Thus it was that Francis of Assisi, and many a saint before and after him, resolved, at any price, to break the chains of worldly possessions. It was a logical resolution. Wealth is the gravest of obstacles to the spiritual life, and few men are wholly free from its solicitations or slavery. The possession and administration of a large property, and, indeed, every position of exceptional honor and power, induce with almost absolute certainty a hardening of the disposition which is the very opposite of happiness. One shudders as he observes how dull life seems to that spiritless throng which in ever-increasing numbers visits each year the Swiss mountains to escape the emptiness of their prosperous lives.
Such is the result of these external ways of seeking happiness. But we do not fare much better when we turn to that form of happiness which lays claim to a nobler and a spiritual source,—the happiness of the æsthetic life. For the boundaries between this form of happiness and that of mere materialism are by no means easy to define. Æsthetic enjoyment often passes over into mere sensualism, as Goethe, the great model of æsthetic interest, has proved to us both in his poetry—as in the case of Faust—and in his own life. Indeed, the new school of æstheticism runs grave risk of interpreting much in terms of art which is in fact mere materialism. Those who thus seek happiness should recall the saying of their illustrious predecessor, who possessed in an extraordinary degree the capacity to attain whatever happiness in life æstheticism had to offer. “When all is said,” remarks Goethe, “my life has been nothing but care and work. I can even say that in my seventy-five years, I have not had four weeks of real happiness. It has been a continuous rolling up hill of a stone which must ever be pushed again from the bottom.” Four weeks of happiness in seventy-five years! This man of art declares that in his view life is nothing else than misery! There is hardly an honest day-laborer who at the end of his life, full as it may have been of genuine troubles, could give so poor an account of himself.
The fact is, then, that human nature seems obviously not intended for this kind of happiness. Life is made for activity; and this kind of receptive enjoyment, even in its highest forms, is designed merely to give flavor and change to life, and to be sparingly used; so that those who give themselves too confidently to such enjoyment bitterly deceive themselves. Genuine happiness cannot be arbitrarily produced. It issues from obedience to a genuine demand of human nature, and from intelligent activity naturally employed. Here is the rational basis of that faith in human equality and that contentment with the simple joys of life, in which people to-day believe much too little, and which awhile ago people praised with perhaps exaggerated sentiment.
Still further, as regards such æsthetic enjoyment, it is to be observed that the level of æsthetic judgments in literature and art is now so visibly sinking that these resources cannot long satisfy minds that can be called educated, or nations that can be called progressive. The time may soon come when people will weary of this “efflorescence” of science, literature, and art; and may even wish to exchange it for a taste of healthy barbarism. The Austrian poet Rosegger has thus described a not impossible future: “We already see each year a great migration of people passing from the cities to the country and the mountains, and not until the leaves are touched with autumn color returning to the city walls. The time will come, however, when prosperous city-folk will betake themselves permanently to country life; and when the work-people of the city will migrate to the wilderness and subdue it. They will abandon the search for book-knowledge, they will find their pleasure and renewal in physical work, they will make laws under which an independent and self-respecting livelihood will be ensured to country-dwellers; and the notion of an ignorant peasantry will disappear.” However this may be, it is at least certain that we are approaching a period marked by a return to nature, and by a taste for simplicity, such as existed at the end of the last century, when Marie Antoinette played shepherdess with her courtiers at the Trianon. It is a simplicity which is caricatured by the luxurious folk who parade each summer through Switzerland in mountain dresses and spiked shoes, and attempt an intimacy with the life of nature. Even these folk, strange as is their attire and laughable as is their mimicry of the life of peasants and mountaineers, find themselves as happy as their conventional lives permit.
One other external notion of happiness may be dealt with in a word. It is the happiness which is sought in freedom from care. Such happiness is an ideal for those only who have never had the experience of such freedom. For the fact is that through our cares, when not excessive, and through our victory over cares, comes the most essential part of human happiness. Cares of a reasonable nature do not constitute what we call care. Many a life of the widest experience would testify that the most unendurable experience is to be found, not in a series of stormy days, but in a series of cloudless ones.
I pass, then, from those who seek for happiness in material and outward conditions to those more rational inquirers who seek it in the spiritual life. These persons expect that happiness will be secured in the doing of their duty, in a good conscience, in personal work of public good, in patriotism, or charity, or some form of philanthropy, or perhaps in conformity to the teachings of their Church. And yet, a very considerable part of the drift to pessimism which one observes in our day comes of the experience that no one of these ways leads surely to happiness, or, at least, that one does not get in such ways the happiness for which he hoped. Indeed, it is perhaps still further true that a great part of the reckless “Realism,” now so prevalent among us, comes not of the conviction that it will make one happy, but only of the despair of finding any other way of happiness. For if it be true that neither our work, nor what we call our virtues, can bring peace to the soul; if outward activity, and charity, and patriotism, are but a mockery of happiness; if religion is for the most part only a form or a phrase, without objective certainty; if all is thus but vanity of vanities, then indeed: “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.”
I do not join in the condemnation with which the moralists usually meet this view of life. I deny only the conclusions which are drawn from such a view. I recognize the honest purpose of these modern philosophers. They represent, at least, a sincere love of truth; they are hostile to all mere phrases. The spirit of the modern world looks for a happiness which is not mere philosophical composure, but which has objective results. It demands a kind of contentment in which every human being may have a share. In all this, the spirit of the age is wholly right, and this demand for objective happiness which it utters is a note which has not been heard for two thousand years. I, too, desire happiness; but I know that one who would find the way to happiness must, first of all, and without hesitation, throw overboard all the false idols which have tempted him to worship them. As he dismisses the prejudices which birth, or circumstances, or habits, have created, he takes one step after another toward true happiness. As the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, one of the least fortunate persons of our day, rightly said: “The abandoning of an untruth, or of a prejudice, brings with it forthwith a sensation of joy.” Here, then, is our guide along this darkened road, which without some such guidance we could not find at all.
“The happy life lies straight before our eyes,—
We see it, but we know not how to prize.”
First of all, then, we must admit that happiness does not consist in the sense of virtue alone. This idol of the incorruptible Robespierre will not serve us. For virtue in its completeness dwells in no human heart. One must have but a meagre conception of virtue, or else a very limited intellectual capacity, who finds himself always self-contented. Even the vainest of men are not in reality contented; their vanity itself is in large degree only a sense of uncertainty about their worth, so that they need the constant endorsement of others to satisfy them. The maxim says that a good conscience makes a soft pillow, and he who has this unfailing sense of duty done no doubt has happiness; but I have not, as yet, fallen in with such a man. My impression is that there is not one of us who has ever, even for a single day, done his whole duty. Beyond this, I need not go. If one of my readers says to me: “I am the man who has thus done his duty,”—well, he may be quite right, but I do not care for that man’s nearer acquaintance. The farther a man advances in the doing of his duty, so much the more his conscience and perception grow refined. The circle of his duties widens continually before him, so that he understands the Apostle Paul, when, with perfect sincerity, and without false humility, he speaks of himself as the “chief of sinners.”