Is through eternity set free from strife.”[3]
VI. HAPPINESS
VI. HAPPINESS
WHATEVER the philosophers may say, it remains true that, from the first hour of man’s waking consciousness until that consciousness ceases, his most ardent desire is to be happy, and that the moment of his profoundest regret is when he becomes convinced that on this earth perfect happiness cannot be found. Here is the problem which gives to the various ages of human history their special characters. Blithe are those ages when young and progressive nations still hope for happiness, or when men believe that in some new formula of philosophy, or of religion, or perhaps in some new industrial programme, the secret of human happiness has at last been found. Gloomy are those ages in which, as in our time, great masses of people are burdened with the conviction that all these familiar formulas have been illusions, and when persons of the keenest insight say—as they are now saying—that the very word happiness has in it a note of melancholy. No sooner, we are told, does one speak of happiness than it flees from him. In its very nature it lies beyond the sphere of practical realization.
I do not share this opinion. I believe that happiness can be found. If I thought otherwise, I should be silent and not make unhappiness the more bitter by discussing it. It is, indeed, true that those who talk of happiness utter therewith a sigh, as if there were doubt whether happiness could be attained. It is still further true that irrational views of happiness seem to be for the present forced upon us. Only through these imperfect views can individuals or communities approach that degree of spiritual and material development which is the necessary foundation for real happiness.
And here our question seems to involve a serious contradiction. For we have, first of all, to learn from our own experience much that does not bring us happiness. Each in his own way must pass, with the greatest of all poets, through the “forest dark” to the “city dolent,” and climb the steep path of the “Holy Mountain,” before he may learn how
“That apple sweet, which through so many branches
The care of mortals goeth in pursuit of,
To-day shall put in peace thy hungerings.”[4]