Desire precedes _consecutio_, and pleasure follows upon it; but the act of getting possession, in which lies happiness, is distinct from both.

This is illustrated by the case of the miser having his happiness in the mere possession of money; and the position is essentially the same as Butler's, in regard to our appetites and desires, that they blindly seek their objects with no regard to pleasure.

Thomas concludes that the _consecutio_, or happiness, is an act of the intelligence; what pleasure there is being a mere accidental accompaniment.
Distinguishing between two phases of the intellect--the theoretic and the practical--in the one of which it is an end to itself, but in the other subordinated to an external aim, he places true happiness in acts of the self-sufficing theoretic intelligence.

In this life, however, such a constant exercise of the intellect is not possible, and accordingly what happiness there is, must be found, in great measure, in the exercise of the practical intellect, directing and governing the lower desires and passions.

This twofold conception of happiness is Aristotelian, even as expressed by Thomas under the distinction of perfect and imperfect happiness; but when he goes on to associate perfect happiness with the future life only, to found an argument for a future life from the desire of a happiness more perfect than can be found here, and to make the pure contemplation, in which consists highest bliss, a vision of the divine essence face to face, a direct cognition of Deity far surpassing demonstrative knowledge or mortal faith--he is more theologian than philosopher, or if a philosopher, more Platonist than Aristotelian.
The condition of perfect happiness being a theoretic or intellectual state, the _visio_, and not the _delectatio_, is consistently given as its central fact; and when he proceeds to consider the other questions of Ethics, the same superiority is steadily ascribed to the intellectual function.