Is Life Worth Living?. W. H. Mallock

Is Life Worth Living? - W. H. Mallock


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in himself. If our greatest delight were to see each other dance the can-can, then it might be morality for us all to dance. None the less would this be a happy world, not because we were all dancing, but because we each enjoyed the sight of such a spectacle. Many young officers take intense pride in their regiments, and the character of such regiments may in a certain sense be called a corporate thing. But it depends entirely on the personal character of their members, and all that the phrase really indicates is that a set of men take pleasure in similar things. Thus it is the boast of one young officer that the members of his regiment all spend too much, of another that they all drink too much, of another that they are distinguished for their high rank, and of another that they are distinguished for the lowness of their sensuality. What differentiates one regiment from another is first and before all things some personal source of happiness common to all its members.

      And as it is with the character of a regiment, so too is it with the character of life in general. When we say that Humanity may become a glorious thing as a whole, we must mean that each man may attain some positive glory as an individual. What shall I get? and I? and I? and I? What do you offer me? and me? and me? This is the first question that the common sense of mankind asks. 'You must promise something to each of us,' it says, 'or very certainly you will be able to promise nothing to all of us.' There is no real escape in saying that we must all work for one another, and that our happiness is to be found in that. The question merely confronts us with two other facets of itself. What sort of happiness shall I secure for others? and what sort of happiness will others secure for me? What will it be like? Will it be worth having? In the positivist Utopia, we are told, each man's happiness is bound up in the happiness of all the rest, and is thus infinitely intensified. All mankind are made a mighty whole, by the fusing power of benevolence. Benevolence, however, means simply the wishing that our neighbours were happy, the helping to make them so, and lastly the being glad that they are so. But happiness must plainly be something besides benevolence; else, if I know that a man's highest happiness is in knowing that others are happy, all I shall try to procure for others is the knowledge that I am happy; and thus the Utopian happiness would be expressed completely in the somewhat homely formula, 'I am so glad that you are glad that I am glad.' But this is, of course, not enough. All this gladness must be about something besides itself. Our good wishes for our neighbours must have some farther content than that they shall wish us well in return. What I wish them and what they wish me must be something that both they and I, each of us, take delight in for ourselves. It will certainly be no delight to men to procure for others what they will take no delight in themselves, if procured by others for them. 'For a joyful life, that is to say a pleasant life,' as Sir Thomas More pithily puts it, 'is either evil; and if so, then thou shouldest not only help no man thereto, but rather as much as in thee lieth withdraw all men from it as noisome and hurtful; or else if thou not only mayest, but also of duty art bound to procure it for others, why not chiefly for thyself, to whom thou art bound to show as much favour and gentleness as to others?' The fundamental question is, then, what life should a man try to procure for himself? How shall he make it most joyful? and how joyful will it be when he has done his utmost for it? It is in terms of the individual, and of the individual only, that the value of life can at first be intelligibly stated. If the coin be not itself genuine, we shall never be able to make it so by merely shuffling it about from hand to hand, nor even by indefinitely multiplying it. A million sham bank notes will not make us any richer than a single one. Granting that the riches are really genuine, then the knowledge of their diffusion may magnify for each of us our own pleasure in possessing them. But it will only do this if the share that is possessed by each be itself something very great to begin with. Certain intense kinds of happiness may perhaps be raised to ecstasy by the thought that another shares them. But if the feeling in question be nothing more than cheerfulness, a man will not be made ecstatic by the knowledge that any number of other people are cheerful as well as he. When the happiness of two or more people rises to a certain temperature, then it is true a certain fusion may take place, and there may perhaps be a certain joint result, arising from the sum of the parts. But below this melting point no fusion or union takes place at all, nor will any number of lesser happinesses melt and be massed together into one great one. Two great wits may increase each other's brilliancy, but two half-wits will not make a single whole one. A bad picture will not become good by being magnified, nor will a merely readable novel become more than readable by the publication of a million copies of it. Suppose it were a matter of life and death to ten men to walk to York from London in a day. Were this feat a possible one, they might no doubt each do their best to help the others to accomplish it. But if it were beyond the power of each singly, they would not accomplish it as a body, by the whole ten leaving Charing Cross together, and each of them walking one tenth of the way. The distance they could all walk would be no greater than the distance they could each walk. In the same way the value of human life, as a whole, depends on the capacities of the individual human being, as an enjoying animal. If these capacities be great, we shall be eager in our desire to gratify them—certainly for ourselves, and perhaps also for others; and this second desire may perhaps be great enough to modify and to guide the first. But unless these capacities be great, and the means of gratifying them definite, our impulses on our own behalf will become weak and sluggish, whilst those on behalf of others will become less able to control them.

      It will be apparent farther from this, that just as happiness, unless some distinct positive quality, gains nothing as an end of action, either in value or distinctness, by a mere diffusion in the present—by an extension, as it were, laterally—so will it gain nothing further by giving it another dimension, and by prospectively increasing it in the future. We must know what it is first, before we know whether it is capable of increase. Apart from this knowledge, the conception of progress and the hope of some brighter destiny can add nothing to that required something, which, so far as sociology can define it for us, we have seen to be so utterly inadequate. Social conditions, it is true, we may expect will go on improving; we may hope that the social machinery will come gradually to run more smoothly. But unless we know something positive to the contrary, the outcome of all this progress may be nothing but a more undisturbed ennui or a more soulless sensuality. The rose-leaves may be laid more smoothly, and yet the man that lies on them may be wearier or more degraded.

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