happy we must compass happiness in some degree for ourselves; and our success with others will be just to that degree and no more. The quality and intensity of enjoyment which we ourselves have is alone that which we are able to impart to others. To assert, therefore, that we should make no effort to obtain or increase this, is as illogical as can be.
Here some one may think I am caught in my own trap. For if people cannot assign pleasures to others, is it not an impertinence to offer instruction on the subject? Can anybody tell me better than myself what I like and what I desire?
True, but the difference is wide between telling me what things should please me, and telling me how I can best please myself; and the latter is the aim of right instruction in this matter. That it is badly needed, one who runs may read. Most people pursue unhappiness more steadily than happiness. Only fools find life an easy thing; to the wise it is a perpetual surprise that they get along at all. To them, life is a lesson to be learned, and happiness is a science the first axiom in which is to seek knowledge. To be happy one must work for it, and not merely have the wish and possess the requisites; as Aristotle so prettily expresses it, “As at the Olympic games, it is not the strongest or handsomest who gain the crown, but only those who join in the combat.”
There is boundless need for a clear statement of the true theory of personal happiness. It has been neglected, misconceived,
and decried long enough, and countless lives have been darkened in consequence. Such a theory, to be true, must be applicable to all men, of all sorts and conditions, because the desire of happiness is the common motive of all. Has it yet been discovered? That is the object of the present inquiry—for it is little more than an inquiry; but be sure that when it is discovered and set forth, it will come not as something new or strange, but like some half-forgotten, long familiar truth.
Not only, therefore, is it desirable, it is the bounden duty of every man to consider his own highest happiness, to learn what that is, and to go to work to secure it. It is his duty to his neighbors as well as to himself; more than that, it is his first duty to his kind. It is incumbent on every generation to transmit an increased store of social and personal felicity to posterity. This is the only good reason for the continuance of the race. But a generation does nothing except through its individual members; hence, it all comes back to the personal effort for happiness.
But the moralist will object, Is not this doctrine one of absolute egotism, of stark selfishness?
This objection is what has nullified and cast into disfavor every essay ever written, from the Nichomachean Ethics downward, which attempted a reasoned and practical art of increasing personal happiness. They have all been frowned down as selfish and, therefore, immoral.
It is time for this opposition to cease. It rests on a
misunderstanding of terms, on a confusion of different sensations, on the bad books of some writers, but mostly on ancient prejudice and an ignorance of facts. Let the subject be approached with a mind free from bias; let the false beacons hung out by some schools be disregarded; above all, let a clear understanding of what happiness consists in be gained; and this potent objection will be dismissed from the case.