book of M. Droz, _sur l’ art d’ étre heureux_, the substance of the
first chapter of which is given as above, will not be irrelevant,
I would hope, _to you_, if to others. It was a beautiful April
morning, and I had wandered away from the town, with the book
in my hand, among the hills. I inhaled a bland atmosphere that
just ruffled half formed leaves, and shook from trees, shrubs and
flowers the pearly drops and the delicious aroma of the season.
A dun, purple, smoky vapor veiled the brilliancy of the sun and
gave the face of nature its most exquisite coloring. A repose,
like sleep, seemed to rest upon the earth, only interrupted by the
ruminating of the flocks and herds on the hill sides. The bees
sped away to their nectar cells from tree and flower, leaving upon
the dark and fleeting line of their passage through the air a
lulling hum like the tones of an Eolian harp. A large town, with
its ceaseless and heavy roll of mingled sounds, lay outstretched
beneath my feet. Painted boats were slowly wending their way along
a canal from the town, and winding their course round the foot of
the hills. Before me was a vast panorama of activity, business,
commerce and all the accompaniments of a busy town. A few paces
behind me, and I was plunged in a forest where town and commerce
and life were hidden as if by the shifting of a scene, and the jay
screamed, and the woods showed as to the red man who had seen
them centuries before. A beautiful spring branch murmured by me in
its deep and flood-worn channel down the glen. A little advance
spread the town before me. A little retreat gave me back to the
wildness of nature in the forest. Here I had often enjoyed much of
the little that life allows us to enjoy, in quiet communion with
nature and my own thoughts. I had never experienced it in higher
measures than at this moment. Could I, by a volition, have arrested
the flight of time and the succession of sensations, here would I
have fixed the _punctum stans_ of existence, and been content to
have this scene always around me, and the enjoyment of this union
of meditation and repose, perpetual.
But a change came over my thoughts, as I read the quaint axiom,
laid down with such mathematical precision, _man is formed to be
happy_. What I saw and what I felt, my own consciousness assented
to the proposition. But, startled by a transient feeling of pain,
a new train of ideas succeeded. I have only to pass, said I, the
short interval between this repose, verdure, quietness and internal
satisfaction, to reach the scene of dust and smoke before me.
Besides spires and mansions, I shall see hovels, poor, blind, lame,
squalid, blaspheming youth, imbecile age, prostitutes, beggars,
haunts of felons and outlaws; and even in the abodes of what shows
external comfort and opulence, the sick and dying hanging in
agonies of suspense upon the countenance of their physician and
friends, as they catch gleams of hope or shades of despair from
their aspect. Many of these sick, even if they recover, will only
be restored to trembling age, to perpetual and incurable infirmity,
and to evils worse than death. Yet, unhappy in living, and afraid
to die, they cling to this wretched existence as though it were
the highest boon. These varied shades of misery that the picture
before me will present to the slightest inspection, in ten thousand
forms and combinations, are visible in every part of our world. I,
too, shall soon add to the deepness of the shading. My friends will
depart in succession; and in my turn, on the bed of death, I shall
look in the faces of those most dear to me, as I am compelled to
depart out of life. What an affecting contrast with what I see and
what I am!
Why there is this partial evil in the world is not a question which
I shall here attempt to vex; for I could add nothing to what has
already been said upon the subject. It is enough that the evil
does actually exist. Is it remediless? Can life be so spent as to
leave a balance of enjoyment set over against the evil? These are
my questions. There will always be inequality, ignorance, vice,
disease, a measureless amount of misery and death. What portion
of the evils of life can be cured? What portion must be manfully,
piously endured? What transient gleams of joy can be made to
illumine the depth of shade?
I yield entire faith to the doctrine before you, that, estimate
these evils as highly as you may, a balance of enjoyment may
still be struck in favor of life. I do not doubt, that more than
one half the suffering and sorrow which every individual endures
is simply of his own procuring, and not only that it might have
been wholly avoided, but that positive enjoyment might have been
substituted in its place. An inconceivable mass of misery would at
once be struck from the sum if, as I have already remarked, we knew
the physical, organic and moral laws of our being, and conformed
ourselves to them. A uniform, consistent and thorough education
would cure us of innumerable errors of opinion, injurious habits,
and a servile conformity to established and prescribed prejudices,
and would impart to us wisdom, force of character and resignation,
to enable us to sustain, as we ought, those that are unavoidable.
Imperfection, pain, decay and death, in the inevitable measures
belonging to organized beings, would remain. The dignity of true
philosophy, the stern consciousness of the necessity of courage,
profound and filial submission to the divine will, and the well
defined and investigated hopes of religion would accomplish the
remainder.
Consider one single evil--fear, unnecessary fear, an entirely
gratuitous infusion of bitterness in the cup of life. I ask the man
who has seen fourscore winters to tell me, were all that he has
suffered in his pilgrimage cast into one account, what would be the
greatest item in the sum? I believe that almost every one might
answer, that more than half might be charged to one single source
of suffering--fear--fear of opinion, reproach, shame, poverty,
pain, danger, disease and death. I pause not to consider the usual
dull illustrations of the wisdom and utility of assigning to us
the instinct of fear, to put us on our guard and to enable us to
ward off evils. It is not this instinctive shrinking and vigilance
to avoid evil that I consider. Let education have its most perfect
work in raising us superior to this servile and tormenting passion,
and too much of it would still remain. Of all that we have suffered
from fear, what portion has been of any service in shielding us
from that which we apprehended? Not only have we avoided no evil
in consequence, but the enervating indulgence of this passion
has taken from us our quickness of foresight, our coolness of
deliberation, our firmness of action and resolve, by the exercise
of which, we might have escaped all that we dreaded. We may
calculate then, that every pang we have felt from this source has
been just so much gratuitous agony.
Not only natural instincts, but acquired habits are transmitted;
and this evil of fearfulness, this foreboding of apprehension,
shaping the fashion of uncertain ills, has been the growing
inheritance of countless generations; and a shrinking and
effeminate timidity has been woven into our mental constitution
by nature. Education, instead of resisting, or counteracting, or
diminishing the transmitted mischief, has labored with terrible
effect, to make it a principle and a motive to action, and the
most efficient engine of the inculcated systems of morality and
religion. Fear of death, and a slavish terror, springing from
misapprehensions of the character of the divine being, and unmanly
and debilitating horrors in regard to the unknown future in another
life, these have been the chief sources of this evil. Terribly have
the father and the mother, the minister and the school-master, and
general prescription and example concurred, to strengthen this
barbarous instrument of governing, which never inspired a good
action, and which it would be cruel to apply to a slave. Horrible
have been the bondage, the mean abjectness of spirit, the long
agony of the soul, which this inculcation has inspired.--We have
been sedulously trained in a course of discipline which has made
us afraid of our own shadows in the dark, and inspired us with
shrinking and terror in view of a silent and peaceful corpse,
which, in the eye of sober reason, should originate associations no
more fearful, than a waxen figure. We, who are the victims of this
inborn and instinctive inheritance, we, who have had it inwoven by
precept, education and example, and the prevalent impression, that
it is one of the purest and most religious motives of action, are
best able from our own consciousness, and the memory of what we
have suffered from it, to present just views of it to others.--It
may be in us an ingrafted principle, too deep to be uprooted
by any rules, or reasons, or system of discipline; a habit too
unyieldingly become a part of our nature, to be overcome. But with
minds more docile, with temperaments more pliant, with habits
less fixed, it may be otherwise. The next generation may transmit
a more manly and less timid nature to the generations to come.
Education, building on the basis of minds of more force, may then
accomplish its perfect work, imbuing them with a filial confidence
in the Almighty, a sense of the beauty of well-doing, and a perfect
fearlessness in regard to everything, but doing wrong. The happier
generation of that era, will be spared the agony of all deaths, but
the single one of nature; and will be fortified by discipline, and
the force of general opinion and example, to regard this inevitable
law of our being, this merciful provision of providence, this rest
for the worn and weary, as the hireling regards the evening shade,
when he reposes from his labors and receives his reward. I shall
elsewhere advert to this evil in more detail, and point out such
remedies, as appear to me to be suggested by reason, education and
religion.
Note 2, page 41.
This classification of the great divisions of our species, as they
are occupied in the pursuit of happiness, seems to me to unite
truth with poetry and philosophy, and to be both happy and just.
The disappointed, who affirm that the earth offers no happiness,
the gloomy, who view life as a place of penance, austerity and
tears, the dissipated and voluptuous, who seek only pleasure, and
whose doctrine is, that life offers no happiness but in unbridled
indulgence, the ambitious, who consider happiness to consist only
in wealth, power and distinction, and a very numerous class, who
have no object in view, but to vegetate through life by chance,
constitute the great mass of mankind. The number of those who
have lived by system, and disciplined themselves to the wise and
calculating pursuit of happiness, has always been small. But
there have still been some, enough to prove the practicability
of the art.--Wherever we find a person, who declares that he has
lived happily, if his enjoyments have been of a higher kind,
than the mere vegetative easiness of a felicitous temperament
and an unthinking joyousness, we shall find on inquiry, that he
has been a philosopher in the highest and best sense. He may
scarcely understand the import of the term; but, however ignorant
of systems, and the learning of the schools, if he have made it
his chief business, to learn by the study of himself, and general
observation, how to be happy, he is the true sage. He may well
be content, let others regard him as they may; for he has put in
requisition the best wisdom of life. No one maxim, especially,
ever included more important and practical truth, than that, to be
happy, we must assiduously train ourselves to retain through life
a keen and juvenile freshness of sensibility to enjoyment, and
must early learn to anticipate the effect of experience and years
in cultivating a stern indifference, a strong spirit of endurance,
and unshrinking obtuseness to pain. It has been my fortune to see
examples of persons who enjoyed life even to old age with all the
ardor and the quick perception of the young, and who had always
been as remarkable for their impassive and heroic endurance of pain.
Note 3, page 43.
We are told, in ridicule of this study, that men have been very
happy without rules, and before any system had been laid down,
and will continue to be happy, unconscious of the means by which
they arrived at their enjoyment. So have men reasoned without
acquaintance with the rules of logic; but this proves not the
inutility of the study. Let the objector convince us that the happy
without thought and rules would not have been happier if they had
sought enjoyment with the keen and practical intelligence of a
Franklin.
Whatever men do well without definite aim and without rules, it is
clear to me, they would do better with these advantages. The same
argument equally militates with all means of moral instruction.
‘The world,’ the objector may say, ‘will proceed as before, say
what we may.’ But this would be deemed no just ground of objection
to an attempt to improve the age, though the efforts may have
little visible and apparent effect.
Note 4, page 44.
No term has been more hackneyed, in these days, than education.
We have had system upon system, and treatise upon treatise; and
more has been written and declaimed upon this subject than almost
any other. And yet, scarcely a word has been said upon a grand
and radical defect in all existing systems which reduces to a
very humble scale the results of the best concerted efforts. I
lay out of the question all other incongruities, that I might
easily mention, and come directly to that which I have chiefly in
my mind. Each of the different instructors, through whose forming
hands the pupil passes, communicates to him different, militant
and incompatible impulses; so that, instead of a continuous
operation and an onward movement, it seems to be the work of each
successive teacher to undo that of all the others. The father and
mother, besides various minor inculcations, labor, as their highest
object, to infuse into the mind of their child, ambition, the
desire of preëminence and distinction. The school-master instils
the same principles under such different circumstances as to
render the envy, rivalry and competition of the school-room almost
another series of impulses. The minister and the catechism enjoin
humility, meekness and a disposition to prefer others in honor
before themselves. ‘Be honest and high-minded,’ say the parents
and teachers. ‘Be adroit, and circumvent those who are watching
to take advantage of your weakness and inexperience,’ says the
master at the counting-desk. The elder friends teach one class of
maxims, and the younger another. The actual world inculcates rules
different from all the rest. Thus the parents, the school-master,
the minister, the politician, society and the world are continually
varying the direction of the youthful traveller. No wonder that
most people either have no character, or one that is a compound of
the most incongruous elements. A pupil, to have a strong, wise,
marked and efficient character, should have had it steadily trained
to one end; and every impulse ought to have been in a right line
and concurrent with every other. Such must be the case before
honest and uniform characters will be formed.
There is little force in the objection, that he who has not been
constantly happy himself ought not to presume to teach others to
be happy. On the contrary, as the author beautifully suggests,
none can discuss, with so much experience and force of truth, the
dangers of shipwreck, as they who have themselves suffered it. If
the art of happiness can be taught, the teacher must necessarily
have paid the price of a qualification to impart it, in having
been himself unhappy. Conscious that he had the susceptibility of
enjoyment, and wanted only the right direction of the means, he
will be able to set up way-marks, as a warning to others, at the
points where he remembers that he went astray himself.
Note 6, page 45.
The necessity of moderating our desires and reducing them within
the limits of what we may reasonably hope to acquire, has been
the beaten theme of prose and song for so many ages that the
triteness of repetition has finally caused the great truth to
be almost disregarded by moralists. Yet, who can calculate the
sum of torment that has been inflicted by wild and unreasonable
desires, by visionary and puerile expectations, beyond all
probable bounds of means to realize them, indulged and fostered
until they have acquired the force of habit! Whose memory cannot
recur to sufferings from envy and ill will, generated by cupidity,
for the possessions and advantages of others that we have not!
Who can count the pangs which he has endured from extravagant
and unattainable wishes! Poetry calls our mortal sojourn a vale
of tears; yet what ingenuity to multiply the gratuitous means
of self-torment! Has another health, wealth, beauty, fortune,
endowment, which I have not? Envy will neither take them from
him, nor transfer them to me. Why, then, should I allow vultures
to prey upon my spirit? Learn neither to regret what you want
and cannot supply, nor to hate him who is more fortunate. With
all his apparent advantages over you, he wants, perhaps, what
you may possess, a tranquil mind. There is little doubt that you
are the happier person if you contemplate his advantages and his
possessions with a cheerful and unrepining spirit.
I present two considerations only, as inducements to control and
regulate your desires. 1. In indulging them beyond reason you are
fostering internal enemies and becoming a self-tormentor. In the
quaint language of the ancient divines, they are like fire, good
servants but terrible masters. 2d. The higher gifts of fortune, the
common objects of envious desire, are awarded to but a few. The
number of those who may entertain any reasonable hope of reaching
them is very small. But every one can moderate his desires. Every
one can set bounds to his ambition. Every one can limit his
expectations. What influence can fortune, events, or power exercise
over a person, who has learned to be content with a little, and
who has acquired courage to resign even that without repining?
Franklin might well smile at the impotent malice of those who would
deprive him of his means and his business, when he proved to them
that he could live on turnips and rain water. It is not the less
true or important, because it has been a million times said, that
happiness, the creature of the mind, dwells not in external things.
Note 7, page 47.
Wherever civilized man has been found, the first effort of his
mind, beyond the attainment of his animal wants, has been to
travel into the regions of imagination, to create a nobler and
more beautiful world than the dull and common-place existing one,
to assign to man a higher character and purer motives than belong
to the actual race. To possess a frame inaccessible to pain and
decay, and to dwell in eternal spring, surrounded by beauty and
truth, is an instinctive desire. A mind of any fertility can
create and arrange such a scene; and in this dreaming occupation
the sensations are tranquillizing and pleasant beyond the more
exciting enjoyment of actual fruition. With the author, I deem
the propensity for this sort of meditation neither unworthy in
itself, nor tending to consequences to be deprecated. So far as
my own experience goes, and I am not without my share, it neither
enervates nor satiates. It furnishes enjoyment that is calm and
soothing; and such enjoyment, instead of enfeebling, invigorates
the mind to sustain trials and sorrows. Why should we not enter
into every enjoyment that is followed by no painful consequences?
Why should we not be happy when we may? Is he not innocently
employed who is imagining a fairer scene--a better world--more
benevolence, and more joy than this ‘visible diurnal sphere’
affords? Addison is never presented to me in a light so amiable
as when he relates his day-dreams, his universal empire, in which
he puts down all folly and all wickedness, and makes all his
personages good and happy. Every writer who has produced a romance
worth reading, has been endowed in this way, as a matter of course;
and I confidently believe that the greatest and best of men have
been most strongly inclined to this sort of mental creation. May
not their noblest achievements have been the patterns of those
archetypes? I have no doubt that imaginings infinitely more
interesting than any recorded in romances, Arabian tales, or any
other work of fiction, have imparted their transient exhilaration
to meditative minds, and have passed away with the things that
never grew into the material and concrete grossness of sensible
existence. If ink and paper and printing could have been created as
cheaply and readily as a new earth and better men and women, and
scenes more like what we hope for at last, the world would have had
bequeathed to it more volumes, than would have weighed down all
the ponderous dulness of by-gone romance. I cannot assure myself,
that you would have been amused, or instructed in reading; but you
would then have been able to form some idea of the hours of pain,
embarrassment, lack of all external means of pleasant occupation,
journeying, cold and watching, that have been beguiled by this
employment. I only add that, so far as my experience extends, the
first calm days of spring, and the period of Indian summer in
autumn are most propitious to this sort of revery.
Note 8, page 48.
These and the subsequent views of ambition in this essay of M.
Droz, have been the theme of severe and sweeping strictures upon
the general tendency of his book. Ambitious and aspiring men will
find it ridiculous, of course, to exact, as a pre-requisite to
the pursuit of happiness, the abandonment, or the moderation of
ambitious thoughts, especially in such a country as ours, where
some boon is held out to tempt these aspirings in almost every
condition, from the mansion to the cabin. It may not be amiss
for men, who are themselves aspirants, and to whom the access to
distinction and power is easy, and the attainment probable, to
declaim against the tendency of these maxims. I know well, that
in every rank and position, the inculcation of aspiring thoughts,
emulation and rivalry is the first and last lesson, the grand
and beaten precept, upon which the million are acting. I am well
aware how many hearts are wrung by all the fierce and tormenting
passions, associated with this devouring one. I affirm nothing in
regard to my own interior views, respecting what the world calls
fame, glory and immortality. Those who are most dear to me, will
not understand me to be entering my _caveat_ to dissuade them from
this _last infirmity of noble minds_. Could I do it with more
eloquence than ever yet flowed from tongue or pen, there will
always be a hundred envious competitors for every single niche
in the temple of fame. It can be occupied but by one; and he who
gains it will exult in his elevation only during its freshness
and novelty. The rest, to the torment of fostered and devouring
desires, will add the bitterness of disappointment.