At the outset, I must attack as unsound a maxim which has been assiduously disseminated by the school of economists of which Herbert Spencer is the leader. It is put in the form,—“The greatest efficiency is the greatest happiness.” It would be a calamity if this were true. The
pursuit of happiness would be hopelessly circumscribed, as but few in the world can attain maximum efficiency in anything. Fortunately, it is historically false. Those men who have won fame by their enormous personal capacity have certainly not been the happiest of their kind. Far from it. They have been men of one idea, absorbed by some “ruling passion,” to which they have sacrificed all else, and consequently, so far from gaining happiness, have usually ended by wrecking their own and others’. It is not the reach of a man’s abilities, but the use he makes of them, that decides his fortune. Spencer’s maxim is precisely the reverse of the principle which should govern an education intended to secure the utmost enjoyment for the individual and those around him. Such an education should not be concentrated on one faculty of the mind nor on one subject of study, but should extend in all directions, be broad and many-sided. It is an education within the reach of every one, which requires no schoolmaster but oneself; and yet confers a degree on its graduates more valuable than any university can bestow.
Its leading theoretical principles may be grouped under five propositions:—
I. The multiplication of the sources of pleasure and the diminution of those of pain.
II. The maintenance of a high sensibility to pleasurable impressions.
III. The search for novelty and variety of impressions.
IV. The establishment of a proper relation between desires and pleasures.
V. The subjection of all pleasures to the increase of happiness.
These principles are not speculative or doctrinal, but are based on the physiology of the nervous system and the constitution of the human mind.
I. Let us begin with the first, for it is the basis of the whole Art of Pleasure. Differently expressed, it means that the sum of our enjoyment must be enlarged by increasing our sources of enjoyment. In other words, we must set to work to acquire tastes in addition to those which we already have by nature or previous education. The most useful instruction is that which teaches us to profit by all our chances. People are never so unhappy as they think they are, because at the moment they forget how many sources of pleasure remain for them.