CHAPTER I
THE ESSENCE OF HAPPINESS
Here we have, as a matter of fact, reason for the same terror that engulfs a man at the beginning of his study of God. The terrific complexity of man's life and man's activity might well seem an overpowering assignment for the limits of one volume. The scope of those activities, stretching from ocean to ocean, from pole to pole, from the earliest beginnings to the limitless future, would be far too much to touch upon, let alone plunge into, if man were not man. Because he is man, there is an element of unity that binds together the whole sweep of man's doings as closely as his nature binds the individual; there is a common harmonious note that reveals the meaning of the whole apparently discordant chorus.
The key to the mystery of human life is happiness
That note of unity and harmony is human desire. The same force that has driven men apart, that has set nations at one another's throats, that has wiped individuals and races off the face of the earth, is at the same time the one great focal point of human agreement and harmony. All men agree on this -- they want what they want. And because of this desire, men act. In the attainment of what they want we have the essential notion of happiness. It is not pleasure, not enjoyment, but the possession of the object of desire which constitutes happiness. And in this sense all men want to be happy. Happiness is the key to the mystery of human life, of human activity.
Happiness consists in the attainment of the goal of life.
The material of our study in this volume, therefore, is human action, particularly in its culmination in happiness. It is fortunate for our feeble courage in the face of this task that the fundamental notions involved are so clear. At least most of us will agree theoretically on what a human action is; certainly all of us will agree practically in determining when a man is acting humanly. Theoretically, an act is human over which a man has control, an act that is done deliberately, i.e. on purpose, for a precise reason, to attain a definite goal. When we catch ourselves up now and then and ask in astonishment, "Why in the world did I do that?", only to find there is no answer to the "why" of that question, we are right in concluding that we need sleep, or a vacation, or a visit to the doctor.
For while a human being has certainly placed an act, he has not acted humanly. Practically, we have a whole set of phrases to express the difference between a human action and one that is not human. A servant explains: "I'm sorry, I didn't mean that"; and of course the apology must be accepted, even though the coffee spilled on us is, unlike most coffee, incredibly hot. A man whose foot has been trampled in a subway crowd says what he says because he "is angry, not himself". we are "beside ourselves" with indignation, "in a trance, absent-minded, forgetful, cross, hysterical or terror-stricken", and of course our actions are not human.
The study of happiness must begin, not at the beginning, but at the end, the goal
For if human they are, then they must be done for some reason, to some end, for some goal. For, after all, action has to do with the attainment of the object of desire, and the object of desire is precisely the goal or end of that particular action. The study of happiness, then, cannot begin at the beginning; it is too intimately wrapped up with the finish or goal. It is not that man's head is befuddled, but rather that man has the kind of head which makes it necessary to begin at the end. He is not living his life backwards but has that divine faculty of standing off to one side and looking at his life, or of looking ahead of his life, and so is capable of appreciating its meaning as well as its humour. And looking ahead, he will see that the goal does much more than flavour the action directed to it; it does even more than explain the existence of that action, as we shall see presently. For on the determination of the nature of that goal depends the meaning of the whole life of a man, the nature of all his activity, the very destiny of man.
There is a goal of life: Fact of man's goal -- from his activity.
From what we have seen of action that is human, we know the life of man has some end or ends, some goal or goals. The very fact that an act, to measure up to our requirements of human action, must be deliberately controlled, places it as coming from deliberate will; the act is ours and imputable to us because we have willed it. This is universally true of any act that presumes to be human; so that human activity comes from the human will and goes to the object of the human will. In other words, it is placed because of some good, some end, since it proceeds from the instrument of human desire (will) whose only object is good.
The failure of modern philosophy
Here we come upon one of the most drastic failures of modern philosophy. Face to face with the unquestionable fact of finality -- purposiveness -- in human action, modern philosophy has taken refuge in the murk of vague speculation. In the face of modern contempt for any but the most empirical knowledge, modern philosophy has committed itself to the building of castles in the air. It is dangerous to attempt to classify modern ethical theories; they are so intensely flavoured by the individual philosopher's personal outlook and background that almost every man has a system of his own. But, roughly, we can split modern ethical theory into three classes: (a) the first trles to explain this finality of human activity in terms of the society to which man belongs, reducing ethics to positive law, to some form of public opinion, to sociology; (b) the second attempts the same task in terms of a necessity of the universe in which man moves, whether mechanical or animal, reducing ethics to mathematics, biology, or psychology; (c) the third, faced with the dilemma that reduced Aristotle's magnificent reasoning to vague muttering, makes a god out of man and talks in frankly, or insidiously, subjectivistic terms, describing its ethics as individualistic, emotional or autonomous.
The human being, in whose name all this has been done, is an intensely individual and practical being. To explain patiently that his efforts, his sufferings, his triumphs, his courage, his loyalty, his failures have no objective significance for him personally, merely exasperates him If all his activity is only in the name of, and for the vague purposes of a very intangible, perhaps very distant, community perfection; or is only the ceaseless grinding of a giant machine, the necessary, irresistible urging of an animal, or the frail spinnings of his own mind, he will do one of two things: either he will stop all his effort, all his activity, or he will push the theorizing of philosophies into the room with the children's toys and make his own decisions. And this latter is precisely what he has done. The position and influence of philosophy in our universities today are adequate testimony of philosophy's failure in the field of ethical theory. The pursuit of wealth, of power, of pleasure, of food or drink, of physical perfection, or of scientific inquiry as the goal of human life, gives the other side of the picture, the failure of philosophy in the field of ethical practice.
Men and women of today are no more satisfied with fables than were the men and women of any other age. And if we are to get at the truth of human happiness, we cannot simply scramble human activity with every other form of action in the universe. To act for a goal of our choosing, and that means to attempt to attain happiness, is a uniquely human fight. Other things, other creatures, may be propelled towards a goal by the drive of physical necessity or of animal instinct, much as an arrow is shot towards a target by the impulse and aim of the archer. But only man can direct action towards a goal, for only man is in control of his actions. Control of action involves deliberate will, the ability to see the connection between the tools used and the Job to be done, between the means and the end. To envy the secluded happiness of a pampered lap dog is a waste of energy; he cannot be happy because he cannot know what it is all about. We might, indeed we do, whip a puppy for chewing up slippers, we hope that he will remember the whipping in connection with the slippers and avoid both; but we never think of absolving him from his sins.
Aristotle, and St. Thomas after him, laid the solid foundation for the investigation of human activity by tying its goal up with the order of reality. In his treatment of God, St. Thomas triumphantly vindicates both the reality and the sublime supremacy of the divinity by first showing its connection with the very first principles of being and thought. Here, in the very beginning of his investigation of the meaning of human life, we see him laying down the same metaphysical basis for his thought, bringing out clearly the connection between that goal of human activity and the first principles of reality.
The nature of this goal: It is uniquely human
Precisely because a human action, to be human at all, must be directed to some goal, to some good, it follows that there must be some goal that is the last, the ultimate explanation of all human activity. Just as all movement must have one supreme beginning if there is to be any movement at all (as we saw in the first volume in proving the existence of God), so all human movement must have one goal, one end, if there is to be any movement at all. In concrete terms, I buy a boat-ticket to Europe, either because the supreme goal of my life is the possession of such a ticket, or because I want that ticket for some other purpose, such as to go to Europe. Whatever it is I strive for, I want that thing either for itself, or as a step to getting something else. Of course no one starts to climb a flight of stairs devoid of the conviction that the stairs go somewhere, that they have some end; for after all the whole purpose of stairs is to get us to some other place. So, no human being starts a chain of action that is going nowhere; for the whole reason of acting at all is to get somewhere, to attain some object of our desire. This is the first argument used for the existence of God, but taken from the order of efficient cause and put to work in the order of final cause. To question its validity is to demand action and at the same time, in the same breath, make action impossible.
Each man has but one goal
A final, ultimate, supreme end, or goal, is necessarily solitary, unique. In simpler language, no man or woman can have two final goals at the same time, any more than a person can walk in two directions at the same time. Action is a majestic flight towards a landing field; and motion, swift or slow, crooked or straight, has only one final stopping place. The family likeness of all desirable things -- goodness -- is an unerring clue to their common origin and final resting place.
That goal is the source of all other desires
This ultimate, supreme goal is the giant power-house from which the current flows out to all other lesser goals. This is the head of the house of desirable things, from whom comes all the beauty and allure of the lesser members. These lesser ends are intermediaries, steps, which have value because of their connection with the supreme end; separated from it, they are as pathetically useless as a bridge torn from the banks of a river it was meant to span.
It is the same for all men.
In a very real, very objective sense, this supreme, ultimate good which draws forth all human activity is identical for all men. For on this one point are all men agreed; the purpose of their action is happiness. And it is precisely this supreme end which can fulfil that purpose. Actually, the ends of human activity are as multiple as the energies men put forth in search for happiness, as diverse as the mistakes men make in trying to determine just what that final, supreme good is. A man with a thick tongue and a headache is not a dependable judge of the tastiness of a breakfast; neither is a perverted will a dependable judge, of the object in which human happiness is to be found. Our next steps in the investigation of the essence of happiness will be the determination of the healthiness of the human appetite or will, the concrete discovery of just what particular object can confer happiness on man.
It is the end of all creatures, but differently
But first, and passingly, we might point out that the majestic force which has swept the universe on from its dim beginnings towards its final goal has made no exception in the case of man. He may be the very summit of nature, the lord of the world, but he is none the less a part of that natural order, subject to those same natural laws, and moving along with nature to the same supreme end. For it is quite true that the end of nature and the end of every man in nature is the same; as all motion must have had the one source, so it must have the one final resting place, the one goal. In this same sense, we might say that Admiral Byrd's plane, his dog, and himself all reached the same goal, the South Pole, but certainly not in the same way. So with the creatures of our universe: some by merely existing, some by living, others by living and feeling, reach a little image of that final good; while men and angels speed on to the very core of that final good on the wings of knowledge and love.
Objective Happiness -- determination of the beatifying object:
Three possible -- and historical -- mistakes
It is the peculiar genius of our race to be able to make mistakes. And that genius has been exhausted in the attempt to determine the object the possession of which will mean happiness for us. Men have placed their chips on every number that the universe offers in the gamble for happiness, and they have always been wrong. As a matter of fact only two classes of mistakes were possible: placing all chance for happiness in some external, particular good, or on some good within the nature of man himself, whether of body or of soul.
External goods: riches, honour, fame, power
Of the external seducers, riches have played a leading role, but their beauty has been an illusion produced by make-up and a spotlight. For the ultimate goal of man cannot exist for anything else; because it is ultimate it is desired for itself, it is never a step but always that to which steps lead. And riches, whether natural (such as food and drink) or artificial (such as wealth) are always steps, always for something else: the first for the sustaining of life; the second, even more obviously, for the purchase of natural goods.
The other external goods -- honour, reputation, power -- are just as easily disposed of as being claimants to the place of honour in man's quest for happiness, no matter how many millions of men and women they have fooled. Natural and artificial riches, as instruments used by man for his ends, are servants, not the supremely desirable answer to his lifetime of longing. Honour and reputation are quite outside of the man himself and indeed often independent of his efforts; in any case they bring nothing intrinsically within the scope of a man's own being. Honour is rather a witness to excellence than the constituent of happiness.
Reputation (fame or glory) is another witness, not in us at all but in those who are honouring or praising us. These are frail things, often grossly erroneous, as we well know, at the mercy of every circumstance, and presupposing, not establishing, some claim to happiness. No, these are not the reason for man's existence, the final goal of all his efforts.
If the supreme good to which every man dedicates his life could be conceived as capable of being utterly vicious, capable of being possessed and still leaving its possessor a fool, or even dragging a man down to the gutter, we might be forced to hesitate before the throne of power in determining the object which will give us happiness. Power is quite capable of all these things; but, by the same token, it is incapable of being the final answer to man's quest for happiness.
Corporal good: the body itself, its pleasure
Since his happiness is not to be found in the universe in which he lives, man looks, quite logically, in the only other obvious place, within himself. But his body is no more helpful than was the whole scope of the universe. Its conservation, its health, its beauty, its sensitive acumen or vegetative prodigality, are no more the explanation of man's activity than the conservation of a ship is the real purpose, the last end of a captain. The captain's job is to make a port, to navigate his ship; everything else about that ship serves this master purpose. The body's job is to make possible that activity we call human and all of its various and complex workings serve that same master purpose; ministering the material to the intelligence and will which the body serves.
The soul of man
To pass immediately to a consideration of the soul of man would be to treat with contempt the mistake about happiness most common in our own day. And no human mistake deserves contempt, if only because there is behind it a human heart which, until its last beat, is capable of that incredible courage that snatches victory from despair. What of sensual pleasure? Can a man lose himself here and find the complete happiness whose absence has been the driving force of all his days? Because there is so much of the animal in us, this is a mistake easy to make and difficult to remedy.
But mistake it is. For if human activity is distinctive, the goal at which it aims is no less distinctive, not at all a place where we must lie down with the brutes. As a matter of fact, a child does not have pleasure because it is enjoying ice-cream, but because it has ice-cream to enjoy. In other words, pleasure, delight, does not cause itself, but is caused by possession of some good, some end. No pleasure can make up happiness; rather it must always follow humbly in the wake of happiness, like a train-bearer following a bride.
Our attempt to determine the object which will bring man his happiness has thus far been entirely a consideration of facts. It has been no more than a pattern of the final or the ultimate, demanded by every human act, laid on the actual choices made by men. We have not been theorizing, not preaching, but simply comparing facts and rejecting obvious misfits. This strict adherence to facts brings us to the last possibility -- the soul of man. It is the end of a great experiment; the last step which many have not bothered to make because they think the answer could not be other than the right one, the one sought. But honest facing of the facts cannot allow cowardice to creep in at this last stage. Let us put that pattern of finality, of supremacy in the order of things desirable over the soul and its possibilities -- and the answer again is no! They do not match.
Indeed, if they did match, there would be no necessity for the bustle of human life; man would be happy from the very beginning. The very urge of man's nature that he get out of himself, as well as the shrivelled, distorted result achieved by the introvert, are indications that man's happiness does not lie within himself. Man, by his knowledge, can in a sense take all things into himself. He can become all things, and so he can desire all good. But he is not all things, he is not God. Neither he nor any creature is all good; and only that which can satisfy man's desires can bring him happiness.
The true object in whose possession lies happiness is the Universal Good
The object of his pursuit of happiness is not outside man and in the universe; it is not within man, body or soul. But this does not mean that the whole affair is a grim joke of cosmic proportions. It is still real, still decidedly objective, this beatifying object -- but it is above man and the universe. It is the answer to the human capacity to desire all goods and be satisfied with none; it is the final good that can leaves nothing to be desired; it is the absolutely universal good, outside and above man; outside and above the world, outside and above any good that bears the brand of limitation, of particularity.
Subjective or Formal Happiness -- the attainment of the goal
A boy is not happy because an apple will bring him happiness; but because he has the apple in his possession. Neither is a man happy because the universal good will bring him happiness; but because he possesses that universal good. The attainment of the final goal, not its mere existence, marks the close of the pursuit of happiness. And that means no less than our having reached out and taken possession of the final good, bringing it into ourselves, making it our own. In this strictly formal sense, happiness, the final accomplishment of our human actions, is indeed within man.
Dr. Cabot of Harvard(The Meaning of Right and Wrong (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1936), p. 112 ff.) insists that man's business in life is to grow. The dimly seen truth behind this statement is the same as that behind modern philosophers' insistence on progress, advance, constant change, evolution without end. For to the naked eye it is apparent that action and perfection have a strange affinity. When I have absorbed all that an educational system can offer me in the way of knowledge, quite patently I have more of perfection than I had in my grammar-school days. A potential opera star has much less perfection of voice than the opera star who has realized her potentialities. It is quite true then that perfection is in exact proportion to actuality, as true of man as of plants, or indeed as of God.
Happiness possible -- from a comparison of man's faculties man's goal
Consequently, this ultimate perfection of man, which is his complete happiness, is to be found in his consummate, most perfect act. In modern terms, substance exists for the sake of function; the ultimate in perfection of any substance, then, will be its most perfect function. More simply, the goal of life will be the realization of the best that is in man.
It is accomplished by an act of man
This truth is so obvious that, stated in common-place language, it seems almost insulting to intelligence. Everyone knows that man's desires are satisfied only by his reaching out and getting what he lacks. Of course, since some object he now lacks will satisfy his desires, will bring him happiness, the thing for him to do is to reach out and get it -- a feat that is accomplished by using the tools at our command, human actions.
Not by any of his inferior acts
Since we know what we are after -- the universal good -- we can immediately exclude all those operations that are not distinctively human, those sense operations common to all animals, whose goals are not universal but particular goals. This action must be a distinctively human action, i.e. an act of intellect or will. And again the process of exclusion is simple. I can desire a hat in a draughty room by a mere act of my will: I can enjoy the possession of that hat with my will. But if I ever expect to have that hat, I'll have to get up and get it. As a universal good is not something to be had by reaching out my hand, or by calling a servant, the only possibility of its possession is by an act of my intellect. Can I make it? Why not? That same intellect can know all things, even the universal; and it is the universal good that I am after.
But let it be well understood that no substitutes will do. My will can be satisfied only when I possess that universal good, only when it is present within me by my knowledge of it. The lofty considerations of truth offered by philosophy or science will not do; not even the absorbed contemplation of angelic beauty will be tolerated patiently. It must be all or nothing: either the universal, all-embracing good, or the failure of the pursuit of happiness. The intellectual perfection that will help me to take more steps towards a goal is not sufficient; rather that is necessary which will mean no more steps.
But by the supreme act of man -- intellectual vision
In plain words, I must see God. From the very beginning I have been driven by the desire to plumb the depths, to be unsatisfied with the superficial, to know the inner workings, the very essences of things. And having come upon the traces of God in nature, having learned of His existence, my nature will not be satisfied until I have seen the very essence of God.
So far Aristotle managed to trudge up the last hill in his pursuit of happiness. He saw man standing at the summit of the created universe; at the peak of man's nature was the intellect; and the zenith of that intellect's activity was the contemplation of truth. Here, he concluded, must lie the happiness of man: in the supreme act of his supreme faculty, in the perfect realization of his greatest potentiality.
Looking down from these heights, Aristotle was brought to earth with a crash. The men of that earth were real; the labours, interests, worries of their lives were decidedly real and left very little room for silent contemplation. Perhaps their offices were not as busy then as ours are today, but certainly their lives were. Moreover, how many of these men were capable of contemplation; and how long could the best of them keep it up? What an end to the quest of happiness! Such was the way Aristotle must have felt about the whole thing. His courage and devotion to facts were great enough to make him hold doggedly to the conclusions facts had forced upon him; but they were not great enough to make him take the last few steps that were possible to philosophy -- to come out clearly with the last conclusions demanded by the facts. He chose to leave them vague.
Two common errors in regard to this formal happiness:
Cannot be had.
Would not give happiness if it were had.
Two obvious difficulties jumped at Aristotle -- and at men ever since. For it seems evident that man cannot see God, and, even if he did, the act, like all his acts of contemplation, would endure for only a short time and could not give him happiness. To these objections St. Thomas had the infallible answers of divine faith. As a matter of fact, men do see God; and in their vision is their supreme happiness.(Ex Constitutions Benedict XII, "Benedictus Deus" H. Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbobrum (Freiburg, Germany: Herder & Co., ed.; 17, 1928), #530.) It is quite certain that the universal Good, the essence of God, cannot be crowded into a mental concept, nor be abstracted from sensible things; and yet that is the way our intellect works. Yes, the way it works naturally; the way it works at the present time, not because of its intelligence, but because of that crutch which intelligence must use and which we call reasoning. Man can be, and is, lifted above that lowest grade of intelligence; he is enabled to throw away the crutch and come to grips with divinity, not through an image or a concept, but in the way the divinity sees itself -- through the immediate union of that supremely knowable essence to the intellect of man.
Supernatural? Of course it is supernatural. But that fact is no more of an affront to man's self-sufficiency, to the efficacy of nature, than is the fact that man is born without protection and clothes but is given hands and reason to make up for the deficiency. Here he is given a free will by which he can co-operate with the supernatural help infallibly offered him and reach the happiness which hangs over his head. That the contemplation of divinity is unsatisfying in this life, is beyond all question; and if reason could not have discovered that fact, faith would broadcast it to the four winds.(Council of Vienna, condemned propositions of Beghards, 1,4,5. (Denzinger, #471,474,475).
But that dissatisfaction is in this life, seeing that divinity through a glass darkly and while we are sadly pressed by all the necessities of physical existence. Aristotle was right as far as he went; but it had not entered into the mind of man that God would insist on such a perfect image of Himself in the unfolding of the goal of human activity.
Characteristics of formal happiness:
Once gained it can never be lost.
It cannot be had by natural power alone.
It is strictly a personal accomplishment.
Of this ultimate goal, then, it is strictly true that it is supernatural, not to be attained by natural powers. Yet, paradoxically, it is strictly personal attainment. No other creature, neither man nor woman, nor the highest angel in heaven, can get it for us; nor will God force it upon us. We approach it step by step, by onr own human actions, working with the constant help of God; and the last and eternally enduring act by which we grasp God Himself is an act of our intellect, something that can no more be done for us than our thinking here and now can be done by someone else and still be ours. Once had, this supreme good which satisfies all our desires and puts an end to the quest of happiness cannot possibly slip from our fingers. On its part, the beatifying object cannot dry up and blow away, it cannot decrease or cease to be what it essentially is, the universal good; on our part, we cannot get tired of it, there is nothing else that can tempt us from it, that can seem to have something that is not contained in that ultimate goal. Otherwise it would not be the ultimate, the universal good. Just as now we must will everything under the guise and in the name of good, so then we must will everything in the name of the divine good -- what attractiveness there is in other things, comes from this final end.
The perfection of happiness:
The three essentials or happiness: vision, comprehension, joy
Summing this up: a universally good object and its attainment by us is required for our complete happiness. In that attainment of the final goal there is involved the intellectual vision of the beatifying object; not merely a passing glance, but a tenacious grasp, an enduring comprehension of that object, and, finally, the eternally enduring joy (or rest) of our will, our appetite, in the accomplishment of our goal, in the possession of the all satisfying good.
All else that may be involved in our final happiness, however much it may contribute to the perfection of happiness, is secondary and relatively unimportant -- a delicate touch perhaps, like a drop of perfume on the gown of a perfectly dressed woman, but adding nothing substantial.
Role of the body in happiness
In this way, the reunion of body and soul will add to the perfection of the happiness of man. After all, his body belongs to a man, the soul was made for union with that body, and without it, the soul is in a very real sense incomplete; but the addition of the body will not add to the essential joy and glory of the soul, rather the other way around. From the soul will come joy and glory to the body, much as at present a light heart gives buoyancy to our steps.
Role of external goods
This overflow from the soul to the body will carry that body far beyond the limits of natural perfection. Often the body is in command of the situation at present, as the protest of our knees at an overlong prayer will testify; but then, the body will be completely subservient to the soul as it was meant to be. It would seem difficult then to find a place in the perfection of happiness for external goods. At present they are ordained to the needs of physical life; even the most sublime contemplative needs food and clothes. But the question of clothes in heaven would seem to be still very much open to debate.
Role of friends
Friends, of course, there must be, in the same way that we must have our bodies. They are our other selves; something of ourselves would be missing without them. And this is true, even though the principal end of friendship -- the opportunity to help, to sacrifice, to give to others -- will no longer exist; that subtler, infinitely precious joy in the beauty, the triumph, the happiness of friends will give a splendidly human air to the courts of heaven.
Key to present or imperfect happiness -- where and how happiness is to be found here and now
All of this may seem very far away, very unsatisfactory to men and women who are engaged in the actual pursuit of happiness -- as always the tape at the end of a race seems infinitely distant from the starting line. We want happiness now. What can we do about it today? What, if any, is the possibility of some happiness in this life?
Activity and progress as a measure of happiness
All of the answers to questions that might be put about present happiness are contained in what we have already said. Perhaps one of the most important is that no perfect happiness is to be had this side of death. It is an important thing to know. What happiness is possible can be had only by going in the general direction of that final goal, for because of that goal every other good is desirable, every other good has what power it possesses to satisfy the longings of our hearts. And what happiness can be had will be had slowly, trudgingly, little by little, with many an imperfection, distraction, interruption mixed in. The degree of present happiness is in exact proportion to our approach to the final goal of life, as the heat we feel from a fire is in exact proportion to our proximity to the fire. In utterly simple language: happiness, even the imperfect happiness this life can offer, is a matter of approaching God. The closer we get to Him, the greater our share of this imperfect happiness; the farther away we get, the less happiness we can expect to garner. The words of the child's catechism are an adequate summary of all we have said: man was made to know and to love God. The goal of life is the knowledge and love, the vision and enjoyment, of divinity; what happiness we get in this life will be through an imperfect knowledge or love of God, either in Himself, or in one of the mirrorings of divinity which we call creatures.
Answers to the puzzles: of activity, despair and boredom.
The rush of New York life is not necessarily an improvement on the sleepy quiet of a tiny Irish hamlet. Man gains his happiness by activity; but not by every activity, rather by activity that is going somewhere, going to the right place. There is such a thing as being so busy we have no time to live; having our heads so full of knowledge we have no chance to think; or our hearts so crowded that there is no place for love. Activity for activity's sake, bustling for its own sake, may help us to forget, may prevent our thinking, but it will not bring us happiness. Progress is indeed a measure of happiness -- if it is progress towards God. But progress in time saving devices, or labour-saving devices, in wealth, health, strength, beauty, athletic ability, business efficiency -- all of these can easily be synchronizing with flight away from the ultimate goal of human life. At best they are helps; at times they make that true progress easier. There can be no question that a young man of today has made less real progress as a result of fourteen or eighteen years of intensive educational efforts than did the Apostles by rubbing elbows with Christ for three years. A man or woman who starts off in high expectations of grasping full happiness within the span of human life is headed straight for despair; for despair is the fruit of reaching for the impossible. The person today starting life with a denial of life's goal, of the ultimate universal good, has no choice, eventually, but to choke out life or to attempt to choke out reason. The first is despair. The second produces a weariness from trying to pretend that the petty particularities of the universe can be the absorbing explanation of human activity, the goal of human life, the reward for the pursuit of happiness. This is boredom.
CHAPTER XX -- ETERNAL BEGINNINGS
THE one completely certain thing about any hour is that it will come to an end. The next most certain thing is that its end will mark the beginning of still another hour. If the passing moments measure agony, an hour's death-struggle is a long drawn-out affair, the next hour comes too slowly and stays too long; if it is joy that passes under the scrutiny of time, the death of an hour seems like an echo of its birth; the next one comes much too quickly but is welcomed as a reprieve of joy. Welcomed or dreaded, every hour, in common with all passing things, comes to an end and marks a beginning.
Promise of the transient: An end
Men are familiar enough with this truth to mark its occurrence throughout the rough sections life is ordinarily cut up into: infancy, childhood, adolescence, manhood, senescence. Indeed, they find the same truth in every day, and every moment of every day, in the smile that introduces a laugh, the tears that end a pent-up storm, the last hammer blow that completes a work, or the first kiss that begins love's consecration. For this is the mark of all things passing; and there is little man is more familiar with than things that do not last. It would be strange, indeed, if a man, recognizing the inevitability of the end of his life, did not look to what that end begins; for all of his experience rises up in protest against one such exception to the general rule of things that pass.
A beginning
As a matter of fact, no man has been able to resist at least one quick glance; no man has been able to resist the formulation and statement of the beginning that springs from the end of a human life. Sometimes the eyes were blinded, lest they see too much; at others, the glance was taken through a smoke-screen of discouragement, or through a bright fog of unfounded optimism. At no time could men get their hands on evidence that would satisfy their minds beyond the one point of the indestructibility of the soul of a man; all else has to be taken from the mouth of God, and there has always been a great reluctance on the part of many men to take their stories from anyone but other men or the devil.
Some concrete promises. Unchristian beginnings: Their variety
At any rate, the opinions of men on the beginnings introduced by death may be roughly divided into ones framed for comfort and the one framed by truth. Some men like their beds hard, others soft; some will insist on their eggs done one way, some another; a cold shower is heroism to one man, plain common sense to another, and so on. For men's ideas of comfort run a strange gamut. Naturally then, the comfortable beginnings assigned for death are a strange lot to be crowded into one hostelry except for their common and profound aversion to facing the truth.
Their comfort
Perhaps the strangest comfort is offered by the promise of oblivion as the sequel to death. This end of all beginnings, because a beginning of nothingness for the individual, may be reached by the shattering blow of annihilation, or the slow, insidious, dreamlike caresses of absorption that soothes the victim into complacency as pleasantly as the death-stroke dealt by bitter cold. It makes little difference whether the individual is absorbed into a future humanity, a present class, a future race, or a monstrous political ideal; the point is that for him, death begins nothing but nothingness.
Others, particularly those whose feet have dragged through a life that has never seen the sparkle of a star or the threat of a raging storm, find their strange comfort in having death introduce a life pretty much like the one they had been used to: a little vaguer perhaps, a little more befuddled, a little more pointless, but the same dull, hopeless routine. How desperately this petty comfort is desired is testified to by the prospering trade of tricksters and the steady, contemptuous cooperation of the devil in ministering it freely to people dulled enough by monotony to find it satisfying. Still others are by no mean. discouraged, not even by solid facts; they are the cheery ones who banish unpleasant things by refusing to look at them. With the best intentions, they set out to flatter humanity, never realizing that their blundering compliments are really unveiled insults. For them, death is the beginning of a state where all men of all time will gather around and just be happy, like the good, sunny, little children they are at heart; they just know that no man is nearly as bad as he thinks he is or as he tries to be. Mischievous, perhaps, but really bad? Impossible; so unpleasant to think about. Besides, God couldn't punish men forever, He just couldn't; think of our sensibilities!
Christian beginnings
As God tells the story of death's sequel, there is enough in it for unlimited inspiration or downright terror; but little indeed for the relaxation implied by comfort as we make our way to it through the maze of life. For the divine account insists that life, in common with all transient things, comes to an end that is indeed a beginning, and a beginning that never ends: death marks the end of man's merit and demerit and begins either the eternal happiness of heaven which he has won by his virtues or the eternal misery of hell which he has chosen by his sins. Once the story has been given us by God, it is not difficult to see its harmony with what we know of man and of God. For our spiritual soul demands eternal life, our composite nature declares there is an end to personal merits; our acts cry out for justice, for reward or punishment; while the nature of God insists that the punishment be eternal and awful, the reward eternal and ineffable.
Every now and then, some utterly degrading evil dares to rear its head in the company of men; the revulsion is complete and the energetic attack to stamp the unspeakable thing out of existence is normally as prompt as a man instinctive gesture to ward off a blow. Every now and then, some vagrant breeze lifts the veil for an instant from the face of heroic virtue and gives men a passing glimpse of the beauty of God; it brings a serene peace, an inspiring lift, a sense of triumph as though men were suddenly made aware again of the ineffable things within their grasp. In each case, men are brought face to face for just an instant with the climaxes of human life and they know deep in their hearts precisely what death means for the future; unmitigated misery of evil, or unalloyed happiness in goodness.
Beginnings of life. Essential happiness of heaven: Its nature
For some men, then, death begins the life of heaven. Much has already been said about the essential, constitutive happiness of heaven, particularly in the beginning of the second volume of this work where the question was treated at considerable length. It will be enough here to recall that the fundamental happiness of heaven consists in the possession of God, the faint shadows of Whose perfection, beauty, and goodness accounted for all that was real, all that was beautiful, all that was good in the space of our mortal days. Another way of saying the same thing, but from the side of man, would be to point out that heaven is the highest perfection of man's highest faculties constituting his complete fulfillment. The two are seen as one when we remember that we possess God through the beatific vision, that face to face, intuitive knowledge which comes from the immediate union of the essence of God with the intellect of man; from that grasp of God flows the unceasing joy of heaven into the will of man, marking the full satisfaction of all his deepest desires and leaving him at complete peace.
That vision of God is an act that begins but never ends. Divinity is not enclosed in the finite limits of a human concept enabling man to say "I know it all." Rather the act of knowledge begun by the union of the divine essence and the human intellect is an eternally enduring moment of penetration into the depths of divine riches; man will never be finished seeing what he will never fully comprehend, though the simplicity of the divine essence assures him of seeing it all. In the essence of God, each man also sees all that pertains to him, all to which he has any link; and along with this knowledge, there is, of course, the knowledge he has gathered in this life and that which comes by the infusion of species directly by God.
There are several points to be noted here, though they have been brought out before. There is, for instance, the fact that heaven demands the most intense and unceasing activity of mind and will from every man; it is not an eternal vacation in the sense of there being absolutely nothing to do. The deep and lasting peace of heaven is not a statement of eternal stagnation but of complete coordination of all man's faculties operating at their fullest; it is a statement of absence of conflict, not of the absence of any signs of life. The complete satisfaction of man's desires in heaven is not to be confused with the satiety that strikes a man down into heavy slumber after a full dinner, or disgusts him with the thing that has satisfied his appetite; these things are true only of the sense appetites in this life. The spiritual appetites of man, whose echoes will be so completely satisfying to man's senses, are not dulled by satisfaction but made more alert, their quiet is not that of a dozing incapacity for further activity but the quiet of a love that has found all its energies engaged in adequate expression of that love.
Time of its bestowal
As every man is judged immediately after death, he is immediately rewarded or punished. Our faith teaches us that there is no long period of waiting, as though the box-office of heaven could not handle the volume of business; man does not have to stand outside of heaven until his body is united to his soul after the resurrection and the last judgment is pronounced. Immediately after sentence has been passed on his soul separated from his body by death, the eternal reward is his. Nor is there any uneasiness in heaven before the last judgment, as though the sentence might be reversed, any more than there is desperate hope in hell that the first judgment might have been a mistake. The first sentence is final; the last judgment will include the body of man in his reward or punishment and vindicate that sentence before the whole world.
The first judgment has to be final for there is no way in which the happiness of heaven can be lost. Certainly divinity is not going to grow feeble or ugly, slow down, wear out, or die. On the side of man, nothing is going to catch a man's eye, tempting him to greener fields for he will be in possession of all goodness, his every desire fully satisfied, his mind will have fast hold on the supreme truth; the mistakes prompted by ignorance, passion, unfulfilled desires are all ruled out by the very nature of happiness. That this final goal might be snatched from him by some external force is altogether out of the question: men or devils cannot do this, nor can God with out going back on His divine word -- that is, without ceasing to be God. Indeed, if there were not that complete assurance of the eternal duration and complete security of his happiness, it would be absurd to talk of a man's being supremely happy; for as long as there is the slightest chink in the armor of happiness, man will insert the wedge of worry to make himself miserable.
Apparent difficulties
Despite the definite inequalities that will be found in heaven, there will be no cause for rumblings of discontent. Arguing from our own experience with men, it might seem close to a miracle that there be different mansions in heaven, one greater than the other, and yet there be no envy and everyone perfectly satisfied. It is beyond question, assured by the faith, that there will be a distinct gradation of perfection in heaven, based radically on the degree of charity possessed by each man at death, and immediately on the degree of the light of glory given to each man in proportion to his charity. Each will see the same divine essence; but each will penetrate it in proportion to the degree of that supernatural light of glory which makes the vision possible at all. The difficulty comes up only because it is forgotten that every man will see to his fullest capacity, will drink a full cup of his happiness, will have as much of eternal bliss as he can possibly have or possibly want. Under such conditions, it is difficult to call up any vaguest image of a discontented man.
What seems like an even more serious impediment to heaven's happiness is the clear vision the blessed will have of hell. How can a man be happy seeing all those others enduring the eternal and unspeakable miseries of hell ? The very prospect sounds inhuman, even brutal. Certainly it would require a considerable degree of corruption and perversion to enjoy the sufferings of others, let alone endure them, precisely as sufferings. On the other hand, pity must be reasonable or we are ashamed of its appearance, conscious that it is sentimentality of the flabbiest sort. A surgeon can deliberately inflict pain on his patients because it is a reasonable thing to do in the interests of health; while the mother who allows an abscess to eat away the life of her child because she cannot bear to submit it to the pain of the surgeon's knife is being eminently unreasonable, inhuman, and brutal. In heaven, there is nothing of the unreasonable; even pity responds to reason's control and never edges over into inhuman sentimentality. Looking at the damned from heaven, the blessed see men, and angels who bombard them with hate, who desire nothing better than that the blessed be dragged down to their misery; they see men in the tortures they have chosen, being punished for sins they still refuse to renounce, undergoing the justice of an absolutely just God because they would have it that way. Under such circumstances, pity is unreasonable; a joy that gloats over this misery is utterly inhuman and has no place in heaven; but a joy in the perfection of the justice of God is quite another thing.
Accidental happiness of heaven: Dowries
The divine virtues of faith, hope, and charity find their counterpart and perfection in the vision, the attainment, and the fruition or abiding joy of heaven. If these three be taken as acts, they are an integral part of the essential happiness of heaven; but, taken in the sense of the habits from which these acts proceed, they are classed among the accidental joys of heaven and described, with a moving touch of very human simplicity, as the dowries of the soul. Since the idea of a dowry has long been extinct in America, it may not be out of place to explain that this sum of money given by the bride's parents to the groom at marriage was calculated to make smoother the difficult task of building up a common life by relieving the husband of the added financial burden of a wife and children, at least in the beginnings of married life. At the very least, this deprived the husband of all title to grumbling at the discovery that two could not live as cheaply as one and love was not enough to support life, while it protected the wife from falling into the abjectness more or less proper to an object of charity. The dowry, of course, added nothing to her womanhood, nor did it give her any further essential capacities for wifehood or motherhood; it was an ornament which the young bride wore proudly on her wedding day.
In heaven, the soul is the spouse of God, starting out on the fullness of a common life more startlingly different than ever was married life to a bride. There is no likelihood of a grumbling husband in this case, to be sure; the bills would not pile up at the end of the month; nor will there be any cringing abjectness at the threat of a diminished allowance. Nevertheless the bride in this heavenly marriage needs a principle or habit which will make the act of vision joyously connatural; another which will make the fullness of love which is fruition an easy, almost natural thing; still another to remove all impediments to the full and complete possession of God. Not that life with God will be hard, but that it might be wholly joyous, these three ornaments of the soul are given to the bride on her entrance into the eternal marriage of heaven.
Aureoles
Because this whole life of heaven is so far beyond the powers of our cleverest words, we are forced, again and again, to fall back on metaphorical language. Thus, for instance, the essential reward, revolving around the uncreated Godhead, is called the "golden crown" which is given to every man who enters heaven. Obviously, this is not something perched on the side of a man's head, but something rooted deep in his soul. The same language must be used of the accidental joys of heaven which, while not pertaining to the essence of it, make up its full integrity. The "little crowns," or aureoles, are the joys that come, not directly from the essence of God, but from the perfection of the works a man has done, for the outstanding victories he was won; again, these are not piled one on another over a man's head; rather, they are primarily for his soul. These "little crowns," three in number, correspond to the outstanding victories to be won in the course of a human life: the victory of the virgin, of the doctor or preacher, and of the martyr. These are outstanding victories for they represent the successful outcome of particularly difficult fights: against the flesh, against the enemies of faith, and to the point of death itself.
Fruits
The special accidental "fruits" of heaven, envisioned as the full development of the seed of the word of God in men, are the joys that follow, not from the vision of God or the perfection of a man's labors, but from man's own condition, his spirituality. Theologians make a definite correlation between these fruits and the virtue of continence, for it is this virtue which is the barrier to the invasion of man's soul by unruly passion, and so the immediate means by which a man embraces the spiritual to the rejections of the carnal life.
Friends and externals
The preceding chapter has already dealt with the sublime qualities of the glorified bodies of the saints. It is necessary here to do no more than insist on the integral humanity of the blessed after the resurrection. Then, the blessed in heaven will be men and women, composed of body and soul, with the full perfection of both body and soul, perfection not only of being but of operation. When this is said, all else is said, keeping in mind the peculiar perfections of the body outlined in the preceding chapter. Thus, for instance, there is no point in asking if there will be a renewal of friendships in heaven; of course there will, for friendship is an integral part of human life. Will men talk there, laugh, walk, hear, see, stand up and sit down? Of course. These are human beings, blessed human beings, but none the less human. This is not a distortion or denial of human life, but a divine perfection of it.
Beginning of death: Existence and eternity of hell
All this is but one side of the story of what death begins. Uncomfortable as the truth may be, the fact is that there is a hell as well as a heaven, that death not only begins an eternal life, it also begins an eternal death; there is not only adequate reward, there is also adequate punishment. We have it on the authority of the infallible word of God that there is a hell and that in that hell devils and men who die in mortal sin are punished eternally. This, you understand, is not something submitted for the judgment of our individual taste; it will not do to decide that we shall accept some of the truths of revelation -- pleasant truths like grace, the Incarnation, the sacraments, and heaven -- and reject one that is particularly displeasing. To reject any one is to reject them all, for it is to reject the reason for accepting any one of them, namely, the infallible veracity of the God Who has revealed them all.
Nature of its punishment: Pain of loss
With the fact of an eternal hell certain from revelation, the reasonableness of the fact is by no means obscure. By mortal sin, a man breaks off his friendship with God, giving his heart to something less than God; with charity gone, then, man is in exile from God and charity is not to be recovered after death. Inevitably, the exile from divine life must endure eternally; which is precisely the very essence of hell. To look at it from another point of view, by mortal sin, a man chooses a last end other than God; dying in that sin, his will remains firm in that choice. In other words, he wants exclusion from God eternally, only by violence could he be dragged into heaven; hell assures him of getting what he wants. From the other side of the picture, his offense was committed against an infinite Being and is, therefore, infinite no matter how quickly the act was over and done with; it deserves an infinite punishment, a thing impossible to inflict upon a creature except from the angle of duration. Lest there be any question about this, let it be remembered that the whole reason of the necessity of the Incarnation was that only the Son of God could give the infinite satisfaction demanded for man's infinite offense.
It might also be argued that as long as a man's guilt endures, he should be punished for it; and the guilt of a man dying in mortal sin, judged immediately after death, is not wiped out by the passage of any number of ages in hell. The angle of adequate sanction, too, is no light matter; if hell were not to be eternal, a man might well offend God as he pleased and laugh at Him and His punishments, sure that there would some day be an end to them and then he could look forward to an eternity of happiness. Piling up arguments, however, does not bolster the certainty of the truth and the eternity of hell; that certainty needs no support for it rests on the word of God Himself.
To understand the nature of the punishment of hell it is necessary to recall our previous analysis of sin in Volume II of this series. In every mortal sin there is a double element: a turning away from God, and a turning to some created good in place of God. The first is punished in hell by its perpetuation, by an eternal separation from God that is the direct opposite of the eternal union with God which makes up the essential happiness of the blessed in heaven; this is the essential punishment of hell, the pain of loss. Obviously, there is no variety or gradation in this punishment; everyone in hell suffers this, and equally. This is by far the sharpest, the most penetrating pain of hell; for by it, the damned are deprived of the greatest good, God Himself, and they are keenly conscious of their loss. They know then that the goal of life, the one source of order, the one climax of living, is lost to them, not for a day, a year or a century, but forever; their desperation is complete, there is not the slightest grounds for the wildest hope. This is infinite justice, bolstered by infinite power, proceeding against an infinite offense; and there is no escape.
Pain of sense: Eternity and reality of hell fire
The turning to a created good as a last end is punished in hell by what theologians have called the pain of sense. While this has occupied the center of the stage in human considerations of hell, it is actually secondary; it has been given first place only because we find it as impossible, now, to appreciate the loss of the Supreme God as we do to express the ineffable possession of it. This pain of sense is inflicted by the fire of hell. Whatever the lengths of aversion to which sentimentality has pushed modern discussion, the reality of this fire of hell is so universal and so ancient a doctrine of the theologians that question of it would be an extreme of temerariousness. There is indeed hell-fire, and it is real fire; by it the devils and damned souls are punished until the resurrection of the bodies of men, when the punishment of the fire is extended to these risen bodies.
It is quite clear that such fire must operate supernaturally, as an instrument of divine justice and to effects entirely beyond the natural powers of fire. There can be no question of burning devils or separated souls; just how fire punishes them is by no means clear, although it was Thomas's opinion that its action was primarily one of limiting activities, hemming in the proudest creatures of the universe. After the resurrection, fire's natural effects will be produced on the bodies of the damned. without however consuming them, that is, there will be a miraculous effect here, too, analogous to that of the fire which named in a bush without consuming it to awake the wonder of Moses.
Inequality of pain of sense
In the punishment of the pain of sense there is plenty of room for inequality. It is inflicted in proportion to man's conversion to created good in preference to God, and the degrees of men's absorption in the world of creatures are practically infinite. Here, then, there is a kind of hierarchy of misery corresponding to the hierarchy of happiness in heaven; these are the mansions of hell in sharp contrast to the heavenly mansions prepared by the Savior of men. There is no easing up of either the pain of loss or the pain of sense, no gradual mitigation, for there is no change in the reason for both punishments -- the perverse will of the sinner; there is no escape from the eternity of these punishments through a dulling of perception, a gradual slipping into unconsciousness, or eventual oblivion. It is of faith that these punishments are eternal and without mitigation.
Accidental sufferings: Of intellect and will
Artists are not to be taken literally when they picture the misery of hell by the medium of extreme ugliness and distortion. In fact, nothing of nature is changed or lost in hell. The devils have their full complement of perfect natural knowledge, men retain all the knowledge they have stored up in this life; yet that very knowledge, in both cases, is but another source of suffering, keeping vividly in their minds both the good they have lost and the evil that has reduced them to their present misery. They have had a glimpse of the joyous glory of the blessed, the splendor of the risen Christ, and the perfection of the justice of God at the last judgment; yet, there is not an iota of consolation in any of this for one to whom it is lost forever.
Of company of others
Rather, it is the other way around. The wills of the damned are confirmed in adversity. While there is a full cup of remorse that never empties though it is steadily drunk, the sharpest of regrets for the punishments that must be undergone, there is no repentance for the sins committed; sin is not surrendered and God embraced; rather sin is held fast while God is cursed, the more so as the justice of His punishment is beyond cavil. Love, then, is something totally foreign to the very atmosphere of hell, while hate is of the very air the damned breathe: they hate God as the inflicter of punishments, they hate the blessed as having all that they lack, they hate each other as integral constituents of their present misery, and they thoroughly hate and despise themselves. They would willingly accept annihilation, oblivion, as an escape from their torments; but they know there is no escape, not even so bitter an escape as this. It is indeed a terrible thing to fall under the justice of the living God.
Limbo
The horror of hell might well strike a spark of fear from the heart of a saint; but, while we shrink from the grim prospects of it, it is well to remember that no man slides into hell, as it were by accident. This is a place that must be deliberately entered; a man must knock at the door perseveringly demanding admittance, for no man can get into hell without the passport of his own actual mortal sin which proves he has rejected God. A fifth column in hell is a complete impossibility; there are no victims of unjust court procedure there protesting their innocence. It is quite impossible, then, for an infant who is incapable of personal sins to get into hell; the same holds for idiots, the congenitally insane, and, in general, those who are incapable of sin. If these have not received the gift of supernatural life in the sacrament of Baptism, obviously they cannot get into heaven. Their's is an intermediate place called Limbo; a place of natural happiness, free of the torments of hell, yet without the divine perfections of heaven.
Conclusion. Aversions to eternal beginnings: To hell
It is not surprising that we should shrink from hell; in fact, that very aversion is one of the first and surest guarantees of avoiding the place, particularly since a man can act into it only by deliberately choosing the road and furnishing himself with the proper identification cards. What is surprising, and not at all flattering to humanity, is that men should shrink from the truth of hell, as if the place of eternal torment could be obliterated by our denial of it. It is a triumph of unreason so to deal with any truth; it is the height of unreason to give a divine truth treatment of this kind.
There is the usual scramble of reasons behind the unreason, rendering it to some extent reasonable in the sense of explicable; but dissolving none of its unreasonableness to the consequence of making it excusable. Certainly, there is a strong dash of anthropomorphism in our modern refusal to take hell seriously; this is not the way human justice would work, so it cannot be though the whole thing is advanced, not as an implement of human, but of divine justice. There is, too, that strange modern fear of going beyond the field of the sensible; hell is not sensible, we cannot experiment with it, while eternity completely escapes our present experience, so of course there can be no hell. Unquestionably, here and there, there is an element of cowardice that shrinks in terror from the responsibility of acts possible of such momentous consequences. In the case of the first two viewpoints, a man wraps himself in a fog of unreason that allows him to approach the abyss with a certain sense of security until he has actually plunged into it. But in the third, a man begins to taste his hell long before he has swung open the infernal portals; indeed, one of the most horrible characteristics of hell is becoming a modern commonplace precisely through this fear of life. The devils and the damned would, but cannot, embrace annihilation as an escape from their punishments; living men are actually embracing the prospect of personal oblivion, not as an escape from punishment, but in preference to the risk involved in the living of human life.
To heaven
It is somewhat harder to understand how the prospect of heaven can leave men uninterested, indifferent, or positively hostile. One reason may well be the materialist contentment with the world in which he moves, or rather, with that part of it which his blinded eyes can see; this world has been kind to him -- for materialism is an error for the prosperous or those with a prospect of prosperity -- and life seems long, with a great stretch of comforts still awaiting him. He might be willing to settle for present comforts; unfortunately for him, life does not end at death but begins there. It may be that many men have pretty well p1umbed the depths of despair; they have despaired of God and despaired of men, so they steadfastly refuse to look beyond the moment when they will leave men behind even though at that moment they must face God. But the most extensive basis of our modern American disregard of heaven undoubtedly lies in the ignorance or contempt of the supernatural -- a natural consequence of positivism's confinement of man to the prison of nature -- and a thorough misunderstanding of the nature of Christian doctrine on both hell and heaven.
The truth of the beginnings
Diluted Christianity has done much to further this tragic condition. There has been a kind of heartless mercy in this dilution, the weakness of compromise, and the kindness of a lie. When fundamentals are in question, this sweetly corruptive delicacy destroys all it touches; certainly, this half-hearted Christianity is fundamentally destructive of man and his acts as well as of God and His acts, though the thing is advanced as a favor to man. Hell must be taken without appeal to sentiment, without a softening process that eliminates it; it must be taken, as truth must always be taken, literally, straight, with its full force. And heaven must be taken without dilution, with no recourse to a symbolic fog that reduces it to the level of subjective ideals or objective myths for simple people. These two are divine truths; in face of them, man does not choose, he accepts or he is lost.
Naturally all appeal is removed from the prospect of heaven if it is looked on as a giant almshouse with no quarters for the rich and fully equipped with all facilities for the poor to gorge themselves on all the things they missed in their lives on earth. If heaven is to be a place of wholesale revenge where those who were persecuted on earth have their innings doing to others what had been done on earth, it would be a good place to keep away from if a man wanted peace and quiet. If it is a kind of eternal watering-place where the fatigued can sit in the sun eternally doing absolutely nothing, it is a place of torpor rather than of happiness. The point is that heaven is none of these things. True, it has been promised to the poor, but to the poor in spirit; to the persecuted, but to those persecuted for justice sake; it has been described as a place of eternal rest, but of rest for the soul.
In other words, heaven is not at all a simple reversal of the lives men lived on earth; rather it is a completion, a fulfillment, a maturity of what was begun on earth. The poor in spirit, the persecuted for justice sake, those who have exercised their souls in virtue to the point of weariness are not the miserable men of earth; they are the most supremely happy of all the people who walk the face of the earth, regardless of the circumstances of their external life. Heaven comes to these people, not as the answer to his dream would burst on an astonished beggar, the realization of his idyll to a lazy man, or the agony of an enemy to a man on fire with hate; it comes as manhood comes to a child.
Determination of eternal beginnings
The mansions of hell, no less than the mansions of heaven, are not makeshift shacks thrown up after the darkness of death has come down upon life. Both are built slowly, carefully, stone by stone, through all the abundant moments that measure the length of a man's life. A man does not achieve hell by a last minute quirk of divine judgment, but when he embraces sin; a man does not win heaven when God embraces Him eternally but when he embraces God despite the alluring promises of all that is contrary to God. Heaven or hell, in other words, never comes as a shock; it is the harvest that was planted so long ago, watched, cultivated, defended and now reaped in all its fullness. It is the house at the end of the road that could lead nowhere else. In the case of heaven, it is home; and all along the road there were signs marking the path, help proferred to pilgrims, and directions to be had for the asking. Arriving there, man has come home to the God Who made him.