The Pursuit of Happiness: A Book of Studies and Strowings. Daniel G. Brinton
else than the pleasure itself; that is, it must heighten the sense of personal existence.
It is only the conception of Self as a permanent subject to be pleased, that stimulates man to fresh endeavors, that makes him seek knowledge and freedom, that lifts him above the beast, contented with the satisfaction of its appetites. This is what Fichte meant when he said that the consciousness of Self alone enables us to understand life and enjoy it. Nothing is truer than the motto, “Être heureux, c’est vivre,”—to be happy is to live.
Here, again, some uneasy moralist will point the finger and raise the cry of “selfishness.” It is time to have done with this purblind, this high-gravel-blind moralist, who refuses to distinguish between self-feeling and self-seeking. There are two self-loves. The one is inseparable from personal existence, the necessary point of departure of every conscious action, whose activity and whose end are alike in the object outside of the self; the other is that egoism which directs both the action and its end toward itself. The former is fecund, ennobling, inspiring; the latter is sterile and enfeebling. Rightly understood, nothing is so admirable as self-love; but love yourself, not for what you are, but for what you may be. The wisest of teachers set no higher mark for duty than, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” It was a modern and unphilosophical derogation which substituted for it, “Vivre pour autrui.” In living the best for ourselves, we live the best for others.
The conclusion which we have now arrived at, that happiness is the increasing consciousness of Self, leads us to reflect whether this mental state is brought about solely by what is generally known as “pleasures,” or whether some other feeling, not usually classed as such, may not have the same effect. Man can enjoy only through action, and all his happiness depends on action; but there may be a great deal and very intense activity in spheres of experience to which the terms pleasure and pain, in their physiological sense, do not apply. Indeed, such activities may be present along with physical pain and mental suffering, and yet the law hold good: that if these are of a nature to exalt the consciousness of self, they may be a well-spring of happiness under circumstances the most unfavorable. This explains a passage of Epictetus which I thought over a long time before I mastered its significance—“Happiness is an equivalent for all troublesome things;” not that it excludes or abolishes them, but that it is a compensation for them. This puts the whole art of happiness in a different light. It may teach us to avoid some pains and troubles, and this is well; but the best of it will ever be to give us an equivalent for the many that remain. Any text-book of felicity which leaves this out of account may as well be burned by Monsieur de Paris.
Now we can understand what Plato meant when he said that the right aim of living should stand out of relation to pleasure or pain. He had in mind these other activities which give in some natures an intenser sense to self-consciousness than any mere nerve reaction. The ancient ideal was the greatness of the individual, the richness of his imagination, the reach of his intellect, the strength of his will, the firmness of his friendship, the devotion of his patriotism, the singleness of his life and purpose in some noble aim. This it was that floated before the intellectual vision of Plato and led him to scorn the pleasures of the sense and the charms of tranquillity.
Let us applaud him; for we moderns are not ignorant of the luxury of toil and the joy of strong endeavor; we too, like Othello, “do agnize an alacrity for hardness;” with Seneca we can say, “Res severa est verum gaudium.” But we hold it needless and unwise to leave any sunny field uncultured on whose soil may be trained to bloom the fragrant flower of pleasure.
The yearning for joy is a cry of nature which can never be stifled. Give heed to it and obey it. It calls you to wider horizons, to warmer sympathies, to a fuller growth, to a completer development. It holds the secret of Evolution. It is the incessant prompter to a higher form of existence. Biologists have discovered that the avoidance of painful and the search for pleasurable sensations are the first principles of organic animal life, and are those which have developed the amœba into the man. In him, this general consciousness has blossomed into Self-consciousness, and to this he owes all the growth of his higher nature, his essentially human powers. To the extent that this is brought into harmony with the sum of his faculties and with his surroundings, he wins that something greater than pleasure which we call happiness. From the culture of this, if from any source, he must look for the advent of those new spirit-powers which more fortunate generations in the hereafter may enjoy. Who knows but those, our dear children of after days, may gain a still higher form of consciousness, one through which they will be brought into harmony with the perfect working of the Cosmos, and the ancient fable be realized, of men who walked the earth as gods?
III. The Relative Value of Pleasures.
The learned have established what they call “a hierarchy of the sciences,” a scheme which shows the relative value and scope of the various departments of knowledge, and how the one rises upon the other. So in the Science of Happiness there is a series of degrees, a gradus ad gaudium, which measures the relative value of human enjoyments and the dependence of the higher upon the lower.
The ignorance or the disregard of this fact has led to the ruin of more individual lives, and to more fatal misfortunes to the race, than any other error whatsoever. The poison of all false religions and philosophies lies either in condemning pleasure or in commending low forms of it; and the one is as hurtful as the other. The religion which to-day numbers more believers than any other, Buddhism, aims its loftiest aspirations to the extinction of all desire and the abolition of all enjoyment. These are the words of Buddha himself:—
“Let no man look for what is pleasant; for not to find it is pain.
“Let no man love anything; for the loss of the beloved is sorrow.
“After pleasure follows grief, and from affection comes fear.
“I have run through many births, and painful it is to be born again and again; but now, O Thou Builder of this house, Thou hast been seen, and not again shalt Thou rebuild it. The mind has attained to the extinction of all desire.”
This is the ideal of happiness that four hundred millions of human beings hold before their minds to-day. If there is any truth in the modern philosophy which teaches that pleasure lies in functional activity, no more pernicious message could be commended to mankind than that which Buddha brought.
He is far from the only preacher of such a gospel. “To rest in peace,” “to sleep in the Lord,”—is not this the religious hope and aspiration of millions of Christians? It is not a whit higher than the Nirvana of the Buddhist.
The avoidance of pain is the lowest form of happiness; more correctly, it is its mere negative, and scarcely deserves to rank as one of its grades. Yet, alas! to how many millions is it the highest form imagined! To how many is the only escape from unhappiness to forget themselves! This is the cause of that thirst for intoxicants and narcotics which undermines and infects modern society. Dr. Johnson would still find the multitude agree with him in his opinion, that a man is never happy except when he is drunk!
Those Quietists who preach tranquillity and contentment as the goal which all should seek are but one step higher. Indifference to pleasure, or a reduction of the number of pleasures, is a sign of weakening of the reason and of a retrogression in development. No man has a right to be happy because he is contented; though he may well be contented because he is happy. To be “void of strong desire,” set free from hope and fear, snugly harbored from all storms of feeling, so far from being the condition of the sage, is the aspiration of the fool. Keen sensations awaken the sentiments, emotions fertilize the intellect, passions educate the reason. The brute goes through life without a smile or a tear; man’s proud privilege is to weep and to laugh.
The ancients taught that philosophical happiness is to want little, and that it is the error of the vulgar to want much and to enjoy many things. The truer doctrine is that happiness is expansion and growth, the enriching of our natures by manifold experiences, and the securing this by the multiplication of our desires. The avoidance of pain and the limitation of our