Part 3 — PART III.

How far our Happiness depends on Ourselves.

I. Our Occupations, those of Necessity and those of Choice.

In one of his novels, Emile Zola describes a conversation between the workwomen of a Parisian laundry. The subject was, what each would do if she had ten thousand francs a year. They were all of one mind. They would do just nothing at all!

This washerwoman’s ideal of happiness has also commended itself to various philosophic minds. “I have often said,” writes Pascal, “that all misfortunes befall men because they do not know enough to stay quietly in their own rooms.” What puzzled him was that men will make the most toilsome efforts to secure a period of repose; and as soon as they obtain it, they weary of it and demand action. He might have learned from this the fallacy of his own definition.

Pg 110 The genial Herder taught that simplicity and repose are the two valves of the shell that secretes the pearl of human felicity; but he neglected to add that it must be the simplicity of aims combined with a multiplicity of means; and repose enjoyed merely as a preparation for renewed activity.

The true doctrine is that Labor, systematic, effective, congenial Labor, is not only a necessity, it is the source of the highest enjoyment to men. The ancients were right when they said the gods sell all pleasures at the price of toil. “Function in healthful action” is the definition which the modern physiologist gives of the feeling of pleasure; and he but translates into prose the poetic expression of the old Greek. The elements of true happiness must be sought in activity, not in repose; and it is high time that the world and the wiseacres found it out, and ceased singing peans to idleness and cursing the necessity of work.

Most men and a great many women have to work for their living. They usually accept the necessity with discontent and with envy of those who are idle or are in other pursuits. The farmer thinks he would have done better to have gone to the city. The lawyer regrets that he did not study medicine. As in Dr. Johnson’s story:—

“Surely,” said Rasselas, “the wise men to whom we listen with reverence chose that mode of life for themselves which they thought most likely to make them happy.”

“Very few,” replied the poet, “live by choice. Every Pg 111 man is placed in his present condition by causes which acted without his foresight, and with which he did not always co-operate.”

In this country most men select for themselves the occupation which they pursue for a livelihood; but I doubt whether the freedom in their choice makes them more contented with it. The root of their discontent lies deeper than is suggested in Dr. Johnson’s philosophic tale, and its removal, so indispensable to personal happiness, must be sought for elsewhere than in still wider license of choosing.

So far as either happiness or success is concerned it makes no difference, in nine cases out of ten, what business or profession a young man adopts, so that it is suitable to his education and social position. The rare exceptions are where there is some strong natural bent or aptitude; and even then the pursuit of it is more likely to bring enjoyment than money. Men are about equally fitted by nature for all the ordinary avocations of life, and the choice of a business is less important than is generally believed.

That is not where the secret of success and happiness lies. It lies in learning to practice one’s trade or profession as an art, to like it for its own sake, to derive a considerable portion of our pleasure from its pursuit, to have, as the French say, our heart in it, Avoir le cœur au métier. But how is this possible, one will ask, with the drudgery of the counting house, or the mill, or the harvest field, or the Court of Quarter Sessions? It is possible with any avocation, Pg 112 if one will take the trouble to think about it as one of the manifold branches of human industry, to study its relations to other branches and to the lives and fates of human beings, to try to improve it, and to learn its attractions for those who do like it, and endeavor to enter into their feelings. Every occupation has some such attractions and some such possibilities. Those who are willing to see and seize them are those who derive both solid enjoyment and substantial rewards from their work.

Another secret lies in the cultivation of a sort of analogy or harmony between our mental disposition and the occurrences and surroundings in which our obligatory labor places us. This is quite within our own power to effect by the voluntary control of our thoughts. Why busy our imaginations and disturb our minds with dreaming of the pleasures of foreign travel when we know we have to stay at home and work ten hours a day? Far better occupy ourselves with the interests around us and the easily attainable pleasures within our reach. Have no fear that this course is narrowing or lowering. There are no nobler games than those which can be played on any village lawn, and the hyssop on your garden wall, could you read it, would teach you the laws of all organic nature.

The considerations which should have weight in the choice of avocation are less those of capacity or inclination, since these differ little and can readily be cultivated, than those referred to on an earlier page which relate to health, bodily and mental. It is not necessary to be very clever Pg 113 to succeed in business; only a little more clever than those around you. But it is necessary to have your health; for in the struggle for bread, the weak are thrust to the wall without remorse. No one who chooses wisely will select a business which will aggravate an hereditary or acquired malady. It is more satisfactory to be honor-man of a lower class, than come in at the tail-end of a higher one.

There are also certain mental disqualifications which apply especially to the professions. William Hazlitt objected to all professions which depend on reputation, because this is “as often got without merit as lost without deserving;” but this is less the case now than it was formerly. The point is rather a mental unfitness for the work required, a state of things which may exist with plenty of ability. The politician with an instinctive shrinking from publicity, the lawyer who has an aversion to argument, the physician who is unable to show sympathy and interest where he feels none, may succeed in his profession, but he will scarcely enjoy it.

Intense application to an occupation is a common cause of distaste for it and unhappiness in it. Such concentration is nearly always needless, and is often fruitless. The most brilliant fortunes have not been the products of hard work, but of shrewd planning. The sweetness of the chimes does not depend on the violence of the ringing, but on the skill of the bellman. I had a friend who was brought up a broker, but remained a philosopher. He used to say that energy in business is the most common Pg 114 cause of failures. He referred, of course, to that exclusive and persistent zeal which is pretty sure to end by enfeebling the body and exhausting the mind.

Dissatisfaction with one’s lot sometimes arises from over conscientiousness,—a rare disease, I confess, in business circles, but I have met a few cases of it. “Always try to do your best,” is one of several hundred copy-book maxims which hypocrisy pretends are necessary to success, but which common sense and practical life quietly ignore. Very much less than your best will often answer the purpose, and the rope that reaches is long enough. I have witnessed considerable distress, especially among young men, because their books of account were not so immaculate, or their press-articles so studied, as they might have been by greater toil; yet they were good enough,—and good enough is good.

At the best, making one’s living is often a sad affair. Business life is like a dinner at a crowded third-rate hotel, —one’s clothing is so torn in the struggle for place, and there is so much dirt to eat before the dessert is served, that either the appetite turns to nausea, or its satisfaction is followed by indigestion. Hence so many able men prefer permanent positions on small salaries to embarking in affairs on their own account. Many a lawyer will give up a large practice to become a judge on one-third of the income. Politics in the United States is, as a business, notoriously unsafe, but the attraction of fixed salaries overcrowds it with aspirants. The dream of the Socialists Pg 115 is for all citizens to be salaried. Individual effort, however, alone insures general progress; not to dispense with it, but to favor its pleasurable development, is the real social problem.

The true aim of Occupations of Necessity is to provide us time, not for repose and inaction, as most moralists teach, but for Occupations of Choice. We call these our recreations, amusements, pastimes, favorite studies, hobbies, fads, if you please. In these lie the mainsprings of our felicity; and their character reveals pretty clearly the measure of our capacity for happiness, and the degree of our mastery of its theory. If we pass our leisure in cultivating delusions and pursuing inanities, our enjoyment is that of the insane and the idiotic, and arises not from the health, but from the disease or debility, of our minds. Yet how many men, skillful in securing the means of pleasure, are witless in the use of it!

“Those are the best recreations,” says old Thomas Fuller, “which, besides refreshing, enable men to some other good ends.” His words, though they sound well, are only half-wise. To enjoy to the utmost any favorite pastime or study, it should be pursued for itself alone, and with no ulterior purpose or hope in view. “’Twere to cramp its use, to hook it to some useful end.” Pleasure is nobler than profit, enjoyment is higher than utility, whatever political economists or pulpit orators say to the contrary. I know some men who always explain their relaxations as a part of their serious lives; and others who, if Pg 116 detected in an act of benevolence, hasten to show that it was prompted by their self-interest; of the two, I admire the latter more.

Success is another name for Perseverance. When Newton was asked how he reached his great discovery, he replied, “By making it incessantly the subject of my thoughts.”

Happiness follows success, provided the latter is rightly achieved and received.

A contented spirit is merely one which pleases itself with little effort. Contentment differs from Happiness, as repose from recreation.

For most, it will be easier to learn to like what they have to do, than to find the chance of doing what they like.

To teach what they do not know, and to live by a trade that they do not understand, are feats that many are surprised that they cannot perform.

All paths seem rough to the bare feet of those who are used to wearing shoes.

Pg 117 Would you have pleasant yesterdays and welcome to-morrows, let to-day be busy and confident.

You may pound away with the hammer, but if you are not driving a nail, you will break instead of building.

Most divers bring up mud; but few, pearls.

The honey which we gather ourselves tastes the sweetest.

The measure of value of work is the amount of play it provides for; the measure of value of play is the amount of work there is in it.

Play-time should be perfecting-time; the use of leisure hours is to get rid of the lees of life.

Before all days are made holidays, all men should become heroes.

Pg 118

II. Money-making, its Laws and its Limits.

There are some prayers which belong to the universal Religion of Humanity, and none more so than this, which is found in the oldest prayer-book of the Aryan race, the Rig Veda,—“O Lord, prosper us in the getting and the keeping!” “To make money” is certainly the “soul’s sincere desire” of most citizens of the world at the present day, and nowhere is it more fervently uttered than in this country.

This is no discredit. So far as we can trace the history of man from the Old Stone Age upward, the one efficient motive to his progress has been the acquisition and preservation of property. This has been the immediate aim of all his arts and institutions and the chief incentive to individual exertion. The time may come—indeed, there are signs of its approach—when nations will consciously aim at some other than a property career, and individuals will perceive that the purpose of riches is something else than to offer facilities for their further increase or for inglorious ease.

In this devotion to the accumulation of property men have not been led astray by what Shakespeare so magnificently calls—

Pg 119 Material resources are the indispensable requisites to progress. The miseries of poverty are manifest, and there are none greater. The utterly poor man is condemned to servitude and suffering, the woman to degradation. The imperative demands of the animal wants quench the finer elements of character, and the brutal stamps out the human in the desperate struggle for existence.

What wonder that the pauper turns in bestial fury against the rich, who flaunt before him a superfluous luxury? But his passion springs from his ignorance.

Wealth is no longer “spoils,” the product of robbery; rather may it be called the reward paid by society for services rendered humanity. It is frequently the booty won in some victory over the elements of nature or of self, and by the practice of those maxims which make men stronger and more useful to those around them. To the possessor it supplies the leisure necessary to the cultivation of his nobler faculties and to the highest of duties—self-development.

The terms “wealth” and “riches” are vague, and to understand the relation of property to personal happiness, which is my present theme, we must define them closer.

The time has gone by when either love is satisfied to live in “a cot beside the hill,” or a philosopher in a tub. Both prefer to possess a house in a city street and a cottage by the sea; which is a sign that both the philosophy of love and the love of philosophy have improved. The affectation of despising riches—which Pg 120 never was anything but an affectation—is no longer good form, even among sages.

Let us count what riches give.

The list is short and it is pleasant reading. Riches supply us with the food and drink we like, clothing, shelter, and surroundings to our taste, means of warmth and light, the services and to some extent the companionship of those we choose, and especially leisure and means to pursue our “occupations of choice.”

These are the immediate benefits we derive from riches, and practically there are none others. Political economists have therefore called these “real” or “effective” riches, to distinguish them from “potential” or “productive” riches, by which latter they mean property or capital invested with the object of supplying “effective” riches, without personal effort on the part of the owner.

In looking over the list of “effective” riches, one sees that they are all very desirable, and perhaps, I may as well say, essential to personal happiness. I am sure nine-tenths of the civilized world will agree with me. About that, the discussion will be short; but about how to obtain them, that inquiry is not to be disposed of so quickly.

We are now talking business. Let us be practical. Les affaires avant tout. Just how much a year do I need to be rich? Here I make an extraordinary discovery, comparable only to that of the Fortunate Isles, where apple trees bore fruits of gold; or the valley of Sinbad the Sailor, where the common pebbles were rubies and diamonds. On Pg 121 turning to that list of “effective” riches, I perceive that very little of it has to do with things, and very much of it with me. It is based on what I like, prefer, choose. If, like the Emperor Nero, I cannot be satisfied with less than peacocks’ brains and nightingales’ tongues for dinner, I must have the revenues of an empire; but if I am content with bread and beans, with a shanty to keep out the wind and a slop-shop suit for warmth, then a few fifty-cent fees a day—I happen to be a doctor—will make me rich as a Rothschild.

Marvelous discovery! beatific vision! only, at the moment of utmost complacency, calm reflection, like a chill wind, “disencharms the late enchantment.” My tastes are not my own. They belong to my parents and my race. I cannot help it that I was born with a thin skin, which requires fine silk next it to be comfortable; with a queasy stomach, that demands delicate dishes; with a thirst for remote and useless learning, which must have expensive books. So from this time forth I flout at and deride that solemn prig of antiquity, whose name I am glad to have forgotten, who taught that there are two ways of getting rich, each equally satisfactory, but one much easier than the other—the one to diminish our wants, the other to increase our incomes. I have no better opinion of his teaching than had Malvolio of the doctrine of Pythagoras, that “the soul of his grandam might haply inhabit a partridge;” and, really, which of the two the antiquated Pg 122 mentor thought the easier I cannot imagine. To me, it has been the latter.

Money, therefore, we must have.

Her physician said of Cleopatra that she had “pursued conclusions infinite, of easy ways to die.” The expression might be used of many a modern schemer with reference to getting wealth. But alas! I am afraid, of the thousands of schemes, that of the dry, unimaginative, political economists is the only one worth mentioning; and that is summed up in the hateful word—Economize! or, as they put it in their stiff dialect,—“Diminish the consumption of your 'effective’ riches, in order that you may add the surplus to your 'productive’ riches, or invested capital.”

Some of them are even meddlesome enough to lay down exact rules as to how much one should put aside from an annual income and securely invest, in order to meet the demands of what they call “an enlightened prudence.” This, they say, should be one-fourth of such income, and they add that if this with its increment is continued for about five-and-twenty years, the return from your “productive” riches will then be sufficient to supply you with the amount of “effective” riches to which you have been accustomed, without further labor on your part; and you can quietly sit in the chimney corner and live in bliss all the rest of your days, like the prince in the fairy story. This is a page, therefore, good for young married people to read who are starting out in life and have their fortunes to make, and want to “retire” at their silver wedding.

Pg 123 Such slow work will not suit the energetic young man whose determination is to get rich quick and have a good time while he is about it. He has no occasion to go back to antiquity for his two ways of succeeding, and he proposes to use them both as strings to his bow, so that by one or the other he will drive his arrow into the bull’s eye of fortune’s target. Speculation! Advertising! These are the words of power with which he will enslave the spirits which guard the hidden pots of gold. He is well aware that a bit of red flannel is bait enough for many fishes, and that in angling false flies catch more trout than real ones. The value of knowledge to him is measured by the ability it gives to detect the ignorance of others and to take advantage of it. His plans, like those of Cardinal de Retz, are so laid that, though they fail, they will bring in some return. He will manage to secure a commission even on the expenditures he makes for his pleasures. Such a character, and there are many such in our country, often enough succeeds in his ambitions.

I was in active business for twenty years, and I made the discovery that the excellent precepts which all are taught in infancy and continue to praise in after years undergo certain modifications when it comes to practical life “in the street.” Once I amused myself by writing them out as I found them really observed, and I am inclined to insert a few specimens, which I will call

Pg 124 New Lamps for Old.

Not how business should be done, but how others do business, is the proper study.

The brighter your virtues shine, the more fish will be attracted within reach of your gig.

Always praise veracity and honesty; they are useful qualities in others.

The louder you condemn dissimulation, the less you will be suspected of it.

Be virtuous; nothing so enables you to appear superior to those around you.

If you are stingy, do not pretend to be generous; the effort will betray you.

When people express surprise at your meanness, it shows that you must have established a reputation for liberality.

Punctuality is excellent; but the man who comes last to an engagement is the only one who is not kept waiting.

The value of time is its value to yourself.

The simplest device to capture other people’s money is to let them think that they can capture yours.

Truth is bright and strong; too bright for most eyes, and too strong to be administered without dilution.

The man who attends the funeral of his own reputation often has a jolly wake.

Marry for love, work for your living; marry for money, work for your liberty.

But enough of these. It will ever hold true that competitive business breeds deception and selfish greed. The Pg 125 business man who pretends otherwise is either a hypocrite or of dull moral sense.

In this race for riches, whether along the peaceful avenue of economy or jostling in the streets of speculation, where comes in the Pursuit of Happiness? Riches, as I have shown, are and can be nothing more than means to this end, and those who, through avarice, greed, or rapacity, make them the end and aim of their aspirations, trade gold for dross. Scarcely less is the error of those who are ever postponing the hour of enjoyment until a certain sum is reached, and their fortune can be rounded off with additional thousands. It is a general tendency in human nature to live in the past or the future, although the present alone is man’s. What to him is now, and here, is all that he can ever possess or enjoy; and if you ask him, he will grant it; but he is driven ever by what seems an irrational and demonic power to seek his joy in what is somewhere else, far off, out of reach, impossible of attainment, beyond his capacities.

The illusive pictures drawn by memory, by hope, and by imagination have their proper place in the palace of Human Happiness; but the majority fix their gaze steadily on these alone, and wander through halls and chambers filled with rich stuffs and costly ware, through corridors looking out on entrancing views and courts opening to the starry heavens, their eyes fixed vacantly on the far distance, and noting nothing of the beauties by which they are surrounded. To waken them by some whisper of what they Pg 126 are missing, and to persuade them to turn their eyes on what is around them, will be my purpose in the chapters immediately to follow.

Bishop Berkeley declared that he was the richest man in England, because he had trained himself to the habit of mind of regarding everything which gave him pleasure as his own. In our days, most philosophers of that school reside in penitentiaries.

The disappointments of the nouveau riche are, that what he would like to buy is not on sale, and what he expected to get for nothing, he finds can only be had by paying for it.

That you are rich, is nothing to me; but only whether you are willing to spend your money.

Many strive harder to appear happy than to be so. Ostentation is wealth shamming happiness. Envy is the fool who does not see through the sham.

The rich have less advantage over the poor than the latter suppose.

Not the inventory of your property, but that of your unsatisfied wants, measures your fortune; not your annual Pg 127 income, but your annual deficit or surplus, makes you rich or poor.

After all, the worst of poverty is that it leaves us so little money to give away.

In Grecian legend, the apple of discord was made of gold.

If you teach your son to love money well, you will have such success that he will soon love it better than he does you.

A miser has merry mourners.

Youth saves for age, age for its heirs, and these for nobody.

Do not starve your horse to save your hay.

When you deliver a eulogy on a plutocrat, you had better dwell on his millions than on his methods of getting them.

Pg 128

III. The Pleasures we may Derive from our Senses.

The odious doctrine of the ascetics has been that whatever is agreeable to man is offensive to God; and that to cultivate the pleasurable sensations is to prepare one’s self for perdition.

Far more sane than they was that Mohammedan teacher quoted by Gibbon, who, when asked to describe the true believers, replied,—“They are the elect of God, whose lives are devoted to the improvement of their own natural faculties.”

As mistaken as the ascetics, are those wooden-souled disciplinarians who maintain that we should not look for recreation in our daily work, but put off the thoughts of it to holidays and vacations. These are but one degree better than those hypocrites who will tell you that benevolence should have no place in business, and who will offer you a round sum for a public charity, while they squeeze the salaries of their shop-girls down to the lowest quarter-of-a-dollar.

Down with such imposters! Each hour of our lives is the best hour for enjoying ourselves and for providing others the means of enjoyment; and there is no better Pg 129 way to accomplish both these objects than that suggested by the pious Arab,—“The improvement of our own natural faculties.”

These have been divided by experts in such matters into three classes,—the Sensations, the Emotions, and the Intellect. I shall consider the training of each with reference to the special pleasures it can furnish. All are equally worth cultivating. The delights of one are not lower than those of another, if accepted in the proper spirit. He who has right self-culture will derive gratification from them all; and will not be, like the French peasant in Halevy’s story, unable to understand how heaven could be attractive unless his native village were transported there.

Some general rules must be respected if the exercise of any of our faculties is to yield the maximum of pleasure. These rules are derived from the physiology of the nervous system; for it cannot be doubted that this underlies, if it is not identical with, every feeling and function of the mind.

I hasten to say this, lest the reader should suppose they are derived from moral philosophy, or based on duty or virtue. I am well aware they could expect a scant hearing were this the case. Men dislike as much to be urged to their good, as to be forbidden what is hurtful. Nor are they difficult to understand; but this helps little; it is easy enough to learn and to teach wisdom; to apply it to our own conduct is what is hard.

The first rule is that of Moderation. Restrain the indulgence Pg 130 in any one pleasure. Immoderation is sure to be followed by exhaustion of the nerve-fibres and subsequent painful reaction. We should not think highly of a gardener who when he picks his flowers pulls his plants up by the roots. Yet this is the fashion in which many men treat their own faculties.

The second rule is that of Variety. Multiply the sources and kinds of pleasure. Increase the susceptibility of all your faculties to its sweet appeals. Seek it in all directions immediately around you. But do not confound the love of variety with instability and freakishness; nor imitate those prodigals who throw the bottle away after the first sip of its contents:—

There are other rules; but to recite them would make this page as dull as a sermon, and it would have as little effect. These two are the chief, and they supplement each other; for he who indulges moderately in all his pleasures will have the capacity to indulge in many, and will preserve those features which are the most desirable in all,—fineness of Quality and persistence of Duration. He will deal with his faculties as a good government with its subjects,—whose aim is not to make a few extremely happy, but to provide for all a fair share of enjoyment, without making any miserable.

The most general sense we possess is that which is called the “muscular” sense. This it is which yields the pleasurable Pg 131 feeling in exercise, in athletic sports, in rowing, riding, dancing, and what old Thomas Fuller called “the descants on the plain air of walking.” Through it we gain the sensation of buoyancy and elasticity, we “feel good,” our personality is sharpened, and our appreciation of life and what it has to offer is heightened. It is the synonym of healthful activity, and thus becomes the most advantageous preparation for all species of enjoyment.

By physiologists, this muscular sense is not included in the list of “special” senses, because it cannot be localized in any one set of nerves. It is nearest allied to the special sense of Touch, which is centred in certain “tactile corpuscles,” distributed irregularly beneath the skin, principally on the finger-tips. They are extremely useful, but not prominently serviceable in the production of pleasurable sensations. The stroking of soft and warm substances, such as velvet and fur, excites agreeable impressions, but they are not very keen. Irritations to the skin are a source of acute annoyance, but their removal affords merely a negatively acceptable condition.

When we consider how slightly most sensations of touch excite subjective states of mind, it is remarkable that in response to one stimulant they are among the most powerful known in nature. This stimulus is that of another personality. The most positive feelings of both aversion and attraction are those excited by physical contact of the naked flesh. This is why it has been accepted in so many countries as a sign and proof of amity. The savage Pg 132 Africans touch noses and the civilized European shakes hands or kisses the hand or the cheek. Such actions are barren conventionalities, unaccompanied by either pleasure or pain; but they are indeed unfortunate who cannot recall any moment of heart’s utmost joy and triumph when “the spirits rushed together at the touching of the lips.” Such moments are sacred, priceless gifts of the gods, not to be had for gold nor secured by taking thought, so their consideration has no place in this book.

In spite of the active business done at the perfumery counters, the pleasures of the sense of Smell do not seem to come in for a large share of admiration in the modern world. It was different in the days of old. They were considered the most delightful of all, even to Divinity itself. Among the earliest rites of religion was that of burning aromatic incense to the gods; and in the books of Moses good works are described as affording “a sweet savor of satisfaction” to the Almighty. One of the Fathers of the Church speaks of a holy prayer as “the perfume of a just soul” rising to Heaven; and when a good man passed away he was said to die “in the odor of sanctity.” Such solemn authorities should justify the cultivation of the pleasures of this sense. They could be supported by abundant quotations from those philosophers, the poets, who have much to say about “the spicy gales of Araby the blest,” and other such odoriferous associations.

Some odors are as intoxicating as wine, and others cling to the memory like the impressions of childhood. Yet it Pg 133 is rare for the insane to have delusions of the olfactory sense; and I have found few persons who dream of odors. Some writers who claim to be scientific have set up “a gamut of scents,” and others pretend such a harmonic scale can be made the basis of a sort of music of perfumes. This is riding theory beyond sight of practice; but who does not inhale with conscious joy the balsamic fragrance of the pines, the salt and stimulating whiffs from old ocean, or the laden redolence from gardens of roses?

Many writers attribute the pleasure which tobacco gives to its influence on the sense of smell; but this, I am sure, will not explain the intense satisfaction which it yields to men in all climes, consuming it in so many varied ways. I know nothing in physiology more surprising or more puzzling than the eager demand for this plant, which sprang up throughout the world after its discovery in America. I have been a smoker from boyhood, and am just as unable to analyze the pleasure it gives me as to explain it in others.

That prince of epicures, Brillat-Savarin, spent some time in the United States, and in his delightful volume on the Physiology of the Taste has a chapter on “cookery in America,”—which is filled with nothing but asterisks and interrogation points!

A hundred years have passed since he was among us, and we have reformed our cuisine indifferently, though not altogether. We have been too much hampered by fatuous Pg 134 bigots preaching that we should eat to live, and not live to eat; whereas we should most certainly live to eat during two or three hours out of every twenty-four; and so doing we shall be passing them more creditably than do most men, or probably ourselves, the remainder of the day. The game of “beggar your neighbor” has advocates enough and fervent disciples, so I shall have something to say about eating for the fun of it and as a fine art.

All nations of culture have connected a certain solemn joy with the act of taking food. To “break bread” with one is the expression of the sweet sentiment of hospitality, and for the lovers to share the same loaf before the High Priest was the simple and beautiful marriage-rite among the ancient Romans. The “love feasts” of the early Christians were the repetitions of the only ceremony which their Founder prescribed; and science traces to appropriate nutrition the growth of both physical and mental abilities. The devout Novalis called meal-times the “flower-seasons of the day,” and claimed that all spiritual joys can be expressed through the service of the table. Can there be anything in it unworthy or debasing?

In the light of such declaration should we look on our food-taking, and not merely as feeding and filling. Were the kitchen more of a studio in American homes, we should see a higher style of art in the drawing-rooms. The worst preparation for a day’s work is a poor breakfast, and its shabbiest reward is a bad dinner. If our daughters studied more diligently what the Italians call the melodia Pg 135 del gusto, their married lives would be attuned to a more harmonious accord.

Consider the appointments and symmetry of a well-served dinner in that high style of art which the French have brought to perfection. The mere sight of the table awakens our esthetic feelings, disperses the cares that have infested the day, and softens the asperities which its rude conflicts have developed. The snowy cloth with its embroidered centre-piece, bearing a vase of roses or restful green; the gay triumphs of the potter’s skill, flanked by polished metal and diaphanous crystal, whose varied forms hint of the manifold gifts of the grape; the chairs, so disposed as to suggest how we should live our whole lives—ever near to others, but not jostling them. Then how rhythmical the progress of the repast! the cold, salt shellfish, followed by the hot and spicy soup, harmonized by the neutral flavor of the fish, its creamy sauce relieved by the bare suspicion of the clean acid of the lemon; and so on through the courses, until the aromatic coffee and the tiny glass of liqueur, redolent of wild herbs or of Alpine flowers, remove both thoughts of food and sense of satiety.

The sequence of such a repast is not a conventionality. Medical men as well as epicures know that it is based on physiology. Once, with a friend of like inquiring mind, I ordered a dinner at a restaurant of renown, exactly reversing the usual sequence, beginning with Chartreuse, coffee, and ice-cream, ending with soup, oysters, and hock. The experiment convinced us that the received is the right Pg 136 sequence, and we made no second attempt to put the wrong end foremost.

Many will cry that such a dinner as I describe is one for the millionaire and not for the million. They are in error. In France I have repeatedly partaken of such in families of very humble means. They are, in fact, economical. At an ordinary American dinner I have seen seven vegetables and two meats served at once. Half the number would have set forth a much better repast, if served in the French manner. Moreover, an elaborate dinner is not desirable daily; but to have one, say weekly, is as improving as going to the opera, or listening to a great poet read his own verses.

An essential precept of gastronomic culture is to cultivate a taste for all customary dishes. Every locality has its own. Snails and mussels and cockscombs are favorite dishes in Paris, but I have found few Americans enlightened enough to be willing to like them. A broad taste adds to one’s own pleasure and that of others. How disappointing the guest who refuses dish after dish planned with an eye to his pleasure!

Do not be ashamed of the enjoyments of life which are derived from judicious eating and drinking. There are no more accurate standards of a family than its table-manners, table-service, table-talk. Culture is reflected in them as in a mirror. Care not if the bigots and Pharisees call you a wine-bibber and a glutton. You will not be the first to whom they have applied those epithets, and you need not Pg 137 be ashamed of your company. In the city of Paris, where the art of cookery has its home and the Prohibition party no adherents, dyspepsia is scarcely heard of, and the arrests for drunkenness during the entire year of 1890 were—how many, think you?—just thirty-eight!

If I have dwelt with some emphasis on the pleasures of taste, it is because they are little understood in this country and there is a prevalent tendency to decry them. Those which are derived from the sense of Hearing will need no defense. Many of them are matters of constant and intelligent cultivation. We are said not to be a musical nation, but certainly both vocal and instrumental artists are not rare, and those from other countries find among us their most profitable harvest-fields. The intensity and the value of the enjoyment derived from music depend on individual peculiarities which are little modified by cultivation. Of all the exalted pleasures it is the one least communicable and least connected with other faculties. One of the finest pianists in the United States is a negro idiot, and intellectually an appreciative musical audience need not be above him. But I have been told that I have no right to speak about this art. Six generations of Quaker ancestors, who would not permit an instrument of music in the house, have nearly extinguished the musical sense in me.

The music of nature is free to all and intelligible to all. No instruction is demanded to listen with rapture to the blithesome carol of the meadow-lark or the cheery notes of Pg 138 the wood-thrush, joyous denizens of our American fields. The many voices of the wind, now whispering secrets to the pines, now whistling impudently outside our windows, now strident and threatening through the bare branches of winter, bring us messages suited to all moods, and play melodies on our hearts as though their strings were stretched on an Æolian harp. On a sensitive mind the power of these sounds of the wind is altogether peculiar, and appears to be owing to the fact that the agency which produces them is hidden, veiled, and invisible. I would liken it to the effect of distant church bells, heard through the stillness of some Sabbath morn, soft, rhythmical, earnest, inviting us to sweet societies and unseen shrines.

We appreciate too little the delight we almost unconsciously derive from the sense of hearing through the power it gives us to have unrestricted social intercourse in conversation, and to listen to oratory, instruction, and public entertainments. When we observe how even slight deafness circumscribes the life and reduces the number of its sources of enjoyment, we first understand the extent of the gratifications we owe to the faculty of audition, and how important to our happiness are its enjoyment and cultivation.

But how vast is the capacity of man for happiness! How many sources of joy would remain to one deprived of every sense but that of Sight! All his life would not suffice to explore the boundless fields of enjoyment which it alone throws open to him. He has but to cast his eyes around Pg 139 him to revel in the ever-changing garb of earth, in the sky with its majestic clouds sailing across the measureless blue depths, in the splendors of sunrise and sunset, in the transient glory of the rainbow, and in the immortal light of the stars. Stretched on the strand, he may mark the far-off, many-hued, sparkling brine, or elsewhere see great mountains lift their summits to eternal snow and watch them bathed in the rosy glamour of the afterglow, seemingly suspended in mid-air, when night obscures their base.

The beauties of form, line, color, and proportion are open to him, and the treasures of joy which the noble arts of painting, sculpture, architecture, drawing, and engraving have been laboring for thousands of years to enrich the world with in their fullness belong to him. The delicate suggestions of light-and-shade and the inexhaustible fertility of the colorist supply him with storehouses from which he can fill countless hours of gratification. Those elements in our nature which respond to the amusing, the pleasing, the picturesque, and the sublime are almost equally appealed to through the sense of sight; and were we to devote ourselves to answering their fascinating invitations, little leisure should we have left for occupation with any other sense. Nor among these have I enumerated those crowning delights to many minds, the faculty of acquainting themselves with the thoughts of others through reading, and giving perhaps equal pleasure to others by writing, both of which are chiefly conditioned on the sense of sight.

Pg 140 What I have written is but an outline, a scatter of unfinished suggestions, of the numerous enjoyments which we can obtain by the proper cultivation of our senses. Their training, and the rational development of all their functions, are just as essential to our higher life as the cultivation of those which are sometimes, though falsely, called our nobler faculties. There is no aristocracy in the kingdom of nature, and the lowest of our powers, if appropriately directed and educated, is as worthy to occupy the throne as any which in popular repute is deemed the highest.

Sensation is the sense of existence.

There is no “order of excellence” in the faculties of man. One is as excellent as another. The only difference is in the scope of their activities. We should give play to all according to their strength. This is the profound lesson of Walt Whitman’s writings.

Sensation, Emotion, Intellect, all three, enter into every action. We should conduct our lives as one plays a game of three-handed euchre, where the two players who are behind constantly enter into combinations against the one who is ahead.

Quaff pleasure in sips, not gulps; let it fall like the Pg 141 manna in the wilderness, a sufficiency daily, not a quantity at once.

Healthy mirth has no reaction. Laughter is lightsome.

Good fare, good manners, good company,—these are the three graces which should preside over the dinner table. Then will the meal include, in the words of Sydney Smith, “Everything of sensual and intellectual gratification which a great nation can glory in producing.”

Table-talk,—the best of talk. Even Kant thought it not beneath him to give rules for it: first, of the weather and the roads; next, the current events of the day; then history, art, and philosophy. So did Marsilius Ficinus: first, of divine things; then anecdotes; finally, of art and music.

The unthinking are prone to confine the meaning of Pleasure to Sensation. The coarsest philosophy of life is the most popular, because it is most easily understood, and because it appeals to the universal, which are the merely animal, traits of human nature.

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IV. The Pleasures we may Derive from our Emotions.

The emotions are sensations translated into Memory and commented on by the Imagination, with the usual distortion and falsification of the original, characteristic of all translators and commentators.

The primary emotions of Hope and Fear are the recollections of pleasure or pain projected into the future; the disappointment of hope or the realization of fear brings sorrow, regret, or remorse, feelings which are concerned with the past alone.

These reflections suggest how much our happiness has to do with Time. If each could estimate for himself the relative value of the past, the present, and the future, the pursuit of happiness would be a science with results as certain as geometry. As it is, most men pass their days, not in enjoying life, but in getting ready to enjoy it, or in regretting they did not enjoy it; and those who think they are wiser, and who boast that they cultivate the present alone, usually sow it with the seed of thistles and tares to pester their later lives.

The folly of philosophies—and, I may add, religions—has been their effort to divest man of these natural emotions.

Pg 143 “Expect nothing, and you will not be disappointed,” is the cheerful advice of the pessimist and the Buddhist; “Fear nothing, for you are in the hands of God,” says the Christian fatalist. “Regrets are vain,” cries the opportunist; “live in the present, and let the dead past bury its dead.”

In practical affairs, the best philosophy is common sense, which is nothing else than the abstract and epitome of the experience of all mankind through all time; and this arbiter condemns all three of the above maxims as the words of folly and not of wisdom. Hope, fear, and regret are equally necessary to the safe conduct of life with a view to securing the greatest enjoyment from it, and the only point left to consider is the relative extent in which each should be indulged. About this I shall offer a few suggestions.

The skillful architect of his own career will not draw a plan which is either too broad or too high for his means to construct. His hopes will be neither too exalted nor too extended. To be as happy as possible, we must never expect to be extremely happy. Complete happiness is an ideal condition, and we are never farther from the ideal than when we think we have it in our grasp. Nor will his plans be elaborate. The larger the foundation, the more time and money it takes to build the house. The chief enjoyment in life should be drawn from a few, easily accessible sources; though this should not lead us to neglect others that come in our way. One should not refuse a bequest because he has a profitable business. Few understand Pg 144 the limits of their own capacity for happiness. They do not know, as the saying is, when they are well off, and, like a restless inventor, spoil the machine by constantly seeking to improve it. They should ponder on an epitaph on a tombstone in a London churchyard:—“I was well; I would be better; I am here.”

Our hopes should not belong to the class called by physicians “incompatibles;” that is, when the realization of one will certainly or probably prevent that of the other. Few errors are more common than this, and few are productive of greater disappointment. Reasonable reflection and ordinary self-knowledge will generally suffice to prevent it. If I set out in life to make a million dollars I cannot expect also to become a distinguished Sanscrit scholar.

The fruition of our hopes should not be placed in a distant future. Life is uncertain, but that is the least objection. What is certain is, that we ourselves shall not be the same next year or next week that we are to-day. Our tastes and moods will change, and it is quite likely that we shall care nothing for the fruit of the plants we are now so diligently cultivating.

This consideration leads up to the last and probably the most useful of all the suggestions on this subject which I shall offer, that is, that in planning for the future, it will, as a rule, repay us best to devote our most earnest and constant attention to the avoidance of pain or misfortune rather than to the preparation of projects of pleasure. Pg 145 We know what we are about when we set to work to forestall a danger or to prevent a disaster; we are by no means so sure as to what course of action will yield us pleasure. The best laid schemes “gang aft a-gley.”

Hope and Fear are both deceivers; but we like the company of Hope even when we know she lies; and dislike that of Fear the more, the closer we believe she tells the truth. Many temperaments are tortured more by the dread of misfortune than by misfortune, and are constantly sacrificing the happiness of the present for fear they may not enjoy the future. To such as these would apply the pregnant maxim of Lord Bacon,—“The only thing to be feared is fear.”

When in reason and in due proportion to its object, the emotion is salutary and protective. To know what to fear, to take precautions and thus to avoid dangers, are the very conditions of existence. Cowardice is contemptible, but foolhardiness is senseless.

In modern life the most common forms of fear are worry and anxiety. To a certain extent these also are wholesome; there may be good ground for them, and so long as they act as stimulants to healthful activity, they are not to be shirked; but when they lead to morbid states of mind and body, they should be met with appropriate remedies.

The first of these is a deliberate and calm study of the situation and the real causes for fear, if there are any. Spectres lose their terrors by daylight, and most fears are vastly diminished by reflection. What if the worst does Pg 146 come? The worst is never as bad as we imagine it will be. We may also call to mind how useless are many of our anxieties. Why worry about disasters which we cannot prevent? Still less should we worry about those which we can prevent.

When reason and thought will not dispel our fears, we must fight the devil with fire, and conquer one emotion with another. The opponent of Fear is not so much Hope as Courage. Courage recognizes the danger and meets it with a serene front. Confidence in one’s powers, the thought of the prize to be won, the love of glory and reputation, a knowledge of the means at our disposal, and a faith in fortune are the considerations which strengthen courage, and if they are marshaled in battle array and led by Enthusiasm, the fears which hovered over our path will be routed like flocks of evil-boding birds.

An easier though less noble escape from fear is Apathy. In different forms it appears as resignation to the will of God, or the inevitable, indifference to results, and philosophic or religious fatalism. An Arab proverb says there are two days on which it is needless to fear death,—the day on which it is decreed we shall not die, and the day on which it is decreed we shall die; and if death need not be feared, what else should be? Modern science is inclined to the doctrine that men’s doings are ruled by absolute necessity, and that free will is a delusion. For one, I do not accept the doctrine; but he that does should be released from fear if his logic has any validity.

Pg 147 As the future is clouded with fear and its congeners, so the past is embittered with regret, if not with its gloomier fellows, the pains of contrition and the agonies of remorse. Of all mental misery I have ever witnessed, that of remorse for irreparable injuries done to others was by far the acutest. No one who intimately sees such a spectacle but will learn a lesson which will be a warning for a lifetime. Suicide or insanity is its usual result. But for the lighter forms of regret, reflection on their uselessness, willingness to make reparation, intelligent study of the mistakes of the past as lessons for the future, are remedies which we can always apply with benefit. The keen regret which we feel at our own blunders and shortcomings produces almost a distaste for life. But we may recall the homely business proverb, that he who never makes mistakes never makes anything; and it is something of a satisfaction to think that we did not display the full measure of our capacities in a transaction, but could do it much better had we to do it over again.

The emotions which I have been considering are passive in their nature, and their presence does not markedly influence our external lives. This is not the case with the emotion of Anger, the manifestations of which are primarily external. This is why it is so extremely detrimental to family and social happiness. A person who is choleric, of a bad temper, or an irritable disposition, is heavily handicapped for both the pursuit of happiness and the race Pg 148 for success. I think I have seen more fine prospects ruined by this than by any other single trait; and on the ruins promptly sprang up the weeds of dejection, misanthropy, and moroseness. No other weakness so frequently poisons the joys of married life as a “tempery” disposition. Its control is always difficult, never impossible. The simple precept is, to remain entirely silent and motionless for at least a minute after every flash of anger or sense of irritability. Lord Herbert of Cherbury tells of a splenetic friend of his, whose face would flush almost purple at such moments, but who never broke his self-imposed silence, and therefore never spoke a word which he had to regret. A determined intention to control oneself, and steady practice, will always give such self-mastery.

Anger, when it passes into the chronic form of Hatred, seeks its satisfaction in Revenge. It is rather surprising to find such a calm author as Professor Bain including revenge among the essentials of happiness. In moments of anger the thirst for vengeance is keen, and its gratification pleasant for the time; but from my own experience and that of others whom I have asked, the vengeance which finally appeases long hatred falls far short of affording the gratification we expected, and is even associated with some dissatisfaction with self. The game has not been worth the candle. The satisfaction is greater when our enemy brings ruin on himself through the traits and acts we abhor in him. We can then indulge in an unselfish joy in the Pg 149 spectacle, as did the Israelites when the pride of the Pharaohs was humbled by the consequences of their own arrogance and stiff-neckedness.

The Imagination belongs to the emotional rather than the intellectual faculties, as it has small regard for truth and casts on all things the glamour of that light “which never was on sea or land.” Its judicious cultivation adds to the higher enjoyments of life by lifting the events and thoughts of our daily rounds into the mystic realm of the ideal. It is cultivated by the perusal of works of poetry and fiction, and by yielding to the sweet influences of music, song, and the arts of pleasure. In the young it generally needs to be, not so much curbed, as directed in the right road, and in the old to be stimulated. The neglect of it so common in middle life is an unwise preparation for those years which at the best can expect but scant pleasure in watching the mirage of ideal anticipation.

Under the Esthetic Emotions we may class all those which arise from the occupation with what is interesting or beautiful in nature or art. They are perennial fonts of enjoyment to those who will cultivate them in the right spirit—which is, to study them exclusively for the pleasure they yield, and without ulterior aim of utility or didactic purpose. True art acknowledges no allegiance either to utilitarianism or morality—though it is never useless or immoral. Its right aim is to excite within us the consciousness of ourselves by stirring our imagination and feelings Pg 150 into agreeable activity. The emotions which it inspires in the individual rise in value in proportion as they are communicable to others, and thereby develop their contrast to the pleasures of the senses, which are and always remain personal. On the other hand, they differ from those of the intellect by their aim being directed to exciting the faculties which are human. Their limits are defined by these, while the intellect soars far beyond. In the esthetic arts, Man is everything; all refers to him; in science he is nothing, or, at most, a drop in the shoreless ocean of the Universe.

What justice can I render within the limit of a few sentences to the pleasurable emotions excited by the contemplation of Nature? Volumes have been written about and have not exhausted the catalogue of joys offered by the solitary walk through forest and mead, surrounded by that mysterious world in blade and leaf, in bird and insect, in brook and bower, so tantalizingly open and yet so impenetrably closed to our vision. We need no laborious learning, and require no Alps, or ocean, or mighty cataracts, to surcharge our souls with that strange calm and silent joy which Mother Nature ever has ready to pour into the wounds of her returned and wounded sons. A stroll at sunset, through the cow-pasture, by the stream, is all we need, if only our minds are open to the voices and the pictures spread before us. Need I mention the pleasures of gardening, or the charms of the training and companionship of those humbler animals, our pets and favorites, to Pg 151 whose sincerity and affection we so often turn with relief from association with our own species?

Nor shall I go at any length into the obvious pleasure afforded by even a slight acquaintance with painting, sculpture, architecture, photographic reproductions, engraving, those avocations distinctively called by some writers the “arts of pleasure.” The very purpose of their creation was to increase the happiness of life, and those who are content to live without understanding and to some extent appreciating what they contribute to human enjoyment, may as well lay down this book at this point, for its whole purpose is alien to them. In some quarters there is a prejudice against these arts; in many more a suspicion that they are frivolous or enervating. Far from it. Goethe, who beyond any other man of this century studied the strengthening of his faculties, recommended that each day we should for at least a few minutes give our minds to the contemplation of some fine work of art or beautiful natural object, were it but a careful engraving, the reproduction of some masterpiece, a pot of natural flowers, or a sunset from our windows. He had found this in his own experience both strengthening and comforting, and none is so indigent or so occupied that it is beyond his reach.

In museums and picture galleries, in the theatre and the opera, in illustrated books and collections of photographs, we have abundant resources to gratify our desire for observing art; and if we wish to share the delights of practicing it, there are the numerous “minor arts,” admirably set Pg 152 forth for self-instruction in excellent manuals,—free-hand drawing, water-colors, china painting, embroidery—who can remember all of them?

The finest fruit of the culture of the esthetic emotions, culled from their sunniest sides and served as “human nature’s daily food,” is what we call “good taste.” What an admirable faculty! It is the best of good sense, and walks hand in hand with good manners and good morals. It prunes away exaggerations and affectations, it erases superlatives, it modifies antipathies, and lessens prejudices. The modest home lighted by its fairy lamp shines with a radiance that the luxury of the vulgar plutocrat can never approach. The damsel whose simple garb has been hung by its unfaltering hands will please, when the elaborate toilettes of fashion leave the heart untouched. How much to be envied is the natural possessor of this charming quality! More profitable than envying would be the effort to cultivate it, through the study of the rules of art, the observations of the best models of harmony, and the willingness to accept the opinions of others on subjects where they are acknowledged authorities and to search the reasons on which they are grounded.

The pleasure which we derive from the emotion which is called “Plot-interest” is peculiar and popular. We see it in the avidity with which we follow the adventures of imaginary characters in a novel or drama. It evokes the liveliest sympathy and excitement. Tears follow laughter in quick succession, and with as little real cause. Pg 153 We yield ourselves willingly to the situation, and in the fancied sorrows of the heroine forget our own, which are real.

Akin to those of plot-interest are the Emotions of Pursuit, which impart such zest to hunting, fishing, and allied sports. We care little for the quarry; a “paper chase” is almost as exciting as a lion hunt; but it is the sense of the self-conscious and strenuous exertion of our faculties which gives us the enjoyment. This explanation may not be obvious in the case of the enthusiastic angler, who sits by a dull canal under an umbrella all the afternoon, satisfied with a few gudgeons; but this enthusiasm makes up for the lack of positive exertion.

More obscure is the intense and absorbing pleasure which most derive from the Emotions of Risk, which are excited by games, especially those of chance, or where skill is so equally balanced that chance comes in for a large share of the result. This is pre-eminently the emotion which most men cultivate in their hours of recreation. Billiards, chess, pool, cards, backgammon, horse-racing, athletic games, and personal contests, where the opponents are as equally matched as practicable, make up to most minds the definition of Enjoyment. The various games of cards offer the most favorable types of games, as when played fairly and well they have a large and constant element of chance. They have been in ill odor, as being the most convenient means for gambling. But to the one who really enjoys the emotions of risk, the stakes are subordinate. Pg 154 Any one who appreciates the charms of a rubber of whist, or the agreeable exercise of a game of billiards, will not want the additional and often unpleasant addition of a stake, and those who fail to appreciate, or neglect to cultivate, these emotions as a source of pleasure in life, deprive themselves of that which would cheer many a sad hour by innocent and healthful employment.

When I glance back at what I have written, I see I have done little more than catalogue, and that incompletely, the sources of enjoyment offered by the Emotions. But if this superficial survey developed such possibilities, how much of the pure gold of joy awaits the careful prospector who will follow the veins and sift the sands of the region thus thrown open to his energies?

There is this peculiarity in both works of art and scenes of natural beauty, that they impress us most vividly in periods of deepest dejection or highest elation, and are thus incomparable aids in restoring mental equilibrium.

The painful, the hideous, and the shocking are legitimate inspirations of art, as well as the beautiful and agreeable. The latter intimate the direction we should go, the former the dangers we may have to encounter and the existence of suffering which calls for our sympathy.

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Fear and Folly are the couple whose offspring is Distress.

The emotion that does not incite to action, enfeebles.

Activity does not mean excitement. Healthful action is uniform. The wheel of most rapid revolution is the most regular in its motion.

Nature soothes because she knows nothing of our conflicts. Like Spinoza’s God, she loves no one and hates no one.

Not nature, but nature’s infinite analogies, are what quicken the heart and supply it with endless interpretations of its own experiences.

The sombre, the desolate, and the vast in nature appeal most strongly to the educated spirit, because they typify what is measureless, and therefore mournful, in its aspirations.

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V. The Pleasures we may Derive from the Intellect.

When I speak about billiards and fishing and opera-going as pleasures, I am sure everybody understands me. But now that I have to refer to the enjoyment derived from study and thinking and scientific research, I fear the majority will prepare to stifle their yawns or skip the chapter.

Yet I have heard of, and even known, men who turned to such occupations for their highest felicity, and counted such joys above gold or lust or glory or love,—because enemies might rob them of these, but never of the treasures of the understanding. The one aim of their lives was the Search for Truth; and to them all truths seemed equally great, equally worthy devotion. One spent years in the study of polyps and fungi, and by them learned to explain the laws which have developed man and mind; another neglected his profession in order to investigate the anatomy of a worm, and made a discovery which restored thousands of his fellow-beings from wretched invalidism to happy health.

Such exceptional beings are not to be set up as the pole stars for all mariners over life’s ocean. A man cannot be Pg 157 happy beyond the tastes and faculties which he has; and it is as absurd to expect all to enjoy equally the pleasures of the intellect as it would be to look for all to be pleased with the flavor of the same dish. Every man, however, who is not idiotic or insane possesses an intellect, and can derive a great deal of pleasure from its cultivation; and it is always to some degree in his power to cultivate it in the right manner.

If he only knew the many advantages of these pleasures he would not fail to give them his attention. Almost alone of enjoyments they leave behind them no sense of exhaustion, no painful reaction or regrets. They are as varied as our moods, suited as well to assuage our sadness as to prolong our cheerful moments. At no period of the year are they out of season, age does not wither them, nor does “custom stale their infinite variety.” They are social or solitary as we choose to make them, and they know no sense of satiety, as with them the appetite grows by what it feeds on. They flatter our self-complacency by showing us that we are growing wiser, and they stir within us sympathy and appreciation for others. They are always at hand, for the appreciative student carries between the covers of his Shakespeare more pleasure than the millionaire can stow in his yacht. Finally, and as the clinching argument in their favor, they are economical, doubly economical, for they cost little or nothing, and they save us many a broad piece which we should have had to spend for pleasures gratifying the senses the same length of time; Pg 158 economical also of our lives, for the student class are those who have the greatest longevity.

Especially would I urge women to pursue intellectual pleasures rather than those of the emotions, to which they are now largely confined. Some of the most promising marriages fail through lack of intellectual sympathy in the wife. How sad it is to read these words of John Stuart Mill in his essay on the liberty of women,—“Young men of the greatest promise generally cease to improve as soon as they marry;” a result which he attributes directly to the absence of sympathy in their wives for that which constitutes the highest culture, and often a direct opposition to it. His opinion is valid everywhere, though it should be true nowhere. For the sake of her husband and her children, she should resolutely turn to the cultivation of her mind as one of the firmest holds on their affections.

One of the simplest forms of intellectual pleasure is that which is derived from riddles, puzzles, conundrums, and rebuses. Children and primitive nations are especially captivated by these agreeable stimulants to their ingenuity. In French country towns they are highly popular, and many of the cafés have cercles who meet nightly to solve the enigmas proposed in the weekly papers and forward the solutions to the editor. Those which are successful receive a small prize or an honorable mention. The placid bourgeois appear to derive extraordinary enjoyment from this pastime.

Most people understand “cultivating the intellect” to Pg 159 mean reading. Sometimes it has this result, but generally it is too desultory, miscellaneous, and aimless. Were it directed to a more definite purpose it could be made to yield more profit and more enjoyment. I do not mean to the purpose of instruction, as probably the reader has been in haste to suppose, but so as to endow the mind with a wider range of interests and thus with more sources of pleasure.

Read what interests you and interest yourself in what you read—that is the best rule. I have a small opinion of lists of the “hundred best books,” or courses of reading cut and dried for you by large societies. They may instruct, as do lessons appointed by a master; but I am speaking of reading for pleasure; and really that is the only kind worth mentioning. I have always liked reading, but I never could bear to lay out a course for myself, still less follow any proposed by another.

My own very satisfactory plan has been like that of the prospector for minerals. He wanders aimlessly over the mountains till he finds the sign of ore; then he ceases his roving and traces out the vein with zeal and patience. You read an article in a magazine; on one point mentioned you would like further information. Do not pass it by and forget it, but go to the encyclopedia or the library and follow it up; it will lead you to two or three volumes, not to be read, but to be consulted; these will start several allied points of interest; look them up in the same manner; Pg 160 and before you know it you will be burrowing for hours among books with the greatest delight.

By adopting this plan you not only pursue the bent of your own inclination and follow your own fancies, but without knowing it you are obeying some of the most scholastic rules for reading laid down by the learned.

One of these is to “distribute the attention;” by which they mean to learn to pass easily from one subject to another. Do not become so absorbed in one line that others have no charm for you. This is a common error with students of specialties. The great Darwin regretted that toward the close of his life his unremitted attention to science had destroyed his power of appreciating poetry and the drama. Yet neither should one hurry from book to book, or from topic to topic. Each should be pursued up to the point of commencing fatigue; then the volume should be laid down, and an effort made to recall the main facts we have read, and arrange them in order in the mind. What looks like desultory reading will not remain desultory long if pursued in accordance with these suggestions.

As to what kind of books to read, the brief answer is, all kinds. Variety is the guiding principle. Do not read in ruts. Some say we should always have some main theme to which others should be subordinate. The advice is good for those who have by nature some such leading interest; only for them it is unnecessary; and for those who have not, I believe it is useless, for such an interest can Pg 161 rarely be created by the will. I doubt if one can say off-hand,—“From this out, my chief interest shall be in the history of Ancient Egypt,” or something of that kind. Disraeli once remarked that biography has a greater interest than history, because it is life without theory; and French writers are better than English, because they have fewer ridiculous ideas of life. Some such plea could be entered for every department of literature, and each would be just. Unquestionably, the tendency at present is to read too exclusively works of the imagination, novels, romances, dramas, and the like; the pleasure they yield is ephemeral and is apt to disqualify for that which is more persistent though less intense, derived from works based on objective realities.

For one branch of literature I must, however, put in a special claim, as it has been such a pleasure to me ever since I learned to read, and that is Poetry. I have heard it sometimes said that this is a taste of youth, and dies a natural death with advancing years. My own experience is quite the contrary. The delight we derive from accurate rhythm, melodious words, fine thoughts, and the depicting of deep emotions, ought to increase as our experience of the world and wider learning make us more familiar with them. This has been the result in my own case and in that of others whom I know or have heard of; for instance, Sir Henry Holland, writing his biography when about eighty years of age, lays stress on the enjoyment the study of the poets continued to afford him; and my mother, at eighty, Pg 162 derived much pleasure in committing to memory and repeating new poems. There is a sense of completeness, of perfection, which is given a fine thought by appropriate expression in rhythmical language, which prose can never equal, and which, through the potent magic of Form, lifts the mind out of the material into the ideal world, and grants us a momentary glimpse of the Infinite.

If we do not recall to mind and think over what we read we lose most of the pleasure and all the profit of the action. This was what the English philosopher Hobbes meant when he said,—“If I had read as many books as some men, I should be as ignorant as they.” To read without reflecting is like buying grain for food and never grinding it. Through reflection on the images, incidents, and forms of expression with which reading has stored the memory, the highest enjoyment from the process is secured. The mind, like the body, is maintained in a state of pleasurable activity, not by what it swallows, but by what it digests and assimilates. Many people, however, are like dear Charles Lamb, who artlessly confessed,—“I cannot sit and think—books think for me;” and if they think for all to such good purpose as they did for him, no one could complain.

In fact, reflection, meditation, though its pleasures have been chanted by poets and sages for thousands of years, is probably that form of intellectual activity which is least admired and least desired of any. It is not the same as “studying out a subject,” or exerting the creative faculty, Pg 163 as an inventor when he is devising a machine; but the leisurely calling up from our memory of its various contents. They may be from reading or from conversation or from our experience of life. We may present these to ourselves as the pictures of a gallery or as the scenes of a drama or as a series of connected events; and we may endeavor to discern what relations they bore to each other, or speculate on what would have been the results had they occurred differently, or not at all. We may renew half-forgotten pleasures, or smile at useless pains, or recall long since vanished woes. Lessons for our guidance or knowledge of ourselves may unexpectedly come to us as the results of such self-communing; or we may cast our eyes to the future, and enjoy in prolonged anticipation those pleasures which may never come, or, if they come, can last but a moment. This is the nature of that reflection which, if we learn it and cultivate it, will enable us to pass many a pleasant hour, when otherwise we should be cut off from all sources of amusement, as in some dreary waiting for a train or enforced and lonely vigil.

As solitude is thus relieved by exercise of our minds, society by the same may have many an added charm. What a fund of rational enjoyment is offered by reading circles, debating societies, literary coteries, and associations for the purpose of studying Shakespeare or Browning or Ibsen, or whatever other literary star may be in the ascendant! There are some pretentious persons who profess to be above such gatherings. They can well be dispensed Pg 164 with in them. The tendency to be guarded against in order to make such schemes prosperous is that of improving the mind. This should be entirely incidental and secondary. When one joins a dining club, he expects a dinner which he likes, not a special diet prescribed by his medical adviser; and so it should be with literary clubs. Let the improvement take care of itself. It will do so.

Alongside of reading and reflection we must place writing. Many will need no explanation why this should be classed among the pleasures of life; while to others it is always a distasteful drudgery. They escape it whenever possible, and reduce it to its lowest terms, which means letter-writing—and in their case always the writing of very middling letters. A letter, indeed, is a great tell-tale, and tells the more the less it says. A score of years in editorial work, during which the competency of numerous writers had to be gauged by some quick standard, taught me that the letter of transmittal is generally enough to decide on the merits of the manuscript offered. To him who can appreciate its revelations there is no more infallible test of general culture than an ordinary letter.

Correspondence by some is classed among the lost arts. As an art, we can let it go; but as one of the most agreeable of pleasures, it will ever remain. Nature, not art, is what gives it its charm. The free expressions of personal feelings, thoughts, and observations, the intimacy and confidence which we can never find in books or magazines, the household words and pet phrases which grow up between Pg 165 correspondents, the tacit assumptions of common tastes and knowledge, these are what endow correspondence with its boundless charms for those who cultivate it.

Some writers have extolled the pleasure to be derived from keeping a diary. They claim it gives one much delight to turn back to an accurate record of what he did or heard or saw at a given period of his past life. They add that it is also a judicious habit for our own well-being, teaching us what errors we have made, what false opinions harbored, what aims pursued fruitlessly, and the like. I believe what these writers say, and commend their advice to those for whom it is suited. As for myself, I never could follow it. The diaries which I have occasionally begun, I have usually ended by throwing into the fire. It seems to me a man must either progress very little, be supernaturally wise to begin with, or have incredible self-complacency, to read with satisfaction a diary of his own five years old which contains anything but the most naked facts. Amiel’s diary is one of the most attractive published of recent years; but it certainly could have been no pleasure to his sensitive mind to have renewed its sorrows by perusing its morbid reflections.

I have left to the last the consideration of the highest of all intellectual joys,—the Pursuit of Truth. This should be the aim of every thought, and the sole, conscious occupation of our understandings. As our senses are satisfied only with pleasure, in like manner our reason finds no rest until it attains to what is true. That man is useless on the Pg 166 face of the earth, and wastes his life, who devotes his time to anything else than the pursuit of happiness or the search for truth.

They are not antagonistic. They are compatible one with the other; perhaps they are identical, when both are clearly seen and correctly understood. That great teacher who rejected the narrow prescriptions of asceticism, and came eating meat and drinking wine, also taught that the one comforter, the Paraclete, which should in future ages complete the happiness of man, is “the Spirit of Truth.”

There need be no discussion as to what Truth is, nor need we, like jesting Pilate, make the inquiry and “stop not to hear reply.” The answer is as clear as it is brief. Truth is that which will bear constant and free examination. Renewed observation, verification, re-examination, investigation—whatever is true will bear all these without diminution of its lustre; and any statement which men advance as true, but are unwilling to submit to these tests, they know is more or less of a lie.

The highest and clearest truths are to be found in the physical and natural sciences. The latter especially offer unending pleasant vistas to those who can interest themselves in them. The passion of collecting in natural history is a rich source of enjoyment, inexpensive, always open, exhaustless in extent. Whether it be minerals, plants, insects, coins, weapons, or what not, their accumulation occupies vacant hours and they furnish abundant materials for thought, reading, study, and conversation. The man Pg 167 who has a cabinet stocked by his own efforts is one who never complains of ennui. The day for him is never too long.

As for the devotees of Science, there is no need for me to inform them of the pleasure they derive from its pursuit. They are too well acquainted with its joys, transcending any which wealth or popular renown can offer, to care to read their eulogy. But this intense devotion must be born with one or date from some early association, and can rarely be acquired in mature years, so that it need not be dwelt upon here.

“Life according to reason,”—this was Aristotle’s definition of happiness.

The intellect is cold because it is unsympathetic. We must cultivate with it the imagination, which by vividly portraying pain, develops sympathy.

Do you wish to improve your mind? Then read carefully what you do not understand, and listen dispassionately to what you do not agree with.

Error is more agreeable than truth, because the latter points out our limitations and the former conceals them.

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An error actively advocated is healthier than a truth lazily accepted. Thought becomes fecund only in action.

A mistake is sooner corrected than a falsehood, because it is nobody’s interest to maintain it.

Novel-reading is the fashionable narcotic; opium, chloral, and hasheesh together count fewer victims.

All that is, is a prophecy of what will be; hence, to a philosopher, the chief interest in things is their symbolical value.

Vivre caché, c’est vivre heureux. This was Descartes’ motto. It should be translated: “To be able to retire with pleasure to your own thoughts, is to be happy.”

What is the pleasure of being famous? That of being talked of by those you do not know, who do not know you, and in whom you take no interest.

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VI. The Satisfaction of the Religious Sentiment.

After all, the only standard of value which we need apply to anything is the amount and quality of Happiness it yields. This alone can concern Man anywhere and at any time. His religions should be measured by no other mete-yard. All were created by man, for the happiness of man; though all claim another, a superhuman, origin, and pretend to bear the sign-manual of the Divine.

They are right, and what seems a paradox is a sober fact. As much the productions of human hands and brains as are the robes and paintings in which they are bedecked, they have something in them which no externals can represent, and which lifts them above their material drapery. Human beyond all else that man has devised, for that very reason they are superhuman.

The strange law of Evolution is, that nothing in nature reaches its perfection but by becoming something else. The species in attaining its utmost development is transformed into another species. Man would not be the noblest product of the earth did he not feel himself too noble for it; did not the presage and aura of a higher destiny forever float around his thoughts, making themselves Pg 170 felt at the moments of the utmost tension of his faculties; as when behind the parapet of Chillon one rises on extreme tip-toe, and catches a glimpse of the glittering lake and massive Alps beyond.

The vital principle, the motive power, which has created and maintained all religions is the Ideal of Humanity. Each age has had its own, each individual has his own, no two the same. Creeds and churches do but formulate and endeavor to materialize the average conceptions of a period or a class; but their labor is vain. Rejecting the old, putting on the new, the race marches forward to loftier ideals, the milestones of its progress being the wrecks of temples and the ruins of churches. Religions rise and fall and disappear; but Religion grows forever, because it is the inseparable associate, aye, the very expression, of that mysterious impulse on which man’s future development depends, and which makes him part and parcel of the infinite Energy in which he lives and moves and has his being.

Time and Truth will reconcile all religions; but the time will be long and the truth will be slow to make its way. The schools of dogmatic doctrine claim to have embalmed in a creed and confined in a code the whole truth necessary for the happiness of man; not perceiving that they are like children to whom a magician hands a box in which he seems to have shut a pigeon; they open it cautiously, to discover that it is empty, and he points to the bird soaring up to the sky. Only they take good care not to Pg 171 open the box. Their schools and teachers resemble those feeble-minded folk who imagine they increase in knowledge by constantly talking to themselves.

Always boasting of their devotion to truth, they steadily repudiate it. That alone is true which will bear repeated, free, and unbiased investigation; but dogmatists cry,—“Never discuss your faith; never doubt your creed; for he that doubteth is damned.” What progress they make is not from within, but is forced on them from without by the free spirit of inquiry; and what they thus unwillingly accept, they audaciously claim as the product of their own efforts. Everywhere the spirit of ecclesiasticism is the secret or open foe of strict and complete veracity; and yet no permanent alleviation of the sufferings of mankind can come except from veracity. And from this it will come. No matter what the weather is, this seed is sure to grow.

What unspeakable unhappiness religions have brought on the race! Altars dripping with the blood of human victims, mothers casting their babes into the fires of Moloch, teachers crucified by the rabble whom they sought to instruct, millions perishing between the Crescent and the Cross, hideous chambers of the Inquisition, Bruno burning alive in Catholic Rome, and Legate in Protestant London,—a thousand such historic events would give no notion of the miseries which religions have inflicted on mankind, and continue to inflict.

Worse than these have been their blighting breath on Pg 172 individual minds, darkening them with terrors of the supernatural, with racking doubts, despair, and madness; destroying the natural and beautiful growths of the affections; frowning on the attractions of the arts of beauty; crushing the desire of knowledge and the love of investigation; urging men in the ignoble egotism of self-salvation to sacrifice their own happiness and that of those nearest and dearest to them. These influences still exist; they are ever in the spirit of clericalism and dogmatism, and are restrained from plunging mankind again into the dark ages only by that higher and real religion which acknowledges neither form nor creed nor dogma, but only the might and right of Truth and Love.

I would ask what teachings do religions—and I have those in mind which are prevalent in civilized countries to-day—impart, which in any way compensate for the enormous unhappiness and intellectual degradation thus caused?

Most sects calling themselves Christian will at once reply that the happiness they promise is not of this world but of the next, and that he who looks for enjoyment here will forfeit it hereafter. Yet when the evidence for this daring statement is asked for, not an iota can be offered on which there is unanimous concurrence among the sects themselves.

What they do offer, and what gives them their real control over men’s minds, may be summed up as follows: A belief in the Divine government of the world and the Pg 173 paternal care of God over each believer in Him; greater cheerfulness in the acceptance of the misfortunes of life as the wise and ultimately beneficent decisions of His will; an expectation of a life after death; the hope that sins will be forgiven; and the improvement in morals which follows these convictions.

These are undoubtedly valuable aids to human happiness. The question is, what part of them belong to Religion and what to religions; in other words, will not the religious sentiment itself, freed from the shackles of dogmatic belief, yield to man all the happiness offered by sectarian doctrines, relieved of the misery to which they condemn him? When I think of the mental agony caused in millions of lives by the pictures of hell, of eternal damnation, of the last judgment, and of a cruel and merciless God, which most Christian teachers hold before their congregations, I long for the time predicted by that apostle of the new life, Giordano Bruno,—“When the gods shall lie in Orcus, and the dread of everlasting punishment shall vanish from the world.”

Reason has no conflict with religion. Science is based on the assumption that the order of the Universe is one of intelligence, and of an intelligence identical with ours. All force is directed by reasoning energy, which means that it is purposive. Why seek further? Call it Energy or Force or God, the thought is the same.

Whether that share which we possess in the energy of the All remains in personality after physical death, what Pg 174 dogma can prove? what science deny? Enough that in the beautiful words of the burial service of the Protestant Episcopal Church, we are justified in retaining “a reasonable and holy hope” that the victory of the grave is not eternal. Should it be so, what is the dread of it but a delusion of the imagination, which pictures non-existence as felt in non-existence?

The sense of sin, the story of the fall and its expiation by a divine sacrifice; is it not strange that no one word that this was His mission escaped the lips of Him who is said to have been the willing victim? The notion of sin as taught in dogmatic belief has no existence in the unwarped mind nor in scientific psychology. Men are involved in a chain of cause and effect from which they have little chance of escape; and even human justice revolts at administering punishment for involuntary acts. Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner; that infinite Mind, which sees before and after, asks the blood of no victim to understand and to pardon the blind gropings of the wretched children of men.

What abuse has been made of the doctrine of Faith! Its upas-shade has harbored the grossest growths of superstition. Faith is either laziness or cowardice. We accept the opinions of others to save ourselves the trouble of forming our own, or to escape the pains of doubt. But doubt is painful only to him who accepts on authority, not to him who honestly seeks, truth through the efforts of his own powers.

Pg 175 But piety, morality, how can these be secured without dogmatic religions? This is the answer so often hurled as final in their defense. The history of sectarianism shows anything but a clean bill of morality, as I have already hinted; if there is any one corner-stone to the edifice of ethics, it is the honest pursuit of verifiable truth, and that no dogmatic religion dares to advocate. History shows that every great reformer of the morals of his day has been called a schismatic by the Churches.