The Pursuit of Happiness: A Book of Studies and Strowings. Daniel G. Brinton

Moral Precepts.—​The Dualism of Morals.—​The Sense of Duty.—​The Pleasures of the Moral Sense.—​What “A Clear Conscience” Means.—​What is “The Chief End of Man.”—​The Moral Sense Opposes Moral Laws.—​The Benevolent Emotions.

      Strowingspp. 206−215

      III. The Practice of Business and the Enjoyment of Society.

      The Value of Association.—​Society Should Not Ask the Sacrifice of the Individual.—​Maxims for Dealing with Men: First, Distrust; Second, Trust.—​What “Society” is.—​The Drawing-room as the Shrine of Civilization.—​Good-will the Basis of Good Society.—​Ordinary People are the Most Agreeable.—​Maxim for Success in Society.—​The Aim of Society.—​Good Society Not Selfish.—​The Power of Society.—​What Politeness is.—​Society Conversation.—​The Expert in Small Talk.

      Strowingspp. 216−227

      IV. On Fellowship, Comradeship, and Friendship.

      Man’s Highest Pleasure is in Humanity.—​What Fellowship Means.—​Mutuality of Interests the Basis of Social Progress.—​But the Individual must be Respected.—​Comradeship is Based on Tastes in Common.—​It is a Substitute for Friendship.—​Examples of it.—​The Meaning of Friendship.—​What Weakens and what Strengthens it.—​It should be Carefully Cultivated.—​Friendship Between Men and Women.—​Examples of it.

      Strowingspp. 228−237

      V. Love, Marriage, and the Family Relation.

      The Single Life Ever Incomplete.—​The Holiness of Maternity.—​The Emotion of Love Explained.—​Love and Beauty.—​Love Immortalized in Posterity.—​The History of Marriage.—​The Three Conditions of Marriage.—​The Question of Divorce.—​What True Marriage Means.—​Opinions of Thinkers About Divorce.—​The Family as the Object of Marriage.—​The Family Tie Among Us.

      Strowingspp. 238−247

      PART V.

       The Consolations of Affliction.

      I. The Removal of Unhappiness.

      Suffering is Unavoidable.—​Where to Look for Consolation.—​Two Consoling Reflections.—​Advantage of a Multitude of Miseries.—​The Habit of Unhappiness.—​Some Require Ill Fortune.—​Two Popular Methods of Consolation.—​Talk It Over, and Why.—​Our Strange Claim for Happiness.—​The Tolerance of Suffering.—​The Universal Panacea.—​Look Before and After.—​Deal Justly by Yourself.—​How to Regard Incivility and Ingratitude.—​Success Arising from Failures.—​Resignation, Sympathy.—​Remember Your Advantages.—​Thoughts About Time and Death.

      Strowingspp. 248−280

      II. The Inseparable Connection of Pleasure and Pain.

      Pleasure Requires Pain, and Joy Sorrow.—​The Words of Socrates.—​Physiological Relations of Pleasure and Pain.—​Their Analogy to Joy and Sorrow.—​The Oneness of the Pleasure-Pain Sensation.—​The Rhythm of Sensations and Emotions.—​Pleasure Derived from Pain, Joy from Sorrow.—​Quotation from Leigh Hunt.—​Quotation from Sir Richard Steele.—​Sadness the Best Preparative for Gladness.—​Influence of Time on Pleasures and Pains.

      Strowingspp. 263−272

      III. The Education of Suffering.

      What is Suffering?—​The Human Passion of Sorrow.—​Sorrow as the Initiation into the Mysteries of Life.—​The Noblest Prizes Won Only by Suffering.—​It is the Highest Inspiration of Religion and Art.—​It Alone Teaches the Elder Truths.—​The Ministry of Grief.—​The Sweetness of Departed Joys.—​The Compensations of Loves that are Lost.—​The Despair that is Divine.

      Strowingspp. 273−280

PART I.

       Table of Contents

      Happiness as the Aim of Life.

I. Is a Guide to Happiness Possible? And, if Possible, is it Desirable?

       Table of Contents

      The pursuit of happiness—the pursuit of one’s own happiness—is it a vain quest? and, if not vain, is it a worthy object of life?

      There have been plenty to condemn it on both grounds. They have said that the endeavor is hopeless; that to study the art of being happy is like studying the art of making gold, which is the only art by which gold can never be made. Nothing, they add, is so unpropitious to happiness as the very effort to attain it.

      They go farther. “Let life,” they proclaim, “have a larger purpose than enjoyment.” They quote the mighty Plato, when he demands that the right aim of living shall stand apart, and out of all relation to pleasure or pain. They declare that the theory of happiness as an end is the most dangerous of all in modern sociology—the tap-root of the worst weeds in the political theories of the day, for the reason that the individual pursuit of enjoyment is necessarily destructive of that of society at large. Moreover, they urge, who dares write of it? For he who has not enjoyed it, cannot speak wisely of it; and in him who has attained it, ’twere insolence to boast of it.

      Over against these stands another school, not, by any means, solely a modern school. If that boasts Plato as its leader, this can claim Aristotle as its master. It is with the single aim to become happier, said that wise teacher, that we deliberately perform any act of our lives. This is the final end of every conscious action of man. That alone is the true purpose of existence, which, by itself, and not as a means to something else, makes life worth living and desirable for its own sake; and happiness—happiness alone—fulfills this requirement.

      Through the ages this conflict has continued. We find the thoughtful Pascal declaring that every free act of the will has, and can have, no other end in view than the increase of the individual happiness, be it so seemingly inconsistent as drowning or hanging oneself; while the distinctively modern school of social philosophers, without any exception, pin to their banners the maxim of their master, Jeremy Bentham, “The common end of every person’s efforts is happiness;” and they love to confound the ascetics by proclaiming, with Spencer, that “Without pleasure there is no good in life;” or asserting, with Ward, that the sole aim of a right sociology is the organization of happiness. Nay, they have gone so far as to project a series of sciences by which the human race is to reach a condition of entire enjoyment. They give us “Eudæmonics,” or the art of the attainment of well-being; “Hedonism,” or the theory of the securing of pleasure; and even the “Hedonical Calculus,” by which we can to a nicety calculate how much any object, if secured, will add to our felicity.

      These excellent authorities have therefore answered the inquiry whether the pursuit of happiness is a possible occupation, by showing that in fact we cannot of our own wills do anything else; and though we often pursue it blindly and by false routes, we can, by taking thought and learning of others, follow it up successfully. So also taught Aristotle, who tells us in his Ethics, “It is possible for every man by certain studies and appropriate care to reach a condition