The Science of Happiness
The Science of Happiness Rough repeated humiliation has lost faith in his star, and has been rendered powerless and wretched. Often he is unduly unhappy, because he has been told that he is miserable. So many maladies have been sug- gested to him that he tosses in pain upon his bed, as if he were really ill. He has been led to beliwe that he cannot live beyond the age. Of eighty years, that he can develop only by exterminating his fellow-creatures or by laying down his life for them. He has been taught the prejudices of race, of religion, of riches. As a result man dies before his time, lives in a state of permanent warfare, hates his brother, creates around himself an atmosphere of envy, and suffers from the wounds that are thus inflicted. Man is so accustomed to Hearing his misfortunes discussed that it is very difficult for him to listen to those who speak to him of his happiness. His philosophy is mournful, as well as his morality, his poetry, his literature, and especially his history. He has been painted in such gloomy hues that he believes the brighter portraits to be inferior in their essence. He does not seem to understand that it is much easier to colour things black, just as it is easier to do evil than to do good. But man is full of contradictions. He desires long life and he yearns for happiness; yet in reality he lives only a small portion of his existence and patiently sustains himself upon woes which he creates of his own free will or permits others to impose. We shall never be able to do enough to combat these tendencies, which are so harmful to our destinies. " Conflict is noble, and hope is sublime/' to use the words" of Plato. So let us enter upon a battle for our happiness, a battle that is now more necessary than ever. A transformed society requires different thoughts for its guidance. The people should not only possess sovereign power, but their life and their virtues should also become sovereign. It is high time to restore to the people their happiness, just as their political rights have been redeemed. We are wrong to give our compreHension of life the same immobility that ancient Egypt bestowed upon her gods. The time has come for the reshaping of our ideas of goodness, longing, sorrow, as well as of happiness. But let us reassure disenchanted souls. We are not members of the Pangloss family, who believe that everything is for the best in this best of worlds. Our greatness presupposes our woes. But these are not life, nor do they make man. Everything depends upon the angle from which they are beheld. Democritus laughed, and Heraclitus wept over the vices of men, for all our acts seem comical to some, tragical to others. The best course is to apply them all to the advantage of our happiness. After all, if we consider man happier than he really is, perhaps some additional happiness will follow. But misfortune, in any case, will have gained nothing. The reader will pardon; the preceding explanation. It is not out of place. Men may be saddened with impunity, but even the desire to throw the windows wide open for the entrance of warmth and light is beginning to be regarded as dangerous. Let no one be repelled by the word science. There is science and science. The science referred to in the title of this is full of tenderness. It is free from dogmatism and contains no imperative. Like the ancient Peripatetics, who taught in the form of off-hand conversations, it will strive to disengage precepts from facts, as the bees draw the honey from the flowers. Among so many useless sciences, it will at least possess the merit of dealing with the essential concerns of ,the entire human race. Let us hope that, on this account, many things will be forgiven. Reduced to the questions which are in the power of us all, the Science of Happiness would deserve to be constructed by all men. An optimistic science, it must be founded by the combined efforts of all who will become its beneficiaries and its artisans. Advantageous and charitable, perhaps it will play in the society of the future the part assumed by the " domestic philosophers" among the wealthy Romans. Rn There is something touching in the almost divine mission which the majority of the subtle thinkers of Greece accomplished for Rome. They softened the vexations of existence, preached calmness of soul and the joys of living. While reading Seneca and Tacitus, we are pleasantly impressed by the details they furnish concerning these ingenious comforters. 'They knew how to Render death desirable and misfortune attractive. Canus Julius goes to execution accompanied by his philosopher. Livy, after the death of his son Drusus, seeks in conversations with Areus solace for his grief-stricken soul. Minucius suffers horribly at seeing the Emperor's favours turned from him, but Cascilius knows how to convince him that heaven is in this guise sending to him unexpected happiness. The rich had their philosophers as modern society women have their regular confessors. But the philosophers were only in the pay of the wealthy, and the confessors, alas! Have lost their curative virtues. Perhaps the Science of Happiness will be able to replace both, and become the vivifying spring which all souls thirsting for relief will approach to drink. Ill ? Personal ambition holds no place in these pages. The author's merit?if merit he has?does not extend beyond that of striking the hour of assembly for the mutual work. By way of contribution, we will offer a few bricks for the future edifice. Perhaps, some day, they will be rejected as useless. What does that matter! The author will console himself. The certainty that others will triumph Where he failed will henceforth reward him for his defeat. The Science of Happiness promises much. It will perform still more. It will be a delightful science, filled with the flowers of experience and, above all, with the smiles of happy mortals. Tears, our inevitable companions on this earth, will doubtless also appear. But they will be quiet tears, freed from individual bitterness, in order to be of service to our fellow-men. Pre-eminently an altruistic science, it will bear all the residuum of selfishness, of pleasure, and of personal troubles toward the great river of general felicity. A charming science, animated by indulgent kindness, it will envelop, as if in a radiant atmosphere, the terrible things of life: poverty and death itself. It is an attractive science, being devoid of formulas. It is a free science, liberated from all the morose fetters that.hamper enthusiasm. It will also be a science of equality, and will salute with the same contagious good-will the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, the famous and the obscure. In behalf of all, of the life of all, it will strive to release the soul of goodness from evil things, the Smile of happiness from the wry faces of life. In its presence, everything will harmonize in pursuit of the same object f Ho simplify, to increase, and to diffuse happiness upon the earth. In the midst of the deafening uproar of life, in the midst of the many dissonances that separate man and men, it will endeavour to find the celestial bond which, through the soul and the union of souls, unites all mortals for happiness. To both the lowly and the lofty ones of earth, this divine science will sing of the beauty and the power of the treasure placed within themselves, far from all attack. It will demonstrate that, while running after things that are often illusive, and almost always inaccessible, the pursuer forgets to pluck the delicious fruits that adorn the road. Weary of our unrealisable desires, a prey to phantoms which attract us and then vanish cruelly at our approach, we shall perceive sources of happiness which with the utmost sweetness offer themselves to the poorest, most neglected, most unfortunate beings in the world. Is there Such a Possibility of Happiness? During all the time that man has laughed or wept upon this earth, he has felt the stirring of the same longing. Before him, as the ultimate goal, ever remains the ideal of happiness, the supreme crown of all the efforts of his life. Sublime in his disinterestedness, or repulsive in his egotism, man does not cease to regard the problem of happiness as the principal subject of his dreams and of his thoughts. Variations occur only in his comprehension; for, as the lover of pleasure will seek to enrich himself to satisfy the appetites of his body and of his soul, the ascetic will strive to retire from the world to obtain in his solitude the happiness for which he has an equal thirst. He understands it in a different way, but he desires it no less eagerly. Consciously or unconsciously, the pleasure-lover and the ascetic will move Toward the same summit of the mountain, though following different paths. The long distance that separates us from the end is toilsome to traverse. Many travellers before arriving endure great sufferings. The majority die on the way. The few who attain the goal of their efforts find themselves bruised, ill, or mortally wounded. The victory, once realised, appears illusive. They perceive tardily that they have wasted their lives in trying to seize a butterfly which cannot be caught. Instead of the anticipated happiness, an unutterable melancholy takes possession of their souls. Facing the irreparable, they succumb, discouraged, often infinitely miserable. Fewer still are those who profited by a sudden light illumining their path. They took advantage of it to change their direction. Who knows? Perhaps they only changed their Calvary. The dirges of unhappmess which we hear are very sad, but sadder still are those that pass unheard.
II. Despair even inspires a species of terror. Beware of the writers who would dare to maintain its inanity, or oppose to its sneers a moderate trust in life. A refined thinker, such as Paul Stapfer, will not Hesitate to compare them with "fat hogs that grunt contentedly over being well fed and warm in their stay. "To admit and to cry out our woes7' said Richard Jefferies, uis the duty of all beings endowed with reason, for in vain will the worst pessimist describe things in the darkest hues. All that he can say will still remain far inferior to the smallest particle of the reality." Schopenhauer considers all those who do not believe that life is the worst of frauds, narrowminded and shallow Philistines. Dissatisfaction with life is, in its essence, aristocratic. It is somewhat like a garment made in the latest fashion, in harmony with the most refined taste of the most up-to-date leaders. Almost all of those who take seriously their character of missionaries of the truth to men, do not cease to proclaim the Jaw of desolation and of disenchantment. An aggravated melancholy invades our souls like an impetuous torrent sweeping away defenceless houses. Not only do we no longer dare to resist it, but we prevent opposition by covering with ridicule those who are striving to build embankments. "Yes," they say in their turn, "fate is often hard and unjust. Our sufferings are numerous and our pangs in living Burst forth at every moment of our existence. But precisely because we are living in the darkness, let us try to bring into this gloom a few rays of hope and joy." Wretchedly mocked and scorned, these men remain silent, making way for those who mourn and weep.
III. So wails and lamentations echo around us. Everybody believes and calls himself miserable. Does not this result from a simple misunderstanding? Are we not the victims of a mirage which is all the more dangerous because it constantly increases the number of those who are sacrificed? Should the sole end of progress be to augment our distress, while increasing our comfort? There are numerous scientists who assert that the woe which burdens the human race will become more and more heavy and fatal. Shall we not say that the progress of human evolution displays itself in an inverse ratio to the advance of happiness? What is this inevitable law which would shut us within the tragical dilemma of being able to develop only to the detriment of our happiness? One phenomenon impresses us when we consider our fellow creatures. While advancing in life, they usually forget the present and live only In the future. When the latter deceives their hopes, they recognise the fact that they have not lived. Around us, before us, behind us, therefore, we behold only people who have fallen on the road, often duped, and almost always sorrowful and wretched. The moralists usually regard happiness with inconceivable scorn. It drags along behind ethical systems like an importunate shadow. Yet, without the intervention of Happiness, there is nothing stable in human institutions or in moral systems. When it is lacking, there is nothing real, nothing solid in the foundations of life. What is the advantage of overlooking its importance? Happiness, like the gods of ancient Olympus, always arrives in time to make its weight felt in the life of human beings.
IV. The principal problem of our modern life consists in reconciling tfie old and the new faith. The bygone one taught us that life on earth is only a dung-heap out of which grows the invisible Paradise of our dreams; that of the present day believes that life has a purpose in itself. We must be happy on earth, with the assurance of being still more so in the future life, say the believers. We must be happy on earth, for future happiness is only a deceptive mirage, say the sceptics. But both should think, like Goethe, that the object of life is life itself.
V. Adapting a quotation from Plato, the Middle Ages drove Happiness from the city. Ranged behind Kant, modern moralists banish from morality all thoughts of happiness. In the history of so many systems that have fallen into ruin, perhaps only the Stoics and the Cynics have spoken of its divinity humanely, with love for those whom it shuns and with joy for those who benefit by its miraculous touch. This has not prevented their doctrines from being thoroughly moral. They knew, first of all, how to identify Happiness with Truth. The Stoics, it is true, had the courage to exalt Happiness. But their Happiness, in its essenle, is sorrowful. It has a dismal severity. It is always mourning lost illusions. Their joy in life is only the serene thought of death. Yet they take leave of the living like guests rising from an endless banquet. Marcus Aurelius vainly teaches that we ought not to grieve. His soul exhales poison. The divine balance of the best of men is merely a myth. We meet with it only in Renan, who Transports the serenity of his own soul into those of his heroes. We might say of the joy of living and of the happiness of the Stoics what Walter Pater has said of the thoughts of Marcus Aurelius: that we ought to move only with solemn, muffled tread, as it beseems us to walk in a house where lies a dead man. They do not weep; they do not tear their hair; they do not give themselves up to paroxysms of boundless grief. This is much. Only the victories of recent life can illumine with rays of joy and true happiness the austere abode bequeathed to us by our ancestors. VI, Vainly is happiness driven from the cares of the mind. It returns invisible, through doors which are believed to be hermetically sealed. It takes its place triumphantly in spite of all prohibitions. The noblest of doctrines, Kant's categorical imperative,;with its absolute moral necessity, conceived outside of and even in opposition to every idea of Happiness, crumbles logically, when deprived of its support. When a voice commands, Schopenhauer has justly said, it proceeds from within or from without us. It is simply impossible that it should not have the tone of menace, or else that of promise. The person, in listening to either, becomes interested. And the interest, in the main, is only the thought of Happiness. Why then do we not march openly under its banner? Why do we not bow before its ubiquity, embracing, as it does, even our dreams and the aspirations of the soul? Let us try to direct its power, to study its operation, to facilitate its beneficent evolution, to make its laws triumph. Let us, in short, try to render it a science.
VII. Why should we scorn happiness, joy? According to Spinoza, joy is perfection. Morality based solely upon duty, has failed. We no longer believe in Kant, but we believe more and more in the only real thing which exists in us, that which, in spite of ourselves and even against our will, guides and leads us: the perception and even the appetite for Happiness. When this consciousness is perfected and ennobled, Humanity, in its turn, will find itself ennobled and perfected. All the conflicts of bygone centuries waged around the moral ideal have for their purpose the crushing or the triumph of the ego, the renunciation of human personality or its free development. Self, trampled down and destroyed, became the synonym of virtue. On its ruins were expected to grow the divine qualities of man, as if a luxuriant Blossoming could come forth on bare rocks. The reaction, as usual, wandered into excess. Despairing of saving mankind in the mass, it confined itself to causing the triumph of a few exceptional beings. The worship of the strong man, the demi-god, lauded by the Renaissance, and taken up by egotists of every degree, imposes a renunciation of the wrong kind. Asceticism immolated the individual in behalf of the invisible being; egotism sacrifices the community for the benefit of a few stronger and, especially, more rapacious beings. The first disarmed us by its disinterestedness: the second shocks us by the unrestraint of its appetites. Calmness will be restored to our inflamed aspirations only when we admit happiness for all in the same degree.
VIII. The right to life, the right to wages, ;the right of the aged and the infirm to the aid of the Government, and so many of the other victories of modern life, will end by having their supreme achievement in the right to Happiness. Est Deus in nobis. God is in us all. The human soul, inspired by religion or by science; man, son of God, or man, source of the intelligence, will end by bowing before this primordial principle of the human personality. Of uniformity by dissolving itself according to the innumerable varieties of souls. There is no higher sovereignty than self-mastery* said da Vinci. Only, what the peerless Leonardo claimed for himself must be admitted in favour of all, including the humble and the dispossessed. Let us aid them to regain their-dominion by rendering life sweet and friendly. They must be rulers in the realm of their ego, for they are all men. Why philosophise beside the mark? Let us question human nature. Relieved from all restraint, it will answer us with brutal frankness: Happiness is my organic need. I require it as I do food or air. We eat poorly, we breathe badly, and yet we live. But, to make the human ego unfold and flower, let it be developed in Happiness. People who are nobly happy constitute the power, the beauty, and the foundation of the nation. All who seek *%and obtain Happiness contribute to the prosperity and to the moral development of the community. They form the flower and the hope of their native land. The perception of Happiness is immutable. It is the part of the wise man to give to the in vincible < desire a lofty and divine meaning.
IX. Our conceptions, influenced by past asceticism, by false piety, and by ignorance of the Divine laws, prevent us from accepting the right to Happiness, They even cause us to reject this new duty which modern life imposes: the duty of being happy. We ought to be happy, as we ought to love our own city, to be devoted to its interests, and to work for the benefit of the community. The happiness of our native country and of our fellow creatures is dear to us. So much the better. Let us begin by caring for our personal happiness. As Ellen Key has justly said, it is impossible to attend to the feeding of our neighbours until we have satisfied our own hunger and thirst. A person suffering from typhoid fever finds it difficult to nurse his friend. A reformer who, indifferent to his own happiness, expresses the wish to obtain it for others, resembles a blind man who would fain guide those who can see. A little patience, and we shall witness, in the city of the future, how the most recent duty, that of being happy, will take its revenge and triumphantly occupy the place of its annihilated rivals. For Happiness, like tears and laughter, is communicable. Learn to be happy, or still better, be happy, and every one around you will be happier and better.
X. The recommendations of the aesthetes to Jlive and to die in beauty should have for a corollary Sto live and to die in Happiness.
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