Читать книгу The Pursuit of Happiness: A Book of Studies and Strowings - Daniel G. Brinton - Страница 7

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Having reached an understanding about what happiness means, and some notion as to its various grades, it will next be worth while to study its distribution in the several classes of society, in contrasting grades of civilization, in the two sexes, and at various ages. This will be dealing with the subject according to the methods of natural science, and it ought to lead to some interesting conclusions.

One might expect to find a general agreement as to the main facts. Far from it. The common belief is that happiness increases with the means, or at least with the capacity, for happiness. It is this belief which inspires men to labor for the means and improve their capacities. But the philosophers nowise concede its correctness. Hume argued that all who are happy are equally happy; and Paley maintained that happiness is about equally distributed among all orders of the community; that the plowman gets as much real enjoyment out of life as the philosopher, and the beggar at the gate as much as the monarch on the throne. To which Dr. Johnson replied that a small glass and a large one might be equally full, but the latter holds more. The capacity, he justly argued, of the philosopher to receive a multiplicity of agreeable impressions is greater than that of the peasant, and therefore, other things being equal, the quantity of his enjoyment will be greater.

The learned Doctor, indeed, sometimes insisted that felicity increases directly with the means of enjoyment. Representing the latter by money, he would say that a man with six thousand pounds a year should be ten times as happy as the one with six hundred a year; and if he is not, it is because he is an ass.

Here he was certainly wrong. Some of the main elements of ordinary happiness are in the possession of every class of society, high and low, poor and rich; such as the means of self-preservation, family ties, friendship, amusement, and repose. What wealth and power add to this common stock becomes less and less at each remove. This consideration led Bentham to question whether the prince is twice as happy as the laborer, and to doubt whether ten thousand times the wealth brings with it twice the enjoyment. His followers have attempted to frame the relation in a mathematical formula, and have expressed it in the maxim, “The rate of increase of pleasure decreases as its means increase.”

The conclusion is a satisfactory one for several reasons, and appears to be borne out by the experience of mankind. Gibbon quotes the saying of the potent Sultan Abderrahman, who at the close of his brilliant reign of forty years asserted that during the whole of that time he had had but fourteen days of happiness; on which the historian comments that he himself could claim many more than the famous Prince.

The moral of the story is, that it is not the multiplication of the means, but of the sources of pleasure which is the secret of happiness.

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.

To be sure, there are certain advantages in the struggle for life which a woman seems to be conceded, and others which she by nature possesses. She is less exposed to dangers than men; she escapes avocations of the greatest hardship and risk; she is generally supported by the labor of others, and she is allowed privileges in many small matters of daily life which are denied the other sex. Of her own nature she is less the slave of passion, less reckless, less of an egotist, less inclined to deeds of violence and crime. In all civilized countries the convictions of women for criminal offenses are less than one-third those of men.

These points are in favor of her securing a larger share of happiness; but they are checked by many and serious countervails. She is born an invalid. Her periodic sickness, the burden of pregnancy, the pains of childbed, the years of distress at her climacteric age, place her for the best part of her life at a fearful disadvantage. Enter the library of a physician and turn the leaves of his thick volumes on obstetrics and the diseases of women if you would have your sympathies harrowed by a long list of dreadful maladies of which men know nothing.

Another thought disables a woman, and must lessen and darken the enjoyment of her life in every rank and condition of society. Unless under immediate protection, she is always exposed to the possibility of insult and assault, and no general safeguards will ever entirely remove this danger.

Outside of these inevitable disabilities, the unfortunate elements in the modern condition of women are owing to the legal and religious tyranny of men. The dogmas of Christianity distinctly lowered her position compared to what it was in the Roman Republic or the cities of Etruria. At Delphi, the thoughts of the gods found expression through the mouth of the priestess; but the founder of Christian institutions forbade women to speak in the churches. The ancient Greek prayed to the goddesses, Minerva, Aphrodite, and Demeter, as the givers of the good things of life, of wisdom, of love, and the fruits of the field; but to the Christian, evil and death and pain were what the first mother of the race brought as a dower to her husband and left as a legacy to her children.

These pernicious teachings led to a steady oppression of woman in all ages of Christianity, our own included. So thoroughly did they become ingrained in the minds of men that the most liberal scarcely recognized their presence. The priest laid on the bride the obligation of obedience to her husband; and the philosopher, Rousseau, servile in this to the ideas of his time, when he has completed the education of his Emile, contents himself with saying to Sophie, “This is the man whom it is your duty to endeavor to please!” Not until a man arose emancipated from all tradition, did the teaching of Plato that the sexes should be socially and politically equal find a modern philosopher to echo it; that was when John Stuart Mill wrote his essay on the freedom of woman; though it would be unfair to the growth of religious thought not to add that he had been anticipated in most practical points by the despised dissenter, George Fox. Only when the spirit of teachers such as these will have permeated the institutions, the religions, and the social traditions of the day, will women have a fair chance with men at the common stock of happiness possible for the race.

Most fatal of all measures to the happiness of woman has been the unceasing effort of ecclesiasticism to make marriage, for her, an indissoluble sacrament of servitude, instead of an equal civil contract, in which no obligation is assumed on the one side which is not as fully accepted on the other. Mill well remarks that the miseries produced in the lives of individual women by subjection to individual men are simply incalculable. Guarantee the wife every right and every privilege that the husband has, and the increased happiness of both will be sure to crown the concession.

The remedy for this state of things is the proper education of girls and women. But it is a remedy not likely to be administered soon, in spite of the talk about it. Men prefer ignorance in women, as women admire blind devotion in men; because these enable each sex to cheat the other more easily. Nothing is more essential to her happiness than that she should be taught the hygiene of her sex early in life; but the popular voice says ignorance means innocence, and thousands of women are condemned to life-long misery in consequence. I had a medical friend who wrote a volume of excellent advice to mothers, and his profession almost ostracized him for it. Beyond all things, a girl’s education should be directed toward manual training and exercises of the understanding; instead of that, she is taught the fine arts and regaled with poetry and fiction. Her imagination is fostered by lectures on esthetics, and her memory crammed with moral platitudes which have no place in real life; while the principles of business and the maintenance of her own rights are left out of her training. I cannot but attribute to this the most common and fatal defect of the female mind—its lack of the sense of abstract justice.

Men are so selfish and ignorant that they do not understand how much they themselves forfeit by thus reducing the position of woman. In my studies of ethnology, I first inquire the position occupied by woman in a given tribe or nation; for I have discovered no better common measure of civilization. The profoundest thinkers of the age have recognized the principle here involved. Goethe closes the second part of Faust—which is a poetic presentation of the evolution of European culture—with the significant words—“The forever feminine leads us onward.” His friend, Wilhelm von Humboldt, expressed a double fact in the phrase—“The Woman stands nearer the ideal of Humanity than the Man; but she more rarely attains it.” She does not, because she is prevented by prejudice, by dogmas, and by laws. Until these weeds are scorched to ashes by the growing flame of free intelligence, neither will she secure the meed of happiness which is her due, nor will man have found the right road to his best prosperity.

Plato proposed to banish poets from his ideal Republic because they are such liars. The prevalent notion that childhood and youth are the happiest periods of life is largely owing to this mendacious crew. I have rarely met an intelligent person of years who held the opinion. It arises from forgetfulness of early sorrows, from false pictures of youthful joys, and from undue attention to present pains. Most of those who really feel such regret are the moral or literal prodigals, who have wasted their substance in riotous living, and bewail, not the lost happiness, but their inability to repeat their follies.

The rule of honest nature is that enjoyment should steadily increase up to the full maturity of the powers, mental and physical. This, under favorable circumstances, is between forty-five and fifty years of age. After that, physical decadence sets in, and only by exceptional strength or by increased effort can its fatal progress be for a while stayed. From inquiry of many persons, I am persuaded that the rule of the increase of enjoyment up to this turning-point is on the average correct.

That old age is synonymous with wisdom is a comical deception which the graybeards have palmed off on the world, because by laws and customs they hold most of the property, and want most of the power as well. In fact, diminution of the physical powers means decay all round. “As we grow old,” observes Thoreau, “we cease to obey our finer instincts.” It is an error to talk of the accumulated wisdom of years. The experience of youth serves but to lead old age astray; and this is seen nowhere so plainly as when an old man pretends a zest for the pleasures of the young. “No fool like an old fool” is the proverb. Such men are “out of their class,” as a trainer of athletes would say. Every age has pleasures sufficient, which are appropriate to it, and these alone should be sought for. To those who know and respect these laws of nature, old age is very tolerable. It brings many compensations for its inevitable losses; and though not likely to be so happy as the best of middle life, it should be and often is superior in this respect to youth. Probably it would generally be so were it more willing to learn the lessons appropriate to it. Bonstetten goes so far as to say, “No one can be happy till he is past sixty;” but the proverb of the ancient Rabbis holds forever good—“He who teacheth the old, is like one who writes on blotted paper.”