What is humankind's purpose in life? What does it mean to be happy? What is happiness, and where do we find it? These are some of the questions I have had in mind for the past few years, and ones which are very hard to fathom, much less answer. However, these are the questions which Thomas Aquinas attempts to address and even answer in his book Summa Theoligiae: Purpose and Happiness, Volume 16, Questions 1-5. In these five sections, Aquinas (henceforth known as "A") practically spells out-in his opinion-what our purpose on earth is, what makes us happy, what happiness is, and how to gain and keep it. If a person totally and completely believes in what A spells out in these sections, they would gain a philosophical roadmap to steer by for the rest of their life. Although A makes it very easy to follow his ideas, there is a lot of superfluous information which served only to confuse me a little. So in writing the paper I will attempt to boil down the ideas presented by A and perhaps make them a little more accessible to the common reader.
             In this volume of the Summa Theologiae, A lays his ideas out in a very simple format. His five main points are divided into five "questions" in the volume. Furthermore, each of the five questions includes eight main points which serve to explain and prove the main question at hand. In the volume, the first question that A addresses is the question of our purpose in life.
             All people at some point in their life contemplate the reason they were put on earth in the first place, from the lowest bum laying on a sewer grate to the highest billionaire in his multimillion dollar mansion. That lowly vagabond may curse God and rant at the injustice done him, but still thinks about his purpose regardless. The almighty billionaire knows why he is on the planet: to make money and have control over other people! The point is, everyone contemplates the reason for their...