The extremes of the social conditions are almost equally unfavorable, the one through the privations it entails, the other through the burdens it imposes and the distractions it brings. Both are unpropitious to self-culture, and this alone lays substantial foundations for a considerable enjoyment of life.
A similar debate has taken place in reference to the distribution of happiness in the different grades of civilization. Rousseau and his followers never tired of portraying the delights of the savage state. Like the ancient Greeks, he placed the Golden Age in some Arcadia of untutored shepherds and lawless huntsmen. It is the fashion to smile at his notion as the vagary of a crank; but the scientist of our own day whose studies of the conditions of savage tribes stand ahead of all others, has deliberately expressed almost the same opinion as the result of his long researches. “Civilization,” writes Dr. Theodore Waitz, “has proved itself impotent to increase the sum of human enjoyment.”
What a sad conclusion to reach! And what a comment on the jubilant shouts of those optimistic philosophers who have been telling us how vastly better off we are than any of our ancestors!
Yet these also are right in a certain sense. The most careless reader of history must hug himself for joy to think of the multitude of miseries and oppressions which have disappeared from society in the last few centuries.
The inquisition, slavery, trial by torture, the press gang, are but a few of them. At that time the fate and the happiness of the individual were in the hands of priests and kings and nobles; now, thank Heaven! in most countries, especially in our own, they are chiefly in the control of the individual himself.
Nevertheless, it is quite possible in a given state of society that general evils may diminish while personal suffering increases, owing to an undue exaltation of sensitiveness, a sort of moral hyperesthesia, together with the multiplication of desires beyond the means of satisfying them. This is, in fact, the condition of modern society; and these traits, together with its instability and rapid changes, and the bitter competition instigated by its enlarged freedom, have unquestionably very greatly diminished the amount of happiness which might have been expected from the ameliorations of the last few centuries.
There is but one remedy which will be of permanent avail, and that is to educate the individual into some other ideal of happiness than that which is filled by the acquisition of property or the gratification of the senses. The main purpose of all social institutions which have been created up to the present time has been the getting and the keeping of property; the motive of the higher civilization which is to come will be the preparation of the race for a life which will be filled and sustained by its intellectual and spiritual contents.
The Greek philosopher thanked the gods especially for
two blessings,—that they had created him a Greek and not a barbarian, and a man and not a woman. Evidently he held strongly to the opinion that in his own country, at least, the men had the better part in life.
Though woman held an honorable position in Greek society, it was inferior to what she enjoys in the United States to-day; yet the philosopher, were he among us, would probably repeat his thanks. It is quite certain that in the distribution of happiness the stronger sex has seized the lion’s share.