Chapter 40
Happiness and the good life; contentment, blessedness and what makes a life go well.
527 passages · 185 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
Happiness is the name these books give to the end of human life. Under it fall the questions of what makes a life go well, whether contentment can be had at all, and where blessedness is finally to be sought. No other idea is so often presupposed and so seldom agreed upon. Saint Augustine begins from the fact that all men desire a happy life, and so must know it somehow, and he asks where in the soul that knowledge lies1,2. Pascal holds that all men seek happiness without exception3. Rousseau calls the love of happiness the sole principle of human action4. Kant, who will deny it any place in morals, still grants that it is the one end every dependent rational being naturally has5. Even Whitman makes the tendency of all things toward happiness the only point of sane philosophy6. Universal agreement about the desire sits beside universal disagreement about its object, and that tension drives the whole discussion.
The first question is whether happiness can be defined or reached at all. Hobbes denies any final rest or highest good. For him felicity is continual success in getting what one desires, a progress of desire from object to object, because life itself is motion7,8. Kant finds the notion too indefinite to command anything. Its elements are empirical, and to know what would make one happy would require omniscience9,10. Pascal agrees from another side: we have an idea of happiness and cannot reach it, and attaining the pleasures we imagine would not make us happy11,12. Sir Thomas Browne calls Aristotle’s highest good a chimera13. Poets give the same verdict. Goethe’s Faust wagers his soul that he will never say to any moment that it should linger14. Burns calls happiness but a name and counsels content instead15. Carlyle declares paradise an impossible dream and imagines blessedness only in free effort16.
Against this scepticism stand accounts that name the good plainly. The Utopians of Sir Thomas More hold that felicity lies in good and honest pleasure, tied to virtue and religion17. Yet they reject the life of bodily appetite as foul18. Chaucer’s Franklin is a cheerful Epicurean19. Locke says flatly that happiness consists in pleasure and that power, riches and even virtue are valued only as they conduce to it20. A third position meets both camps by making happiness a by-product. George Long explains that the Stoic does not aim at tranquillity directly but finds it in living according to nature21. Mill, after his crisis, reaches the same rule: happiness is the end of life but is gained only by aiming at something else22. Franklin, practical as ever, finds felicity less in great strokes of fortune than in small daily advantages23. The very disagreement became a theme. Pascal rehearses the philosophers’ rival goods, from virtue and pleasure to ignorance and indifference24. Pope concludes that happiness belongs to no particular station25. Goldsmith’s traveller finds each nation claiming the happiest spot on earth, while nature deals its blessings evenly26,27.
If happiness depends on fortune, no life can be judged until it is over. Solon’s maxim echoes through Greek tragedy. Aeschylus warns that prosperity sails swiftly onto the reef of woe28,29. Sophocles closes Oedipus by counting no man happy until he passes his last day unscathed30. Montaigne accepts the maxim, yet he turns it inward: the true happiness that only the last act can prove is the tranquillity of a well-ordered soul31,32. Pascal turns it upward and calls death the beginning of essential happiness33. A related theme holds that the happiness of the great is only apparent. For Raleigh, the joys of the rich and the miseries of the poor are interchangeable and alike vanish34. Bacon says great persons are happy only by report of others35, and Dryden that a fortune which makes a man uneasy cannot make him happy36. Calderón and Pascal both observe that a sweep dreaming himself king would be as happy as the king37,38. Fortune can also run the other way. Sindbad finds present pleasure that repays past humiliation39. Andersen’s swan is happier for having been the ugly duckling40. Gray hears bliss heightened by woe in life’s harmony41.
Whether external goods make men happy is answered almost always in the negative. Sophocles’ Creon, robbed of joy, finds wealth and royal state a vapour’s shadow42. Plutarch places happiness in the qualities of the mind, not in birth in a famous city43. Cervantes’s Anselmo has friend, wife, wealth and birth, and lives discontented44. Penn advises men to seek to be happy rather than rich45. Rousseau adds a historical argument: conveniences become needs, so that losing them is misery while having them brings no happiness46. The counterpart is praise of the poor. Confucius admires Hui, who never lost his mirth in a mean alley47. Tacitus reports that the propertyless Fennians think themselves happier than farmers, having nothing left to hope or fear48. Dekker gives sweet content and golden slumbers to the poor49. Bunyan’s shepherd boy has more heart’s-ease than those in silk and velvet50. Burns finds the poor less wretched than supposed, rich in children, faithful wives and holidays51. Grimm’s Hans, stripped of everything, feels the happiest man alive52. Goldsmith supplies a rare caution: few wants mean few pleasures, and content in a poor clime lacks finer joys53. Work, for its part, is often blessed. Bacon calls happy those whose natures suit their vocations54. Burns finds the idle rich uneasy55, and Carlyle names the man without chosen work the unhappiest56.
From these comparisons comes the doctrine of the mean and of few needs. Aesop prefers simple fare in peace to luxury in fear57. Euripides’ chorus prays for modest fortune and an unpained spirit58. Marcus Aurelius holds that very little is necessary for a happy life59. Penn sets earthly happiness in the mean between want and excess60. Pope reduces it to health, peace and competence, the gifts of temperance61. Goethe distinguishes many desires from few needs62.
The Stoics carry the argument further and place happiness wholly in the mind’s own condition. Epictetus bids men place their happiness where they are equal to the gods63. He shows that one without home or family can live free of sorrow64, and he teaches that unhappiness comes from oneself alone65. The true Stoic, he says, is happy in sickness, exile and ill repute66. Marcus finds happiness in doing what man’s nature requires67. Good fortune, for him, is a good disposition of soul that one assigns oneself68, and the divine part stays tranquil wherever it is cast69. Descartes takes up the teaching in his provisional morality: contentment follows from counting only our thoughts as in our power70. Wotton’s happy man is lord of himself, having nothing yet all71. The Elizabethan lyric makes the mind a kingdom richer than a crown72,73. Goldsmith states the conclusion plainly: we make our own felicity74. The Eastern texts reach a kindred peace by another road. The Buddhist writings place the highest bliss in quitting the illusion of self and count sensual gratification as false happiness75,76. The Gita finds lasting bliss within, beyond sense joys that begin and end77, and likens the tranquil mind to a lamp unwavering in still air78.
Other authors look less to the inner citadel than to the settings of a good life. Cicero longs for retired leisure with friends79. Pliny holds up Spurinna’s cultivated old age, earned by public service, as the ideal life80. Marvell finds a solitary paradise in a garden81, Pope a paternal acre and a quiet unnoticed life82, and Penn calls princes, who belong to everyone, the unhappiest of men83. Friendship is the other great setting. Cicero says it doubles joy and halves misfortune84, and Bacon that princes found their felicity half complete without it85. Milton’s Adam asks what happiness there can be in solitude86. Lessing’s Minna finds it melancholy to be happy alone87. Mirth and the present hour have their defenders too. Confucius approves Tien’s wish to bathe and sing his way home88. Goethe’s Egmont prefers a joyous life to the safety of a sepulchre89. Burns warns that happiness is shy and comes unsought90. Still others ground happiness in health and the mind. Locke praises a sound mind in a sound body91, and Leigh Hunt makes health the groundwork and imagination the richest possession92. Carlyle sees Scott’s happiness resting finally on a healthy soul93. The tales give these hopes a shape, ending in perfect peace until death, “the separator of companions”94,95. Manzoni’s ending is more honest: calm and happy, though not free of vexations96.
The relation of happiness to virtue is old and much contested. Epictetus holds that goodness brings happiness97. Pope sings that virtue alone is happiness below and that the good man grows happier as he grows kinder98,99. Franklin credits his scheme of virtues with the constant felicity of his life100. Rousseau’s vicar reads “Be just and thou wilt be happy” written in the soul, though he admits it is unseen in the present world101. Milton promises a paradise within, happier far than Eden102. The scope widens to the happiness of others. The Confucian gentleman aims at the people’s happiness103. The Declaration makes its pursuit an unalienable right104. Macaulay holds that laws exist to increase the sum of private happiness105.
Kant breaks this alliance. A good will is the condition of being worthy of happiness, not a means to it106. If nature had aimed at our happiness, reason would have been a poor instrument for securing it107. The more cultivated reason pursues enjoyment, the less true satisfaction it finds108. Private happiness is the worst foundation for morals, because prosperity does not match conduct and the pursuit of it teaches only better calculation109. Schiller does not accept the separation as final and asks culture to bring dignity into agreement with happiness110. The utilitarian tradition goes the opposite way. Bentham’s greatest-happiness principle bursts on the young Mill as a revelation111. Yet Mill’s crisis tests the doctrine from within. Asked whether realizing all his reforms would make him happy, he answered no112. He then wondered whether pleasures would cease to please once struggle was removed113. He recovered through Wordsworth’s tranquil contemplation114 and came to count individuality a principal ingredient of happiness115.
The religious authors gather all these failures into a single diagnosis. Pascal finds that all men’s unhappiness comes from being unable to sit quietly in a room116. They hunt, gamble and seek office for distraction from their condition117, and so, always preparing to be happy, they never are118. He rejects both remedies the philosophers offer: happiness is neither without us nor within us, but in God119. Augustine had already compared a drunken beggar’s carefree joy with his own anxious ambition and found both vain120. True happiness, for him, is joy in God alone121. Thomas à Kempis says that no created good can make a man blessed122. Dante sees all men yearning for a bliss in which the soul may rest123, and he places heavenly blessedness first in seeing the Truth, with love following124. The Gospel’s paradox, which gives blessedness to the poor and the weeping, returns in Pascal’s claim that affliction is true beatitude125,126. Lost Eden haunts this tradition. Dante calls it a pledge of eternal peace forfeited by man’s defect127. Milton’s Raphael teaches that happiness is God’s gift but its continuance depends on obedience128. The Hebrew scriptures temper this other-worldliness. The Preacher counts it good to eat, drink and enjoy one’s labour as God’s gift129, and the Psalmist blesses the people with full garners and peace in their streets130.
Several questions remain open across these books. Is happiness a state, as Montaigne and the Stoics hold, or a ceaseless progress, as Hobbes and Faust suggest? Is it the end of morals, as Locke and Bentham taught, or only what virtue may deserve, as Kant insists? Can it be found on earth, in contentment, friends and a quiet acre, or only, as Augustine and Pascal argue, in God? These authors do not settle the matter. What they share is the conviction, stated in Augustine’s first question, that the desire is universal and must point to something.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
See also: Desire 1c
See also: Life and Death 5c
See also: Desire 4a
See also: Desire 4c · Religion 14d
See also: Friendship 1c
See also: Virtue and Vice 3b
See also: Duty 1a
See also: Diversion 2c · Man 7d · Monarchy 6a · Life and Death 4c
See also: God 9d · Desire 11a
See also: Man, Desire, God, Virtue and Vice, Pleasure and Pain, Life and Death