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The purpose of this chapter is not to enter into practical details of an education for happiness—that is the mission of the rest of the book—but to establish certain general theoretical principles on which such an education must be carried out in order to be successful.

And first, I must repeat what I have already intimated, that any permanent and even moderate stock of happiness does not fall into the open mouth, like the roasted quails in the fairy story, but can be obtained only by methodical pursuit and constant watchfulness. Eternal vigilance is said to be the price of liberty; and liberty is only one of the necessary elements of happiness. Meditation, forethought, and the formation of a clearly defined Plan of Life are all required, and even then success is far from certain.

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.

Review the field. Take an “account of stock.” Most people have five senses in tolerably good order. How many have seriously calculated the number of different gratifications each of these senses is capable of yielding? Beyond these lie the inviting fields of the Agreeable Emotions, whose prolific soil needs but to be stirred to teem with flower and fruit; and still beyond, but in easy reach, the uplands of Reason and Thought rise into the purer air, and offer perspectives of entrancing beauty.

All these resources are, to some extent, open to every one. But most sit like a peasant at the table of a prince, refusing to taste the choice viands which are before him, because he cares only for the beans and hodge-podge of his daily fare.

Along with the multiplication of the sources of enjoyment must go the studied avoidance of profitless pain. I say profitless pain, because there is pain which is profitable, and to avoid that would be to miss the best of life, as I shall try to show on a later page—a distinction too often forgotten by those political economists who are preparing the race for the era of universal happiness.

All pain is profitless which is incurred by a deliberate violation of natural law, such as needless neglect of health or disregard of social custom. When we confess that we have “made fools of ourselves,” we suffer what our knowledge could have prevented, and we recognize it. The part of wisdom is to avoid such suffering.

Here lies the incalculable value of knowledge in this pursuit. I do not mean extensive learning or erudition, but knowledge of ourselves, of our immediate natural surroundings, and of our own sphere of probable activity. The chief value of Knowledge, says Epictetus, is that it destroys Fear. We do not dread the known, but the unknown. Its worth does not stop there. It enables us to escape disasters, to lessen pain, to mitigate suffering in ourselves and others, and to secure many joys. Three verbs, observes the philosophical Littré, express the ideal perfection of human happiness—to know, to love, and to serve.

The true end of what is called “culture,” or a “liberal education,” is not to store the mind with a variety of facts useful in managing men or in making money, but to expand our sympathies, to bring us in touch with all that is beautiful and enjoyable in our lives; it is to increase the sensitiveness of our finer instincts, so that they will respond more readily to the delicate stimuli of pleasurable impressions. Thoreau, walking behind the farmer’s cart, claimed to have stolen the best part of the load of apples when he inhaled the fragrant aroma from the fruit. To him it was more gratifying than to have filled his stomach with the acid pippins.

Of all false maxims for happiness, that to be “content with little” is the falsest. We should want immensely, but want wisely. To supply such wants there is no need of the revenue of a kingdom or the lore of a pedagogue. Not one man in a thousand exhausts the means of wise enjoyment which are daily within the reach of his hand. Why go far a-field to seek the treasure buried neath his own hearth-stone? What he needs is to study himself and his environment, so as to protect himself from the dangers to which he is exposed, and to draw from such circumstances as he is placed in, and from such faculties as he is possessed of, the maximum of gratification which they can render him. If all persons acted consistently on this principle, the general sum of human happiness would be indefinitely increased.

The kind of knowledge which is most serviceable to this end is by no means difficult to acquire. It falls within the range of a common school education, and ought to be made a part of it, with the definite aim of promoting personal happiness. Professor Alexander Bain, who belongs to the Scotch common-sense school of philosophers, and who treats all questions in a business-like manner, has drawn up a scheme of such an education, which any one can carry out for himself. It is so excellent that I present its main features, with amplifications of my own.

a. A Knowledge of the Bodily Constitution.

This means an acquaintance with the outlines of anatomy and physiology, the rules of personal and general hygiene, some understanding of the most prevalent diseases in the locality in which we live and those to which we are individually most liable, and the simplest means for their prevention and treatment; what best to do in cases of sudden accidents and emergencies; and last, though not least, the precepts for training, strengthening, and beautifying the body and the features.

b. The Elements of the principal Physical and Chemical Sciences.

Even a rudimentary knowledge of the sciences of chemistry, geology, geography, astronomy, of mechanics, steam, electricity, etc., such as can be acquired from primary text-books, increases wonderfully our interest in the world around us and in what we see and hear every day of our lives, and thus furnishes a thousand sources of enjoyment, besides being certain to find numerous practical applications of utility.

c. The Study of the Mind.

This is at once a delightful pastime and an indispensable art for success in many lines of business. It means an acquaintance with the motives which actuate men in their decisions, the personal traits which make up their characters, their passions and their ambitions, their weaknesses and their prejudices. Men distinguished for what is called “executive ability,” statesmen, diplomatists, promoters and managers of great enterprises, all either possess by nature or have acquired by study this insight, and to it they owe their success. To some degree, all can attain it by observation of those around them, and by the perusal of works which explain the constitution of the mind and the dominant motives of human action. To this should be added an unprejudiced reading of modern politics and history, especially of one’s own country and State.

d. A Knowledge of the Principles of Business.

Worry about business affairs is probably the commonest cause of unhappiness. A great deal of it is inevitable; but a large share of it would be prevented were both sexes taught early in life the general rules and customs of business, and those principles of financial management, investment, prudence, and economy, which are nearly as fixed in their operation as those of the motions of the stars. There are many popular handbooks on this subject, and one such ought to be in every household.

e. A Study of the Value of Evidence.

A remarkable writer, De Senancour, who under the name of Obermann composed some strange books early in this century, maintained that if men would tell the truth and could predict the weather, nearly all the sufferings which afflict humanity would disappear. There is a great deal in his opinion. At present, all men have a rooted aversion to truth, and neither wish to tell it nor to hear it beyond a strictly limited amount. But as a knowledge of facts is essential to right action, the estimation of evidence and the calculation of probabilities are necessary to a prosperous life. A man who has this faculty is said to be gifted with “sound judgment,” but it is quite as much an acquirement as a gift. There are well-known principles by which the value of testimony is balanced and the weight of evidence decided. They are in daily application in our courts, and can be applied at least as successfully to affairs outside.

Such are the outlines of an education directed toward increasing the sources of enjoyment and diminishing the causes of suffering; and what remains to be said is little more than an extension of the principles thus laid down.

II. The second principle is the maintenance of a high sensibility to pleasurable impressions.

To reach the right meaning of this we must begin with physiology. All impressions of the nervous system, that is to say, all feelings, may be compared or studied with reference to three criteria, their Quality, their Intensity, and their Persistence. Feelings of the same quality, as a rule, heighten each other’s intensity, but persistence is usually inversely to intensity. The keener the sensation, the shorter its duration. The story is told of a French scholar who, for suspected heresy, was subjected to judicial torture on the rack. When the instrument was extended the first time, dislocating several of his joints, he uttered a cry of agony; but at the second extension he burst into laughter. “At my own ignorance,” he explained, “to suppose that I could feel such suffering twice.”

It is essential to anything like a constant flow of pleasurable feelings that we maintain a high state of vigor in the organs of sensibility; and this can only be accomplished by a careful limitation of intensity in favor of persistence of feeling. Occasional nervous impressions of a very high degree of intensity are not only consistent with health, but increase it; but their frequent repetition, and especially the determined effort to maintain them for long periods, inevitably result in a deadening of the sensibility and a lack of response to ordinary and healthful stimuli.

The ignorance or disregard of these physiological laws explains some of the most disastrous and conspicuous failures to attain happiness where every circumstance seems propitious. The neglect of them is the origin of that morbid condition of the mind which has been called “the disease of the century,” la maladie de la siècle—Ennui.

The bitter pessimist, Schopenhauer, delighted to show the worthlessness of life, whose only variety is from the toil of pursuit to the ennui of possession; while the sweet mystic, Pascal, discovering in the same feeling the greatest misery of man, saw in it that which would prove his salvation, for it would lead him to renounce the vanities of the world and give himself unto God. The one opinion is worth as much as the other.

If we make an anatomy of Ennui, as Burton made an anatomy of Melancholy, we shall find that two different, though allied, mental conditions have been grouped under the name.

The one is that sense of immeasurable boredom which we feel when placed in uncongenial conditions, especially such as ought to be welcome to us, as listening to good advice, or hearing instructive lectures, or reading useful books—like this one. We are driven to any revolt by such inflictions. The scholar will turn gypsy and the virtuous youth a vagrant to escape them. As a boy, at stiff company dinners, I used to suffer from a keen desire to throw a plate through the window, or commit some other outrageous breach of decorum.

What is the meaning of this innate revolt against conventionalism and formality and respectability? The divines are ready to tell you that it is a clear case of original sin. It is nothing of the kind. It is the inherited and unquenchable thirst for freedom in the human heart, and in some temperaments the strength of this passion for liberty is such that any sacrifice is cheap to purchase it.

Perhaps these have not the worst of the bargain. “Who is the happiest man in France?” some one asked the academician, D’Alembert. Quelque misérable, “Some wretched fellow,” he replied. There is infinite philosophy in his answer. Browning, in Fifine at the Fair, discusses the question with amazing insight into human motive. He demands—

“What compensating joy, unknown and infinite,

Turns lawlessness to law, makes destitution—wealth,

Vice—virtue, and disease of mind and body—health?”

He finds the answer in the “frenzy to be free” which is the ruling passion in such characters as he describes. He is right, for ennui of this kind is unknown in conditions of the largest personal freedom, as in the savage state and among the vagabonds of society.

The other form of ennui arises not from external conditions, but from those which are within. It is a species of dissatisfaction with self. A man is generally his own stupidest companion. According to the proverb, “Poor company is better than none;” because the poorest of all is oneself. A curious paradox that has been noted is that the more a man thinks about himself, the less he cares to be alone with himself! We no longer shun solitude from the dread of bandits or ghosts, but to escape the sight of the specters which arise within ourselves. How many of us can boast of the “sessions of sweet silent thought” which the poet praises as the crown of felicity? Amid the gay throng of pleasure-seekers at Ranelagh, Dr. Johnson felt himself distressed by the reflection, “That there was not one in all that brilliant circle who was not afraid to go home and think.”

There is a moral virtue which the Roman philosophers called sufficientia and the Germans Selbstgenügsamkeit, which terms are not at all translated by the English “self-sufficiency.” Let the word go; the thing is what is needed. Make yourself an agreeable companion to yourself, and this form of ennui will be known to you no longer. This can only be accomplished by the constant and well-directed exercise of your personal activities, and by the maintenance of a high degree of sensibility to pleasurable impressions.

III. The search for novelty and variety of impressions.

The Art of Happiness prescribes that instead of cultivating a limited number of pleasurable impressions up to a high degree of intensity, we should seek a large variety, diverse in quality, moderate in intensity, considerable in persistence. This precept, properly understood, is consistent not only with a high, but perhaps with the highest degree of gratification, for it is supported by another physiological law of the greatest interest. This is, that the utmost zest of pleasure is invariably conditioned on the entire novelty of the sensation. This fact is so familiar that it is embalmed in common proverbs, as that “Variety is the spice of life,” and the like. But the deep significance and the manifold applications of these sayings are rarely considered.

Entire novelties are within the reach of few, and come of themselves but seldom. Fortunately, their agreeable effect can be closely imitated by influences quite within our own control; that is, by the remission and alternation of the pleasures already our own. This alone will maintain the efficacy of any pleasure, for it is a sad fact that in impressions on the nervous system, persistence can never become permanence. Remission and reaction in all sensations are demanded by that eternal and infinite law of Periodicity, or Rhythmical Recurrence, which is the last and highest in the Universe of mind or matter. This in turn enforces on us the importance of aiming for a multiplicity of sources of pleasure, so that we may heighten their impressions by frequent variety.

Here again we come into conflict with that cherished delusion which makes contentment and tranquillity the chief elements of happiness. With political economists, it often arises from a confusion of the spheres of the State and the Individual. The State properly aims at peace, established order, routine, and material ends; but the Individual should seek variety and activity, he should try untrodden paths and risk unknown crises. This alone will make him a many-sided, strong character, responsive up to the full measure of his powers to all impressions of natural enjoyment.

The foe he has to guard against in this joyous quest is Habit. This is the tyrant whose iron scepter enslaves most men. The promptings of pleasure and pain are far from being the only incentives; probably they are by no means the most numerous or potent. The “ruling motives” of most persons are simply the associations, customs, ideas, and aims with which they have been longest in contact. A given mental tendency soon becomes predominant, its easy yoke becomes adjusted to the neck, and the man pursues his way in life without more resistance than the ox to the wain. Vain the attempt to break his fetters and sever the bonds of his habits. He is satisfied to reply, as the Arab to the visitor, who would teach him a better agriculture--“Thus did my father before me and thus my mother taught me; and in this manner shall I continue.”

All attempts to make men happier on a large scale have been shattered against the rock of this stubborn conservatism. Only at rare intervals has it been riven by the shock of some mighty emotion which has swept, tornado-like, over the soul of a nation, uprooting the tangled growths of bigotry and routine. The only hope is that here and there an individual will arise and say to himself, “I shall believe nothing merely because those around me believe it; I shall do nothing merely because I am accustomed to do it; I shall render to myself a reason for my every decision and act.”

If some one asks, Why this invective against Habit, easy Habit, soft as a padded chair, comfortable as an old shoe? the answer must come from an analysis of mind. I have before shown that all true motives of the Will are directed toward the avoidance of pain or the attainment of pleasure. These alone are clearly conscious motives, distinguishing between Self and Object, and therefore heightening to the sense of individual life. Whatever we do “by habit,” on the other hand, we do, in a greater or less degree, by what physiologists call “unconscious cerebration,” and through the involuntary action of our nervous and muscular systems. This automatic action of our organism is constantly encroaching on our consciousness, submerging it, like the tide the shore; darkening it, like the night the landscape; swallowing it inch by inch, like the boa his prey. The struggle against Habit, therefore, and all that Habit means, prejudice, bias, bigotry, authority, is a struggle for life, and the nation, the society, the individual, who succumbs in the contest is, by the very fact, bound hand and foot and cast into utter darkness.

IV. The establishment of a proper proportion between desire and pleasure.

Through the mouth of Hamlet Shakespeare makes the philosophical reflection—“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so;” in other words, the value of anything reckoned in the currency of enjoyment, lies not in the thing itself but in the strength of our wish for it. Most of the aims of effort are like curios, whose price is gauged entirely by the anxiety of the amateur to obtain them, and not by any intrinsic quality.

In life there is no more useful faculty than to be able to put the right price on pleasures. The best of prudential maxims is “Count the cost.” The outlay of effort should be in a just relation to the return which can be reasonably reckoned upon. A given pleasure should be sought with an energy strictly in proportion to the gratification which it can actually yield—not in proportion to a false ideal of that gratification as portrayed by the exaggerations of passion or morbid desire. When infatuation or fascination or an over-heated imagination leads the chase, horse and rider will be soon landed in the ditch. Pain and disappointment ever follow an end sought in excess of its real value. Again to quote the great dramatist, the “expense of passion” is sure to be succeeded by “a waste of shame.”

The precept of education which is thus enforced is the regulation of desire by reflection and deliberation. Proceed to an appraisement, as in business affairs. Ask yourself the grounds of your desire. Is it from experience, or merely on hearsay, and from a groundless imagining of what the object might yield if attained? If it is from experience, and the tasted sweet whets anew the appetite, recall the reaction and the consequences, and if they were unpleasant, present them fully before the bar of your judgment. If imagination alone influences you, remember that you are playing the children’s game of “swapping in the dark,” and are liable to exchange solid value for dross. “Depraved affections,” observes Lord Bacon, “are false valuations.”

V. The last of the five principles stated is the crown of all of them—Make all pleasures a part of happiness.

I have already explained the difference between mere pleasurable sensation and happiness in the true sense of the term. While the former belongs to man’s animal nature, the latter is intimately associated with the consciousness of Self. The power of discriminating one’s Self from the rest of the universe, and making one’s Self the subject of one’s own observation is a faculty peculiar to man alone. There is nothing which lends him more potent aid to accomplish this than his pleasurable sensations. This alone imparts to them any real value in the history of the individual or the race, and through this their value becomes inestimable.

This has always been recognized as true of some of them; but the error of most teachers has been that they have refused to acknowledge the value of all pleasure to this end, the excellence of all enjoyment, when it is brought into relation to the full nature of man. Some have claimed that the charms derived from the esthetic and benevolent emotions are enough to fill our lives; others advocate intellectual joys; many preach that the religious sentiment offers all that man needs; while counselors of an opposite tendency cry, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow ye die.”

All are wrong. The spirit of sound culture will recognize the whole nature of man and the solidarity of all his parts, and will insist on respecting that unity, if his true development is to be accomplished. For this reason it will strive to render the pleasures of the senses and emotions as intellectual as possible; and with not less earnestness will aim to keep the pleasures of the intellect in touch with the emotions and the senses. Its principle will be that the more intimately the gratifications of sense are infused with emotion and thought, the more they will be both purified and strengthened; and the closer the web into which we can weave the austere joys of the reason along with the emotions and the feelings, the more sympathetic, wide-reaching, and ennobling will those joys become. As the ancient mason mingled water from the sky with clay from the earth to make the bricks wherewith to build the temple, so the permanent structure of human progress can be erected only by combining in due proportion the extremes of man’s delights.

A real though mysterious bond unites sense with that which is above and beyond sense. Toward this Unknown it is ever striving, though blindly and unconsciously. In lower forms of life this has led to that marvelous series of transformations which, at last, have reached their culmination in man. In him the struggle no longer expends itself in physical changes, but frames the ideals which float before his mind, constantly spurring him to attempt the impossible. Rest assured that the analogy which holds good throughout all organic nature fails not in him, its most perfect production. Somehow, by unknown ways and under the guidance of unseen laws, his unwearying effort to discover the invisible in the visible, the permanent in the transient, the ideal in the real, will infallibly lead him in triumph to the final goal of all Life. Whenever, without ulterior aim and for its own sake, we give ourselves up to the admiration of some grand scene in nature or masterful production of human art, we feel and recognize how near to us, how much a part of us, is that invisible and ideal world in which are set up the goals of man’s noblest aspirations. To unite these opposites, to illuminate the pleasures of sense with the light of the ideal, and, on the other hand, to capture its evanescent rays by entangling them in material enjoyments, is the final precept of the Art of Happiness.

Anthropology, the Science of Man, is the point of convergence of all the other sciences; and the one aim of the Science of Man is the Happiness of man; thus the Pursuit of Happiness is the end of all pursuits. Pope displayed the inspiration of the poet when he devoted the final epistle of the Essay on Man to a discussion of,

“Happiness, our being’s end and aim.”

The study of Philosophy, said Socrates, is the studying how to die. I add, that the study of Happiness is the studying how to live; and that he who acquires either, possesses both.

Rules for happiness are worth studying, even if they are no better than the rules for writing poetry: which are said to prevent ill poets, if they never make good ones.

Fortunately, happiness is a tree with many roots. It does not depend entirely on outward circumstances; nor entirely on temperament or health; nor entirely on ourselves or on others; nor entirely on prudence or study. By cultivating any one of these, the tree will bear some fruit. So bounteous are the gifts of nature, that if we simply reduce the evils of life to something manageable, our happiness will often take care of itself.

All history teaches that those who renounce pleasure for themselves are least scrupulous about inflicting pain on others.

Genuine pleasure has this unique trait: the more you get for yourself, the more you provide for others.

Pleasure and pain are common to all animals; and man’s most exalted joys and sorrows bear a family likeness to these universal sensations.

In a certain sense, every pleasure is a victory, every pain a defeat; the former is allied to movements of attack, the latter to those of defense or submission.

Pains are pains to all; while there are many pleasures which are such to but a few; though there is no reason but ignorance why they are not shared by the many.

The bliss of ignorance consists in not knowing how much we never had, and in living unaware of the worst of our mistakes.

Spiritualize your senses; the lowest of them may become first in the kingdom of culture. Sensualize your intellect; only thus can you attain the companionship of those noble brethren, Humanity and Urbanity.

Our happiest moments are those in which we believe we can realize our ideals.

Those who condemn the pursuit of Happiness reveal the baseness of their own conception of it.

The doctrine that we should get rid of our wants by extinguishing our desires is suited to the clown in the story, who cut off his ears because they were cold.

Self-realization is widely different from self-manifestation.

An error that persuades us we are happy is more welcome than a truth which shows us we are not.

Life is a sphere with an infinite number of sides; but, like the terrestrial globe, to each individual it seems a plain, bounded by his own horizon, with himself in its center.