[HOW HAPPINESS SHOULD BE AIMED AT.]
IV. There is a fallacious mode of presenting the attainment of happiness; namely, that happiness is best secured by not being aimed at. We should be aiming always at something else.
When examined closely, the doctrine resolves itself into a kind of paradox. All sorts of puzzles come up when we attempt to follow it to its consequences.
We might ask, first, whether there is any other object of pursuit in the same predicament—wealth, health, knowledge, fame, power. These are, every one, a means or instrument of happiness, if not happiness itself. Must we, then, in the case of each, avoid aiming straight at the goal? must we look askance in some other direction?
Next, in the case of happiness proper, are we to aim at nothing at all, to drift at random; or may we aim at a definite object, provided it is not happiness; or, lastly, is there one side aim in particular that we must take? The answer here would probably be—Aim at duty in general, and at the good of others in particular. These ends are not the same as happiness, yet by keeping them steadily in the view, and not thinking of self at all, we shall eventually realise our greatest happiness.
Without, at present, raising any question as to the fact alleged, we must again remark that the prescription seems to contradict itself. Moralists of the austere type will never allow us to pursue happiness at all; we must never mention the thing to ourselves: duty or virtue is the one single aim and end of being. Such teachers may be right or they may be wrong, but they do not contradict themselves. When, however, we are told that by aiming at virtue, we are on the best possible road to happiness, this is but another way of letting us into the secret of happiness, of putting us on the right, instead of on the wrong, track, to attain it. Our teacher assumes that we are in search of happiness, and he tells us how we are to proceed; not by keeping it straight in the view, but by keeping virtue straight in the view. Instead of pointing us to the vulgar happiness-seeker who would take the goal in a line, he corrects the course, and shows us the deviation that is necessary in order to arrive at it; like the sailor making allowance for the deviation of the magnetic pole, in steering. Happiness is not gained by a point-blank aim; we must take a boomerang flight in some other line, and come back upon the target by an oblique or reflected movement. It is the idea of Young on the Love of Praise (Satire I., 5.)—
The love of Praise howe'er concealed by art,
Reigns more or less and glows in every heart,
The proud to gain it, toils on toils endure,
The modest shun it but to make it sure.