c. The Study of the Mind.
This is at once a delightful pastime and an indispensable art for success in many lines of business. It means an acquaintance with the motives which actuate men in their decisions, the personal traits which make up their characters, their passions and their ambitions, their weaknesses and their prejudices. Men distinguished for what is called “executive ability,” statesmen, diplomatists, promoters and managers of great enterprises, all either possess by nature or have acquired by study this insight, and to it they owe their success. To some degree, all can attain it by observation of those around them, and by the perusal of works which explain the constitution of the mind and the dominant motives of human action. To this should be added an unprejudiced reading of modern politics and history, especially of one’s own country and State.
d. A Knowledge of the Principles of Business.
Worry about business affairs is probably the commonest cause of unhappiness. A great deal of it is inevitable; but a large share of it would be prevented were both sexes taught early in life the general rules and customs of business, and those principles of financial management, investment, prudence, and economy, which are nearly as fixed in their operation as those of the motions of the stars. There are many popular handbooks on this subject, and one such ought to be in every household.
e. A Study of the Value of Evidence.
A remarkable writer, De Senancour, who under the name of Obermann composed some strange books early in this century, maintained that if men would tell the truth and could predict the weather, nearly all the sufferings which afflict humanity would disappear. There is a great deal in his opinion. At present, all men have a rooted aversion to truth, and neither wish to tell it nor to hear it beyond a strictly limited amount. But as a knowledge of facts is essential to right action, the estimation of evidence and the calculation of probabilities are necessary to a prosperous life. A man who has this faculty is said to be gifted with “sound judgment,” but it is quite as much an acquirement as a gift. There are well-known principles by which the value of testimony is balanced and the weight of evidence decided. They are in daily application in our courts, and can be applied at least as successfully to affairs outside.
Such are the outlines of an education directed toward increasing the sources of enjoyment and diminishing the causes of suffering; and what remains to be said is little more than an extension of the principles thus laid down.
II. The second principle is the maintenance of a high sensibility to pleasurable impressions.
To reach the right meaning of this we must begin with physiology. All impressions of the nervous system, that is to say, all feelings, may be compared or studied with reference to three criteria, their Quality, their Intensity, and their Persistence. Feelings of the same quality, as a rule, heighten each other’s intensity, but persistence is usually inversely to intensity. The keener the sensation, the shorter its duration. The story is told of a French scholar who, for suspected heresy, was subjected to judicial torture on the rack. When the instrument was extended the first time, dislocating several of his joints, he uttered a cry of agony; but at the second extension he burst into laughter. “At my own ignorance,” he explained, “to suppose that I could feel such suffering twice.”
It is essential to anything like a constant flow of pleasurable feelings that we maintain a high state of vigor in the organs of sensibility; and this can only be accomplished by a careful limitation of intensity in favor of persistence of feeling. Occasional nervous impressions of a very high degree of intensity are not only consistent with health, but increase it; but their frequent repetition, and especially the determined effort to maintain them for long periods, inevitably result in a deadening of the sensibility and a lack of response to ordinary and healthful stimuli.
The ignorance or disregard of these physiological laws explains some of the most disastrous and conspicuous failures to attain happiness where every circumstance seems propitious. The neglect of them is the origin of that morbid condition of the mind which has been called “the disease of the century,” la maladie de la siècle—Ennui.
The bitter pessimist, Schopenhauer, delighted to show the worthlessness of life, whose only variety is from the toil of pursuit to the ennui of possession; while the sweet mystic, Pascal, discovering in the same feeling the greatest misery of man, saw in it that which would prove his salvation, for it would lead him to renounce the vanities of the world and give himself unto God. The one opinion is worth as much as the other.
If we make an anatomy of Ennui, as Burton made an anatomy of Melancholy, we shall find that two different, though allied, mental conditions have been grouped under the name.
The one is that sense of immeasurable boredom which we feel when placed in uncongenial conditions, especially such as ought to be welcome to us, as listening to good advice, or hearing instructive lectures, or reading useful books—like this one. We are driven to any revolt by such inflictions. The scholar will turn gypsy and the virtuous youth a vagrant to escape them. As a boy, at stiff company dinners, I used to suffer from a keen desire to throw a plate through the window, or commit some other outrageous breach of decorum.
What is the meaning of this innate revolt against conventionalism and formality and respectability? The divines are ready to tell you that it is a clear case of original sin. It is nothing of the kind. It is the inherited and unquenchable thirst for freedom in the human heart, and in some temperaments the strength of this passion for liberty is such that any sacrifice is cheap to purchase it.
Perhaps these have not the worst of the bargain. “Who is the happiest man in France?” some one asked the academician, D’Alembert. Quelque misérable, “Some wretched fellow,” he replied. There is infinite philosophy in his answer. Browning, in Fifine at the Fair, discusses the question with amazing insight into human motive. He demands—
“What compensating joy, unknown and infinite,
Turns lawlessness to law, makes destitution—wealth,
Vice—virtue, and disease of mind and body—health?”
He finds the answer in the “frenzy to be free” which is the ruling passion in such characters as he describes. He is right, for ennui of this kind is unknown in conditions of the largest personal freedom, as in the savage state and among the vagabonds of society.
The other form of ennui arises not from external conditions, but from those which are within. It is a species of dissatisfaction with self. A man is generally his own stupidest companion. According to the proverb, “Poor company is better than none;” because the poorest of all is oneself. A curious paradox that has been noted is that the more a man thinks about himself, the less he cares to be alone with himself! We no longer shun solitude from the dread of bandits or ghosts, but to escape the sight of the specters which arise within ourselves. How many of us can boast of the “sessions of sweet silent thought” which the poet praises as the crown of felicity? Amid the gay throng of pleasure-seekers at Ranelagh, Dr. Johnson felt himself distressed by the reflection, “That there was not one in all that brilliant circle who was not afraid to go home and think.”
There is a moral virtue which the Roman philosophers called sufficientia and the Germans Selbstgenügsamkeit, which terms are not at all translated by the English “self-sufficiency.” Let the word go; the thing is what is needed. Make yourself an agreeable companion to yourself, and this form of ennui will be known to you no longer. This can only be accomplished by the constant and well-directed exercise of your personal activities, and by the maintenance of a high degree of sensibility to pleasurable impressions.
III. The search for novelty and variety of impressions.
The Art of Happiness prescribes that instead of cultivating a limited number of pleasurable impressions up to a high degree of intensity, we should seek a large variety, diverse in quality, moderate in intensity, considerable in persistence. This precept, properly understood, is consistent