He who is dominated by his thirst for happiness bars himself from access to true and deep happiness. In his possession and enjoyment of any good, he fails to reach the level of depth where that good reflects the light of God and reveals its ties with eternity. He always remains stuck on the plane of the perishable. The possession of no gift of fortune can ever bring him genuine satisfaction. It is as though every good he has secured spoke to him in the end only words of disappointment: “I am not what thou seekest”; and his hunger and thirst drives him, as it did Faust, further and further across the limitless plains of breadth rather than down the deep paths that converge in the Center, where alone peace and consummate happiness can be found.

Respect for justice without hunger for it

To these two classes of men—the souls that hunger and thirst either not at all, or not after justice—the standard antithesis, intelligible even on a purely natural level, is embodied by the type of man filled with hunger and thirst for that which is important in itself, objectively valuable, and pleasing to God.

They are not very frequently to be met with—the persons belonging to this category, who in the context of every situation attend above all to the question of what is objectively valuable and what is not; who consider everything sub specie of this question, instead of concentrating on the gratification of their subjective needs. Now here, again, we shall have to distinguish various grades of perfection. The lowest degree of this high-minded minority of mankind is found in that class of persons, still comparatively numerous, who do take account of the demands implied in objective value and of the commandments of God inasmuch as they are anxious to avoid any conflict with His will—so far as their own conduct is concerned.

Strictly speaking, it is still the goods of this earth that constitute the object of their longing and striving; they are guided by the purpose of achieving a fine career, of increasing their possessions, of acquiring honors and consideration; they envisage marriage or friendship in the light of the happiness it may provide for them.

But their pursuit of such aims stops short wherever it might involve a transgression of the commandments of God. They display a real interest in justice, accepting it as a corrective, that is, a check placed upon their primary and proper interests. As a loyal citizen respects the laws of the State and seeks to realize his wishes strictly within the limits of legality, so these men are ready to respect the commandments of God and to confine their pursuit of happiness to the limits prescribed by them. They respect justice, but they do not hunger and thirst after justice.