Yet farther. The conditions named are of themselves mere negatives; they imply simply the absence of certain decided causes of unhappiness—ill-health, poverty, and bad conduct. There is a farther stealthy assumption, namely, that the individual is placed in a situation otherwise conducive to happiness. Health, absence of debt, and a good conscience will not make happiness, under severe or ungenial toil, irritation, ill-usage, affliction, sorrow,—- even if they could be long maintained under such circumstances. Nor even, in the case of exemption from the worst ills of life, can we be happy without some positive agreeables—family, general society, amusements, and gratifications. There is a certain degree of loneliness, seclusion, dulness, that destroys happiness without sapping health, or miming us into debt and vice.
The maxim, as expressed, professes to aim at happiness, but it more properly belongs to duty. If we fail in the conditions mentioned, we run the risk rather of neglecting our duties than of missing our pleasures. It is not every form of ill-health that makes us miserable; and we may become seared to debt and ill-conduct, so as to suffer only the incidental misery of being dunned, which many can take with great composure.
The definition of happiness by Paley is vague and incomplete; but it does not omit the positive conditions. After health, Paley enumerates the exercise of the affections and some engaging occupation or pursuit; both which are highly relevant to the attainment of happiness. Indeed with an exemption from cares, and a considerable share of the positive gratifications, we can enjoy life on a very slender stock of health; otherwise, where should we be in the inevitable decline that age brings with it?
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