soon, in spite of the talk about it. Men prefer ignorance in women, as women admire blind devotion in men; because these enable each sex to cheat the other more easily. Nothing is more essential to her happiness than that she should be taught the hygiene of her sex early in life; but the popular voice says ignorance means innocence, and thousands of women are condemned to life-long misery in consequence. I had a medical friend who wrote a volume of excellent advice to mothers, and his profession almost ostracized him for it. Beyond all things, a girl’s education should be directed toward manual training and exercises of the understanding; instead of that, she is taught the fine arts and regaled with poetry and fiction. Her imagination is fostered by lectures on esthetics, and her memory crammed with moral platitudes which have no place in real life; while the principles of business and the maintenance of her own rights are left out of her training. I cannot but attribute to this the most common and fatal defect of the female mind—its lack of the sense of abstract justice.
Men are so selfish and ignorant that they do not understand how much they themselves forfeit by thus reducing the position of woman. In my studies of ethnology, I first inquire the position occupied by woman in a given tribe or nation; for I have discovered no better common measure of civilization. The profoundest thinkers of the age have recognized the principle here involved. Goethe closes the second part of Faust—which is a poetic presentation of the evolution of European culture—with the significant words—“The forever feminine leads us onward.” His friend, Wilhelm von Humboldt, expressed a double fact in the phrase—“The Woman stands nearer the ideal of Humanity than the Man; but she more rarely attains it.” She does not, because she is prevented by prejudice, by dogmas, and by laws. Until these weeds are scorched to ashes by the growing flame of free intelligence, neither will she secure the meed of happiness which is her due, nor will man have found the right road to his best prosperity.
Plato proposed to banish poets from his ideal Republic because they are such liars. The prevalent notion that childhood and youth are the happiest periods of life is largely owing to this mendacious crew. I have rarely met an intelligent person of years who held the opinion. It arises from forgetfulness of early sorrows, from false pictures of youthful joys, and from undue attention to present pains. Most of those who really feel such regret are the moral or literal prodigals, who have wasted their substance in riotous living, and bewail, not the lost happiness, but their inability to repeat their follies.
The rule of honest nature is that enjoyment should steadily increase up to the full maturity of the powers, mental and physical. This, under favorable circumstances, is between forty-five and fifty years of age. After that, physical decadence sets in, and only by exceptional strength or by increased effort can its fatal progress be for a while stayed. From inquiry of many persons, I am persuaded that the rule of the increase of enjoyment up to this turning-point is on the average correct.
That old age is synonymous with wisdom is a comical deception which the graybeards have palmed off on the world, because by laws and customs they hold most of the property, and want most of the power as well. In fact, diminution of the physical powers means decay all round. “As we grow old,” observes Thoreau, “we cease to obey our finer instincts.” It is an error to talk of the accumulated wisdom of years. The experience of youth serves but to lead old age astray; and this is seen nowhere so plainly as when an old man pretends a zest for the pleasures of the young. “No fool like an old fool” is the proverb. Such men are “out of their class,” as a trainer of athletes would say. Every age has pleasures sufficient, which are appropriate to it, and these alone should be sought for. To those who know and respect these laws of nature, old age is very tolerable. It brings many compensations for its inevitable losses; and though not likely to be so happy as the best of middle life, it should be and often is superior in this respect to youth. Probably it would generally be so were it more willing to learn the lessons appropriate to it. Bonstetten goes so far as to say, “No one can be happy till he is past sixty;” but the proverb of the ancient Rabbis holds forever good—“He who teacheth the old, is like one who writes on blotted paper.”
V. Principles of a Self-Education for the Promotion of One’s Own Happiness.
The purpose of this chapter is not to enter into practical details of an education for happiness—that is the mission of the rest of the book—but to establish certain general theoretical principles on which such an education must be carried out in order to be successful.
And first, I must repeat what I have already intimated, that any permanent and even moderate stock of happiness does not fall into the open mouth, like the roasted quails in the fairy story, but can be obtained only by methodical pursuit and constant watchfulness. Eternal vigilance is said to be the price of liberty; and liberty is only one of the necessary elements of happiness. Meditation, forethought, and the formation of a clearly defined Plan of Life are all required, and even then success is far from certain.
At the outset, I must attack as unsound a maxim which has been assiduously disseminated by the school of economists of which Herbert Spencer is the leader. It is put in the form—“The greatest efficiency is the greatest happiness.” It would be a calamity if this were true. The pursuit of happiness would be hopelessly circumscribed, as but few in the world can attain maximum efficiency in anything. Fortunately, it is historically false. Those men who have won fame by their enormous personal capacity have certainly not been the happiest of their kind. Far from it. They have been men of one idea, absorbed by some “ruling passion,” to which they have sacrificed all else, and consequently, so far from gaining happiness, have usually ended by wrecking their own and others’. It is not the reach of a man’s abilities, but the use he makes of them, that decides his fortune. Spencer’s maxim is precisely the reverse of the principle which should govern an education intended to secure the utmost enjoyment for the individual and those around him. Such an education should not be concentrated on one faculty of the mind nor on one subject of study, but should extend in all directions, be broad and many-sided. It is an education within the reach of every one, which requires no schoolmaster but oneself; and yet confers a degree on its graduates more valuable than any university can bestow.
Its leading theoretical principles may be grouped under five propositions:—
I. The multiplication of the sources of pleasure and the diminution of those of pain.
II. The maintenance of a high sensibility to pleasurable impressions.
III. The search for novelty and variety of impressions.
IV. The establishment of a proper relation between desires and pleasures.
V. The subjection of all pleasures to the increase of happiness.
These principles are not speculative or doctrinal, but are based on the physiology of the nervous system and the constitution of the human mind.
I. Let us begin with the first, for it is the basis of the whole Art of Pleasure. Differently expressed, it means that the sum of our enjoyment must be enlarged by increasing our sources of enjoyment. In other words, we must set to work to acquire tastes in addition to those which we already have by nature or previous education. The most useful instruction is that which teaches us to profit by all our chances. People are never so unhappy as they think they are, because at the moment they forget how many sources of pleasure remain for them.
Review the field. Take an “account of stock.” Most people have five senses in tolerably good order. How many have seriously calculated the number of different gratifications each of these senses is capable of yielding? Beyond these lie the inviting fields of the Agreeable Emotions, whose prolific soil needs but to be stirred to teem with flower and fruit; and still beyond, but in easy reach, the uplands of Reason and Thought
