to know what must be avoided or what must be sought, look to the highest good and the purpose of your whole life. For whatever we do ought to agree with it. No one will arrange individual things unless the sum of his life has already been set before him. No one, although he has his colors prepared, will reproduce a likeness unless it is already settled what he wishes to paint. We err for this reason: we all deliberate about the parts of life, but no one about the whole. He who wishes to shoot an arrow ought to know what he seeks, and then direct and govern the missile with his hand.”
Since these things possess the greatest force in private life, they possess so much the greater force in the commonwealth as the fall of great bodies is more serious. For if some Epicurean or Aristippean should set an end for the city, all will be dissolved into pleasures; they will become Sicyonians, Sybarites, and Babylonians. They will overthrow everything honorable and, finally, the commonwealth itself.
It is indeed untimely now to pursue the opinions of the ancient philosophers. For who is now so mad as to place the highest good in pleasure or riches, although he lives in such a way that he seems to acknowledge no good besides feeding and lust?
I leave these things to the philosophers in their thinking-shops. I deny that anyone who refers all things to his own advantage and pleasure can be a statesman; I affirm that he cannot be a good citizen. He will not protect right, he will not rescue an innocent person from punishment, he will not offer food to one perishing from hunger, much less will he put on arms or descend into the arena except for the sake of pleasure. Such savagery and brutish folly will remove from the midst every association of the human race and civil fellowship.
§ 3. More humane, and in a certain manner more cunning, is the reasoning of others who think that commanding is a great part of happiness, and therefore that government exists for its own sake. Dionysius indeed substituted the schoolmaster’s rod for the scepter at Corinth and, lest he should not command, sought a scholastic kingdom. Caesar’s mind was no different: he preferred to be first in an Alpine town rather than second at Rome. But not even that error is tolerable, as St. Augustine rightly says in book 5 of The City of God, chapter 24:
“For we do not call certain Christian emperors happy for the reason that they either ruled longer, or left sons ruling after a peaceful death, or subdued enemies of the commonwealth, or were able both to guard against and to crush hostile citizens rising against them. For certain worshipers of demons, who do not belong to the kingdom of God to which these men belong, deserved to receive these and other gifts or consolations of this wretched life. And this was done by his mercy, lest those who believed in him should desire such things as though they were the highest goods.
“But we call them happy if they rule justly; if, amid the tongues of those who honor them sublimely and the exceedingly humble services of those who salute them, they are not exalted, but remember that they are human beings.”
§ 4. If we also weigh the matter by human reason, this readily occurs: kingship is not the ability to command, but a duty. For neither does the principate exist for its own sake, nor is the prince an end to himself; rather, the supreme good of both is the safety and protection of peoples. No prudent person will have thought that so many thousands of cities and peoples which obey the king of the Spains exist for his sake, but that the king exists for the peoples, and that the king’s duty is to provide for the safety of all and to remedy the evils of all.
Therefore, since servitude exists not for its own sake but for the sake of the master, and kingship is servitude, it does not exist for its own sake. Thus Antigonus most prudently said to his son when he was conducting himself rather insolently and fiercely: “Know, my son, that our kingship is a splendid servitude.” There is also the royal utterance of Sopater to his brother Demetrius in Stobaeus, Sermon 44: “See that you are worthy of government, not by the condition of the commonwealth, but by excellence of virtue and devotion toward your subjects. Those whom previously you did not acknowledge, and whom you thought pertained to you no more than any human being does by the common nature of all, once made prince you ought to revere as now known and familiar.”
Would that all kings, in imitation of Moses, the mildest of human beings upon earth, loved their own people. Numbers 11:11: “And he said to the Lord: Why have you afflicted your servant? Why do I not find favor before you? And why have you placed the weight of this whole people upon me? Did I conceive all this multitude, or beget it, that you should say to me: Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse is accustomed to carry an infant, and bear them into the land concerning which you swore to their fathers?” Moses, established as prince by God, is oppressed by the weight of the people, and God shows how capacious the bosom of princely clemency ought to be. “Carry it,” God says; “carry it as a nurse, solicitously, gently, as one who will render an account to me, the parent.” To that sense another also rightly said: “A good king is a public servant.” And Antoninus the Philosopher received royal adoption sadly, not ignorant how many cares and dangers one headband bound together.
Therefore happiness in kingship exists only in opinion; and when opinion deceives, it removes all happiness, for error makes people wretched. If we also believe those with experience, we shall discover that magistracy is not even to be desired. “The inexperienced man seeks great power; the experienced man hates it,” Pompey used to say. But if he had not hated it too late, he himself and his sons, after nations had been triumphed over, would not have made expiation by so pitiable a death.
I would scarcely believe Themistocles if, endowed with the highest talent, he could not have condemned his own ambition. He used to declare that he preferred to go to the tomb rather than to the tribunal (Aelian, book 6). It is assuredly a great servitude; but because it is splendid and honored, it is loved, especially because insults are feared in private life.
§ 5. So great a labor and care, therefore, belongs not to one who is happy but to one who is busy. Seleucus used to say: “If the common crowd knew how laborious it is merely to read and write so many letters, it would not judge the diadem worth lifting even from the ground.” It is beautiful, I confess, to admit into one’s mind the care of the whole commonwealth, to undertake the destinies of a people, and, in a certain manner forgetful of oneself, to live for nations; to receive innumerable reports from every direction and send out as many commands; to think about so many cities, nations, and provinces; to endure anxieties all nights and days and to take thought for the safety of all. This is beautiful; it is not happy. For happiness is not laborious, is not anxious, does not expend itself upon the advantages of others, but accomplishes whatever it does without any vexation.
Antiochus had this consolation for his defeat: when conquered by the Romans and ordered to reign within Taurus, he declared that he would be freed from a great care because he had been enclosed within modest boundaries of a kingdom. Henry VII, son of Frederick II, applied himself continually to affairs and remembered to take food only late. When admonished that he should have regard for his strength and health, he answered: “For a private person, every time is a time for food when he wishes or is accustomed; but for a king, if he does not renounce his name, only that time in which he is free.”
Alfonso, king of Aragon, experienced this; for when an old man pressed upon him rather importunately during dinner, he said that asses were happier than kings: “For while they eat, their drivers take the packsaddles from them; but this old man places one upon me while I dine.” Tiberius testified that he was a servant—with a feigned mind, but with an utterance to be emulated by good kings: “I have said both now frequently and at other times, Conscript Fathers, that a good and salutary prince, whom you have furnished with so great and so free a power, ought to serve the senate and all citizens, often and generally even individuals; nor do I repent of having said it.” Tiberius said it but did not do it. Charles V both said it and added weight to his words; for by deed he showed what kingship was. Lord of as many kingdoms as others scarcely are of cities, he wished to die a private person; and when he transferred the Belgian provinces to his son Philip, he said: “O son, I place a great burden upon you. For throughout the whole time of my principate I never had a quarter of an hour free from great cares and anxieties.”
Therefore, if he is an emperor in the true sense of the name, if he weighs his duty not merely in appearance and name, and if he considers not the purple, scepter, and diadem but the affair of the people, he is never his own, always the commonwealth’s, and often even the property of individuals. Rudolf I accomplished this excellently, as he did many other things. For when he saw poorer persons being kept away by his attendants, he exclaimed: “By God, permit human beings to come to me; for I was not called to government so that I might be shut up in a little chest.”
§ 6. Those occupations are grave and troublesome; nevertheless, because they are mingled with the sweetness of commanding and the enticement of the highest honor, they are loved by the frivolous and tolerated by the serious, and therefore are thought to hinder happiness less. But if princes should look upon the dangers and evils, they will confess themselves most wretched. This is indeed accustomed to happen to wicked princes; for because they lay aside the care of the commonwealth, they are oppressed by fear. Indeed, as perpetual labor exercises the good prince, so fear—a worse evil than labor—exercises the wicked one.
Hear the oracle of a wise man fleeing government (Vopiscus, Proculus): “You do not know, friends, what an evil it is to rule. Naked swords hang over our necks; spears threaten from every direction, missiles from every direction. The guards themselves are feared; the companions themselves are dreaded. Food is not taken for pleasure, a journey not for authority, wars not according to judgment, arms not according to devotion. Add that every age in government is criticized. Someone is old: he is judged incapable; but if he is not, madness is within him. For because you desire me as emperor, you draw me into the necessity of death. But I have a consolation for death: I shall not be able to perish alone.”
§ 7. What furies, what torments shall we believe tore apart the mind of Heliogabalus? Aelius Lampridius writes thus concerning him: “And it had been predicted to him by Syrian priests that he would die a violent death. He had therefore prepared cords entwined with purple, silk, and scarlet, with which, if necessary, he might end his life by a noose. He had also prepared golden swords with which he might kill himself if some violence pressed him. He had also prepared poisons in thunderstones, hyacinths, and emeralds, with which he might destroy himself if anything more grievous threatened. He had also made a very high tower, with gold and jeweled tablets laid beneath it before him, from which he might cast himself down, saying that even
“his death ought to be precious and in keeping with the appearance of luxury, so that it might be said that no one had perished in such a manner. But those things availed nothing. For, as we have said, he was killed by buffoons and dragged most foully through the streets. This was the end of the name of the Antonines in the commonwealth, since all knew that this Antoninus had been as false in life as in name.”
If anyone, seeing him swimming either among roses or in pools of perfumes, thinks that he was happy, he is no less mad than the gladiator himself. He certainly was not secure, although security in the possession of good is the first portion of happiness. If he knows the dangers that threaten, he is anxious; if he is ignorant of them, he is foolish; nowhere is he happy. Therefore the flattery that is in the open will not inflate a wise king, but the envy that is always hidden, and the conspiracy that must always be feared, will restrain him with salutary fear.
§ 8. What, therefore, is the happiness that is the end of the commonwealth and, as they say, the highest good? I answer:
The end of the commonwealth is the highest good, the public good, the civil and human happiness of all and of individuals, consisting in acts of virtue; also divine happiness, toward which human happiness tends and without which human happiness is scarcely obtained. To these I add external order, peace or the defenses of war, an abundance of resources, and a copious supply of provisions. Since individuals do not suffice for themselves, they unite into one so that they may live honorably, peacefully, easily, and abundantly. Aristotle describes the public good to us no differently: “Ἐστὶ δὲ πολιτικὸν ἀγαθὸν τὸ δίκαιον. Τοῦτο δὲ ἐστὶ τὸ κοινῇ συμφέρον.” “The civil good is right, or what is just; for this is suitable to all.” Those words must be understood concerning a distinguished part of happiness; for generally, where administration is just, the commonwealth flourishes most greatly.
Moreover, the same Aristotle, book 7 of the Politics, chapter 2, affirms that the happiness of each individual human being and of the city is the same. His words are: “Whether the happiness of each individual human being and of the city must be said to be the same or not remains for us to explain. But this too is readily apparent. For all would grant with one voice that it is the same. For whoever places living well for one human being in riches also declares a city happy if it is wealthy and abundant; and whoever places the tyrannical life before all others also pronounces the city that commands the most people the happiest; and if anyone especially admires and approves an individual on account of virtue, he will also have said that the more adorned with virtue a city is, the happier it is.
“But there are now two things that need consideration: one, whether that life is more desirable which is passed in participation in the administration of the commonwealth and the city, or rather the private life of a foreigner, segregated and released from civil society; the other, what form of administering the commonwealth and what disposition—or ordering or, so to speak, arrangement—of the city must be judged best, whether participation in civil society is desirable and to be sought by all, or by some not at all but nevertheless by most.”
And in chapter 3 he says that εὐδαιμονίαν is πρᾶξιν, “that happiness is action,” and finally concludes that the same life is the best end for each individual human being and for the whole commonwealth.
§ 9. Nevertheless, I propose that two things be observed here. The first is that the happiness which we define is very imperfect, scarcely to be designated by the name of happiness; for it is both inconstant and insincere, contaminated by the intervention and mixture of many evils. It is rather the way to true happiness; nevertheless, he who is upon the way of happiness is also called happy. Thus the royal prophet also pronounces: “Blessed is the man who has not gone away in the counsel of the impious, and has not stood in the way of sinners, and has not sat in the chair of pestilence, but his will is in the law of the Lord.” Yet that happiness does not consist in the goods of pleasures, resources, and honors, which call the mind away from the good and do not lead it to the end.
The second admonition is that I join to happiness begun, or to the actions of the virtues, peace, resources, fortifications, and dignity—not as though people could not be happy without these things. Certainly the poor, the afflicted, and the martyrs have been happier through contempt for and loss of these things. But because these things are sought in the commonwealth, and are preserved well and with virtue—for that fortitude by which people can sustain calamities gladly and willingly belongs to few—the safety of all must therefore be pursued. Although the Stoics deny that soundness of limbs, health, strength, honors, and resources are goods, nevertheless the holy Fathers also number these things among the good gifts of God, which ought both to be sought and to be causes for thanksgiving. For it is permissible to use these as defenses toward true happiness; but when they are absent, the wretched are often cast headlong into crimes through need.
This, therefore, is the political end; yet it tends farther and searches out a richer happiness—namely, heavenly happiness. For the earthly city was established by God for this purpose: that it might transfer its citizens to the heavenly city. Hence it comes about that the earthly commonwealth ought not to be separated from the Church, but that there ought to be the highest conjunction of both. Nor will anyone obtain natural good and the moral virtues without the assistance of more divine grace.
Let no one teach that this can be done; it has not hitherto been done. All things were full of vices and crimes wherever the grace of God was not acknowledged. The Christian religion teaches us that without a special influx of divine goodness, one can neither arrive at perfect virtues, even human and moral ones, nor avoid sins for long. Aristotle himself, book 1 of the Ethics, chapter 9, and the final book, final chapter, taught that attaining the virtues is a divine gift. But we shall treat of that matter afterward in its own place. Now let us establish this with Aristotle, book 7 of the Politics, chapter 18: “Εὐδαιμονίαν εἶναι ἐνέργειαν καὶ χρῆσιν ἀρετῆς τελείας.” Happiness is action and the use of perfect virtue, with those aids added which conduce publicly to virtue.