Chapter 174 — In what consists the misery of man, as regards the punishment of the damned

Since the wretchedness to which vice leads is opposed to the happiness to which virtue leads, whatever pertains to wretchedness must be understood as being the opposite of all we have said about happiness. We pointed out above that, as regards his intellect, man’s ultimate happiness consists in the full vision of God; while as regards man’s affection, happiness consists in the immovable repose of his will in the first Good. Therefore, man’s extreme misery will consist in the fact that his intellect is completely shut off from the divine light, and that his affections are stubbornly turned away from God’s goodness. And this is the chief misery of the damned. It is known as the punishment of loss.

However, as is clear from what we have said already, evil cannot wholly exclude good, since every evil is founded on some good. Consequently, although misery is opposed to that happiness which will be free from all evil, nonetheless it must be rooted in a good of nature. The good of an intellectual nature consists in the fact that the intellect looks to the truth and the will tends to the good. But every truth and every good is derived from the first and supreme good, which is God. Therefore, the intellect of a man situated in the extreme misery of hell must have some knowledge of God and some love of God, namely, according as he is the principle of natural perfections. This is natural love. But the soul in hell cannot know and love God as he is in himself, nor so far as he is the principle of virtue or of grace or of any other goods by which intellectual nature is brought to perfection by him; for this is the love that belongs to virtue and glory.

Nevertheless, men buried in the misery of hell are not deprived of free choice, even though their will is immovably attached to evil. In the same way the blessed retain the power of free choice, even though their will is fixed on the Good. For freedom of choice, properly speaking, has to do with choice, and choice is concerned with the means leading to an end. Now, the last end is naturally desired by every being. Hence all men, by the very fact that they are intellectual, naturally desire happiness as their last end, and they do so with such immovable fixity of purpose that no one can wish to be miserable. But this is not incompatible with free will, which extends only to means leading to the end.

The fact that one man places his happiness in this particular good while another places it in that good does not pertain to this or that man insofar as he is a man, since in such opinions and desires men differ. Rather, this variety is explained by each man’s condition. By this I mean an emotion or habit; and so if it were to change, some other good would appeal to the man as most desirable. And this appears most clearly in men who are led by emotion to crave some good as the best: when the emotion, whether of anger or lust, dies away, they no longer judge that good as they did before. Habits are more permanent, and so men persevere more steadily in seeking things pursued by habit. Yet, so long as habit is capable of change, man’s desire and his judgment as to what constitutes the last end are subject to change.

This possibility is open to men only during the present life, while they are in the state of changeability. After this life the soul is not subject to change as regards alteration, because such a change can affect it only indirectly, in consequence of some change undergone by the body. However, when the body is resumed, the soul will not be governed by changes occurring in the body, but rather the other way around. For at present the soul is infused into a body that has been generated of seed, and therefore is fittingly affected by changes experienced in the body. But then the body will be united to a preexisting soul, and so will be completely governed by the latter’s conditions. Accordingly, whatever end the soul is found to have set for itself at the time of death, it will remain in that end forever, desiring it as the best, whether it is good or evil. This is the meaning of Ecclesiastes 11:3: In the place where the tree falls, there it will lie.

After this life, therefore, those who are found good at death will have their wills forever fixed in good. But those who are found evil will be forever obstinate in evil.