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Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029199572 
 
i 
 
 fC?e 0^ota( p[iv\>06e of ttje Unhctee 
 
 Y subject is "The Happy Life." I 
 address here especially youngpeo- 
 ple who have passed the period 
 of childhood, with its unreflecting 
 gayety, fleeting shadows, gusty griefs, and 
 brief despairs, and have entered, under condi- 
 tions of singular privilege, upon rational and 
 responsible living. For you happiness must be 
 conscious, considerate, and consistent with ha- 
 bits of observing, reading and reflecting. Now 
 reflecting has always been a grave business, 
 
 "Where but to think is to be full of sorrow 
 And leaden-eyed despairs;" 
 
 and it must be confessed that our times pre- 
 sent some new obstacles to a life of thought- 
 ful happiness. Until this centilry the masses 
 of mankind were almost dumb; but now their 
 moans and complaints have become audible 
 through telephone, telegraph and rotary press. 
 
(^Be The millions are now saying what the moody 
 ^appv poets have always said : 
 
 iCife " The flower that smiles to-day 
 
 To-morrow dies, 
 All that we wish to stay 
 
 Tempts, and then flies. 
 What is this world's delight? 
 Lightning that mocks the night, 
 Brief even as bright." 
 
 The gloomy moralist is still repeating: "I have 
 seen all the works that are done under the sun, 
 and behold ! all is vanity and vexation of spirit." 
 The manual laborers of to-day, who are much 
 better off than the same classes of laborers 
 have been in any earlier times, are saying just 
 what Shelley said to the men of England in 
 1819: 
 
 " The seed ye sow another reaps. 
 The wealth ye find another keeps, 
 The robes ye weave another wears. 
 The arms ye forge another bears." 
 
 They would adopt without change the words in 
 which that eminent moralist^ Robinson Crusoe, 
 a century earlier, described the condition of the 
 laboring classes : "The men of labor spent their 
 strength in daily struggling for bread to main- 
 tain the vital strength they labored with ; so liv- 
 
ing in a daily circulation of sorrow, living but to (^^e 
 work, and working but to live, as if daily bread i^appj> 
 were the onlyend of wearisome life, anda weari- iZife 
 some life the only occasion of daily bread." 
 Matthew Arnold calls his love to come to the 
 window and listen to the "melancholy, long- 
 withdrawing roar " of the sea upon the moonlit 
 beach at Dover ; and these are his dismal words 
 to her: 
 
 "Ah, love, let us be true 
 To one another! for the world, which seems 
 To lie before us like a land of dreams. 
 So various, so beautiful, so new, 
 Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, 
 Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain ; 
 And we are here as on a darkling plain 
 Swept with confused alarms of struggle and 
 
 flight, 
 Where ignorant armies clash by night." 
 
 The poets are by no means the only offenders; 
 the novelists and scientists take their turn. The 
 fiction of this century deals much with the lives 
 of the wretched, dissolute, and vicious, and 
 with the most unjust and disastrousconditions 
 of modern society. A fresh difficulty in the way 
 of natural happiness is the highly speculative 
 opinion, lately put forward by men of science 
 
I^Rg and promptly popularized, to the effect that ex- 
 foappv *^'""'^' nature offsets every good with an evil, 
 j£;jf^ and that the visible universe is unmoral, or in- 
 different as regards right and wrong, revealing 
 no high purpose or intelligent trend. This is, 
 indeed, a melancholy notion ; but that it should 
 find acceptance at this day, and really make 
 people miserable, only illustrates the curious 
 liability of the human intelligence to sudden 
 collapse. The great solid conviction which sci- 
 ence, within the past three centuries, has en- 
 abled thinking men and women to settle down 
 on is that all discovered and systematized 
 knowledge is as nothing compared with the 
 undiscovered, and that a boundless universe of 
 unimagined facts and forces interpenetrates 
 and encompasses what seems the universe to 
 us. In spite of this impregnable conviction peo- 
 ple distress themselves because, forsooth, they 
 cannot discern the moral purpose or complete 
 spiritual intent of this dimly seen, fractional 
 universe which is all we know. Why should 
 they discern it? 
 
It 
 iCoxoet anb i^is^et pieaeutec 
 
 |T is, then, in spite of many old and 
 some new discouragements that 
 we are all seeking the happy life. 
 We know that education spreads, 
 knowledge grows, and public liberty develops; 
 but can we be sure that public and private hap- 
 piness increase? What the means and sources 
 of happiness are in this actual world, with our 
 present surroundings and with no reference to 
 joys or sorrows in any other world, is a natu- 
 ral, timely, and wholesome inquiry. We may be 
 sure that one principle will hold throughout 
 the whole pursuit of thoughtful happiness, — 
 the principle that the best way to secure future 
 happiness is to be as happy as is rightfully pos- 
 sible to-day. To secure any desirable capacity 
 for the future, near or remote, cultivate it to- 
 day. What would be the use of immortality for 
 a person who cannot use well half an hour ? 
 asks Emerson. 
 
 In trying to enumerate the positive satisfac- 
 tions which an average man may reasonably 
 
 5 
 
fC^e expect to enjoy in this world, I of course take 
 ^appw no account of those too common objects of hu- 
 ;Cife man pursuit,— wealth, power, and fame; first, 
 because they do not as a rule contribute to hap- 
 piness; and secondly, becaijse they are unat- 
 tainable by mankind in general. I invite you to 
 consider only those means of happiness which 
 the humble and obscure millions may possess. 
 The rich and famous are too few to affect ap- 
 preciably the sum of human happiness. I begin 
 with satisfactions of sense. 
 Sensuous pleasures, like eating and drinking, 
 are sometimes described as. animal, and there- 
 fore unworthy. It must be confessed, however, 
 that men are, in this life, animals all through, 
 — whatever else they may be, — and that they 
 have a right to enjoy without reproach those 
 pleasures of animal existence which maintain 
 health, strength, and life itself. Familiar ascetic 
 and pessimistic dogmas to the contrary not- 
 withstanding, these pleasures, taken naturally 
 and in moderation, are all pure, honorable, and 
 wholesome. Moreover, all attempts to draw a 
 line between bodily satisfactions on the one 
 hand, and mental or spiritual satisfactions on 
 the other, and to distinguish the first as beastly 
 indulgences, and the secotid as the only plea- 
 sures worthy of a rational* being, have failed, 
 6 
 
and must fail ; for it is manifestly impossible to ({£(je 
 draw a sharp line of division between plea- j^appp 
 sures, and to say that these are bodily, and £^ife 
 those intellectual or moral. Are the pleasures 
 of sight and hearing bodily or mental? Is de- 
 light in harmony or in color a pleasure of the 
 sense, or of the imagination? What sort of a 
 |oy is a thing of beauty? Is it an animal or a « 
 spiritual joy? Is the delight of a mother in fond- 
 ling her smiling baby a physical or a moral de- 
 light? But though we cannot divide pleasures 
 into animal and moral, unworthy and worthy, 
 we can, nevertheless, divide them into lower 
 and higher pleasures : the lower, those which, 
 like eating and drinking, prompt to the mainte- 
 nance and reproduction of life, and which can 
 be impaired or destroyed by prolongation or 
 repetition; the higher, those which, like the 
 pleasures of the eye or ear, seem to be ends in 
 themselves. In the lower there can bte destruc- 
 tive excess, in the higher excess is impossible. 
 Recognizing, then, that there are higher plea- 
 sures than eating and drinking, let us clearly 
 perceive that three meals a day all ojie's life not 
 only give in themselves a constantly renewed 
 innocent satisfaction, but provide the neces- 
 sary foundation for all other satisfactions. Tak- 
 ing food and drink is a great enjpyment for 
 
 7 
 
(^^e healthy people, and those who do not enjoy eat- 
 ^apvf ingr seldom have much capacity for enjoyment 
 ^ifc or usefulness of any sort. Under ordinary cir- 
 cumstances it is by no means a purely bodily 
 pleasure. We do not eat alone, but in families, 
 or sets of friends and comrades ; and the table 
 is the best centre of friendships and of the do- 
 mestic affections. When, therefore, a working- 
 man says that he has worked all his life to pro- 
 cure a subsistence for himself and his family, 
 he states that he has secured some fundamen- 
 tal satisfactions, namely, food, productive em- 
 ployment, and family life. The satisfaction of 
 eating is so completely a matter of appetite that 
 such distinction as there is between the luxu- 
 rious and the hardy in regard to this enjoyment 
 is altogether in favor of the hardy. Who does 
 not remember some rough and perhaps scanty 
 meal in camp, or on the march, or at sea, or in 
 the woods, which was infinitely more delicious 
 than the most luxurious dinner during indoor 
 or sedentary life? But that appetite depends on 
 health. Take good care, then, of your teeth and 
 your stomachs, and be ashamed not of enjoy- 
 ing your food, but of not enjoying it. There was 
 a deal of sound human nature in the unex- 
 pected reply of the dying old woman to her min- 
 ister's leading question : " Here at the end of a 
 8 
 
long life, which of the Lord's mercies are you |^«g 
 most thankful for?" Her eye brightened as she foapntt 
 answered : " My victuals." jt jr^ 
 
 Let us count next pleasures through the eye. 
 Unlike the other senses, the eye is always at 
 work except when we sleep, and may, conse- 
 quently, be the vehicle of far more enjoyment 
 than any other organ of sense. It has given our 
 race its ideas of infinity, symmetry, grace, and 
 splendor; it is a chief source of childhood's joys, 
 and throughout life the guide to almost all 
 pleasurable activities. The pleasure it gives us, 
 however, depends largely upon the amount of 
 attention we pay to the pictures which it in- 
 cessantly sets before the brain. Two men walk 
 along the same road: one notices the blue 
 depths of the sky, the floating clouds, the open- 
 ing leaves upon the trees, the green grass, the 
 yellow buttercups, and the far stretch of the 
 open fields ; the other has precisely the same 
 pictures on his retina, but pays no attention to 
 them. One sees, and the other does not see ; one 
 enjoys an unspeakable pleasure, and the other 
 loses that pleasure which is as free to him as 
 the air. The beauties which the eye reveals are 
 infinitely various in quality and scale ; one mind 
 prefers the minute, another the vast; one the 
 delicate and tender, another the coarse and 
 
 9 
 
m^c rough ; one the inanimate things, another the 
 j^appv* animate creation. The whole outward world is 
 ^ife the kingdom of the observant eye. He who en- 
 ters into any part of that kingdom to possess it 
 has a store of pure enjoyment in life which is 
 literally inexhaustible and immeasurable. His 
 eyes alone will give him a life worth living. 
 Next comes the ear as a minister of enjoy- 
 ment, but next at a great interval. The average 
 man probably does not recognize that he gets 
 much pleasure through hearing. He thinks 
 that his ears are to him chiefly a convenient 
 means of human intercourse. But let him expe- 
 rience a temporary deafness, and he will learn 
 that many a keen delight came to him through 
 the ear. He will miss the beloved voice, the 
 merry laugh, the hum of the city, the distant 
 chime, the song of birds, the running brook, the 
 breeze in the trees, the lapping wavelets, and 
 the thundering beach ; and he will learn that fa- 
 miliar sounds have been to him sources of pure 
 delight— an important element in his well- 
 being. Old Isaak Walton found in the lovely 
 sounds of earth a hint of Heaven: 
 
 " How joyed my heart in the rich melodies 
 That overhead and roun4 me did arise! 
 The moving leaves —the water's gentle flow - 
 
Delicious music hung on every bough. ^g^ 
 
 Then said I in my heart, If that the Lord fo^jp. 
 Such lovely music on the earth aecord; jTir^ 
 
 If to weak, sinful man such sounds are given, 
 Oh! what must be the melody of heaven!" 
 
 A high degree of that fine pleasurewhich mu- 
 sic gives is not within the reach of all; yet there 
 are few to whom the pleasure is wholly de- 
 nied. To take part in producing harmony, as in 
 part-singing, gives the singers an intense plea- 
 sure, which is doubtless partly physical and 
 partly mental. I am told that to play good mu- 
 sic at sight, as one of several performers play- 
 ing different instruments, is as keen a sensu- 
 ous and intellectual enjoyment as the world 
 affords. 
 
 These pleasures through the eye and ear are 
 open in civilized society to all who have the will 
 to seek them, and the intelligence to cultivate 
 the faculties through which they are enjoyed. 
 They are quite as likely to bless him who works 
 with hand or brain all day for a living, as him 
 who lives inactive on his own savings or on 
 those of other people. The outward world yields 
 them spontaneously to every healthy body and 
 alert mind ; but the active mind is as essential 
 to the winning of them as the sound body. 
 
I^gg There is one great field of knowledge, too 
 jboppv '""ch neglected in our schools and colleges, 
 jTifg which offers to the student endless pleasures 
 and occupations through the trained and quick- 
 ened senses of sight, hearing, and touch. I mean 
 the wide field called natural history, which com- 
 prehends geography, meteorology, botany, zo- 
 ology, mineralogy, and geology. Charles Dar- 
 win, the greatest naturalist of the past century, 
 said that with natural history and the domes- 
 tic affections a man might be truly happy. Not 
 long ago I was urging a young naturalist of 
 twenty-six to spend the next summer in Eu- 
 rope. He thought it was hafdly right for him 
 to allow himself that indulgence ; and when I 
 urged that the journey would be very enjoyable 
 as well as profitable, he replied : " Yes ; but you 
 know I can be happy anywhere in the months 
 when things are growing." He meant that the 
 pleasures of observation were enough for him 
 when he could be out of doors. That young man 
 was poor, delicate in health, and of a retiring 
 and diffident disposition; yet life was full of 
 keenest interest to him. 
 Our century is distinguished by an ardent re- 
 turn of civilized man to thatlove of nature from 
 which books and urban life had temporarily 
 diverted him. The poetry and the science of our 
 
times alike foster this love, and add to the de- ^gg 
 lights which come to lovers of nature through ^apov 
 the keen senses, the delights of the soaring im- jTic^ 
 agination and the far-reaching reason. In many 
 of our mental moods the contemplation of Na- 
 ture brings peace and joy. Her patient ways 
 shame hasty little man; her vastnesses calm 
 and elevate his troubled mind; her terrors fill 
 him with awe; her inexplicable and infinite 
 beauties with delight. Her equal care for the 
 least things and the greatest corrects his scale 
 of values. He cannot but believe that the vast 
 material frame of things is informed and di- 
 rected by an infinite Intelligence and Will, just 
 as his little animal body is informed by his own 
 conscious mind and will. 
 
 It is apparent from what I have said of plea- 
 sures through the eye and ear, and from contact 
 with nature, that a good measure of out-of-door 
 life is desirable for him who would secure the 
 elements of a happy life. The urban tendency of 
 our population militates against free access to 
 out-of-door delights. The farmer wdrks all day 
 in the fields, and his children wander at will in 
 the open air ; the sailor can see at any moment 
 the whole hemisphere of the heavens and the 
 broad plain of the sea ; but the city resident may 
 not see a tree or a shrub for weeks together, 
 
 13 
 
Cife 
 
 ^fip and can barely discern a narrow strip of sky, as 
 foaopv ^^ walks at the bottom of the deep ditches we 
 call streets. The wise man whose work is in the 
 city, and indoors at that, will take every pos- 
 sible opportunity to escape into the fresh air 
 and the open country. Certain good tendencies 
 in this respect have appeared within recent 
 years. Hundreds of thousands of people who 
 must work daily in compact cities now live in 
 open suburbs ; cities provide parks and deco- 
 rated avenues of approach to parks; out-of- 
 door sports and exercises become popular; 
 safe country boarding-schools for city children 
 are multiplied, and public holidays and half- 
 holidays increase in number. These are appre- 
 ciable compensations for tl^e disadvantages of 
 city life. The urban population which really 
 utilizes these facilities may win a keener en- 
 joyment from nature than the rural population, 
 to whom natural beauty i§ at every moment 
 accessible. The cultivation of mind and the 
 increased sensibility which, city life develops 
 heighten the delight in natural beauty. More- 
 over, though man destroys much natural love- 
 liness in occupying any territory for purposes 
 of residence or business, he also creates much 
 loveliness of grassy fields and banks, mirror- 
 ing waters, perfectly developed trees, graceful 
 14 
 
shrubs and brilliant flowers. In these days no (j£R^ 
 intelligent city population need lack the means jbapi 
 and opportunitiesof frequentout-of-doorenjoy- -fi^ifg 
 ment. Our climate is indeed rough and change- 
 able, but, on the whole, produces scenes of 
 much more various beauty than any monoto- 
 nous climate, while against the occasional se- 
 verity of our weather artificial protection is 
 more and more provided. What we rhay wisely 
 ask of our tailors and our landscape architects 
 is protection in the open air from the extremes 
 of heat, cold, and wind. The provision of an 
 equable climate indoors is by no means suffi- 
 cient to secure either the health or the happi- 
 ness of the people. 
 
 IS 
 
tit 
 
 ROM the love of nature we turn to 
 family love. The domestic affections 
 are the principal sojurce of human 
 happiness and well-being. The mu- 
 tual loves of husband and wife, of parents and 
 children, of brothers and sisters, are not only the 
 chief sources of happiness, but the chief springs 
 of action, and the chief safeguards from evil.The 
 young man and the young woman work and 
 save in order that they maybe married and have 
 a home of their own ; once married, they work 
 and save that they may bring up well a family. 
 The supreme object of the struggling and striv- 
 ing of most men is the family. One might almost 
 say that the security and elevation of the family 
 and of family life are the prime objects of civili- 
 zation, and the ultimate ends of all industry and 
 trade. In respect to this principal source of hap- 
 piness, the young mechanic, operative, clerk, or 
 laborer is generally better off than the young 
 professional man, inasmuch as he can marry 
 earlier. He goes from the parental roof to his 
 
 i6 
 
own roof with only a short intervali if any, be- l^^e 
 tween. The workingman is often a grandfather ^appf 
 before he is fifty years old; the professional man ^ife 
 but seldom. Love before marriage, being the 
 most attractive theme of poetry andfiction, gets 
 a very disproportionate amount of attention in 
 literature, as compared with the domestic af- 
 fections after marriage. 
 Concerning these normal domestic joys, any 
 discerning person who has experienced them, 
 and has been intimate with four or five genera- 
 tions, will be likely to make three observations : 
 In the first place, the realization of the natural 
 and legitimate enjoyments in domestic life de- 
 pends on the possession of physical and moral 
 health. Whatever impairs bodily vigor, animal 
 spirits, and good temper lessens the chance of 
 attaining to the natural domestic joys, —joys 
 which by themselves, without any additions 
 whatever except food and steady work, make 
 earthly life worth living. In the second place, 
 they endure, and increase with lapse of years ; 
 the satisfactions of normal married life do not de- 
 cline, but mount. Children are more and more in- 
 teresting as they grow older ; at all stages, from 
 babyhood to manhood and womat^hood, they 
 are to be daily enjoyed. People whothink they 
 shall enjoy their children to-morrow, or year 
 
 17 
 
(^R( after next, will never enjoy them. The greatest 
 iboppv pleasure in them comes late; for, as Hamerton 
 j£lfg mentions in his " Human Intercourse," the most 
 exquisite satisfaction of the parent is to come 
 to respect and admire the powers and charac- 
 ter of the child. Thirdly, the family affections 
 and joys are the ultimate source of civilized 
 man's idea of a loving God, — an idea which is 
 a deep root of happiness when it becomes an 
 abiding conviction. They have supplied all the 
 conceptions of which this idea is the supreme 
 essence, or infinite product. It deserves men- 
 tion here that these supreme enjoyments of the 
 normal, natural life— the domestic joys — are 
 woman's more than man's; because his func- 
 tion of bread-winning necessarily separates 
 him from his home during a good part of his 
 time, particularly since domestic or house in- 
 dustries have been superseded by factory me- 
 thods. 
 
 i8 
 
pieaeute in llSobiif <Bi9ettion 
 
 TURN now to the satisfaction 
 which comes from physical exer- 
 tion, including brainwork. Every- 
 body knows some form of activity 
 which gives him satisfaction. Perhaps it is rid- 
 ing a horse, or rowing a boat, or tramping all 
 day through woods or along beaches with a 
 gun on the shoulder, or climbing a mountain, or 
 massing into a ball or bloom a paste of sticky 
 iron in a puddling furnace (that heaviest of la- 
 bor), or wrestling with the handles of the plun- 
 ging, staggering plow, or tugging at a boat's 
 tiller when the breeze is fresh, or getting in 
 hay before the shower. There is real pleasure 
 and exhilaration in bodily exertion, particularly 
 with companionship (of men or animals) and 
 competition. There is pleasure in the exertion 
 even when it is pushed to the point of fatigue, 
 as many a sportsman knows ; and this pleasure 
 is in good measure independent of the attain- 
 ment of any practical end. Thpre is pleasure 
 in mere struggle, so it be not hopeless, and 
 
 19 
 
(^R0 in overcoming resistance, obstacles, and hard- 
 ibappv ships. When to the pleasurepf exertion is added 
 jl^lfg the satisfaction of producing a new value, and 
 the further satisfaction of earning a livelihood 
 through that new value, we have the common 
 pleasurable conditions of productive labor. 
 Every workingman who is worth his salt (I 
 care not whether he works with his hands and 
 brains, or with his brains alone) takes satisfac- 
 tion, first, in the working, secondly, in the pro- 
 duct of his work, and thirdly, in what that pro- 
 duct yields to him. The carpenter who takes no 
 pleasure in the mantel he has made, the farm 
 laborer who does not care for the crops he has 
 cultivated, the weaverwho takes no pride in the 
 cloth he has woven, the engineer who takes no 
 interest in the working of the engine he directs, 
 is a monstrosity. Itis an objection to many forms 
 of intellectual labor that their immediate pro- 
 duct is intangible and often imperceptible. The 
 fruit of mental labor is often diffused, remote, or 
 subtile. It eludes measurement, and even obser- 
 vation. On the other hand, mental labor is more 
 enjoyable than manual labor in the process. 
 The essence of the joy lies in the doing, rather 
 than in the result of the doing. There is a life- 
 long and solid satisfaction in any productive la- 
 bor, manual or mental, which is not pushed 
 
 20 
 
beyond the limit of strength. The difference be- C^C 
 tween the various occupations of men in re- i^appp 
 spect to yielding this satisfaction is much less itife 
 than people suppose; for occupations become 
 habitual in time, and the daily work in every 
 calling gets to be so familiar that it may fairly 
 be called monotonous. My occupation, for in- 
 stance, offers, I believe, more variety than that 
 of most professional men ; yet I should say that 
 nine-tenths of my work, from day to day, was 
 routine work, presenting no more novelty or 
 fresh interest to me than the work of a carpen- 
 ter or blacksmith, who is always making new 
 things on old types, presents to him. The Orien- 
 tal, hot-climate figment that labor is a curse 
 is contradicted by the experience of all the 
 progressive nations. The Teutonic stock owes 
 everything that is great and inspiring in its de- 
 stiny to its faculty of overcoming difficulties by 
 hard work, and of taking heartfelt satisfaction 
 in this victorious work. It is not the dawdlers 
 and triflers who find life worth living; it is the 
 steady, strenuous, robust workers. 
 
V 
 
 C?e pCeaeme of 5Rea5injf 
 
 NCE when I was talking with Dr. 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes about the 
 best pleasures in life; he mentioned, 
 as one of the most, precious, fre- 
 quent contact with quick and well-stored minds 
 in large variety; he valued highly the number, 
 frequency, and variety of quickening intellec- 
 tual encounters. We were thinking of contact 
 in conversation ; but this pleasure, if only to be 
 procured by personal meetings, would obvi- 
 ously be within the reach, as a rule, of only a 
 very limited number of persons. Fortunately for 
 us and for posterity, the cheap printing-press 
 has put within easy reach of every man who can 
 read all the best minds both of the past and the 
 present. For one-tenth part of a, year's wages a 
 young mechanic can buy, before he marries, a 
 library of famous books which, if he masters it, 
 will make him a well-read man. For half-a-day's 
 wagesaderk can provide himself with a weekly 
 paper which will keep him informed for a year 
 of all important current events. Public libraries, 
 
circulating libraries, Sunday-school libraries, f^^e 
 and book-clubs nowadays bring much reading jhaunv 
 to the door of every household and every soli- ^{fg 
 tary creature that wants to read. This is a new 
 privilege for the mass of mankind ; and it is an 
 inexhaustible source of intellectual and spir- 
 itual nutriment. It seems as if thisi new privi- 
 lege alone must alter the whole aspect of soci- 
 ety in a few generations. Books are the quietest 
 and most constant of friends ; they are the most 
 accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the 
 most patient of teachers. With his daily work 
 and his books, many a man whom the world 
 thought forlorn has found life worth.living. It is 
 a mistake to suppose that a great deal of lei- 
 sure is necessary for this happy intercourse with 
 books. Ten minutes a day devoted affectionately 
 to good books — indeed to one book of the first 
 order like the English Bible or Shakespeare, or 
 to two or three books of the second order like 
 Homer, Virgil, Milton, or Bacon — will in thirty 
 years make all the difference between a culti- 
 vated and an uncultivated man, between a man 
 mentally rich and a man mentally poor. The 
 pleasures of reading are, of course, in good part 
 pleasures of the imagination ; but they are just 
 as natural and actual as pleasures of the sense, 
 and are often more accessible and more lasting. 
 
 23 
 
e^utwaf ^evvice anb €oiopctation 
 
 N the next place I ask your atten- 
 tion to the fact that man is a part of 
 outward nature, and that the men 
 and women among whom our lot is 
 cast are an important part of our actual envi- 
 ronment. In some relation or other to these hu- 
 man beings we perforce must stand. The ques- 
 tion in what relation we had better stand to 
 them is a practical, this-world question, and 
 not a sentimental or next-world question. Fur- 
 ther, our sympathetic feelings, over which we 
 have hardly more control than we have over the 
 beating of our hearts, go out to our fellow-men 
 more and more widely, as better means of com- 
 munication bring home to us the joys and sor- 
 rows of widespread multitudes. In what rela- 
 tion is it for our satisfaction to stand in this 
 world toward our fellow-men? Shall we love 
 or hate them, bless or curse them, help or hin- 
 der them? These are not theoretical questions 
 which arise out of religious speculation or some 
 abstract philosophy. They are earthly, every- 
 24 
 
day, concrete questions, as intensely practical ^gg 
 as the question how are we to get our daily ^appv 
 bread, or where are we to find shelter from the ■fTife 
 snowstorm. Human beings are all about us ; we 
 and they are mutually dependent in ways so 
 complex and intricate that no wisdom can un- 
 ravel them. It is in vain for us or them to say. 
 Let us alone ; for that is a downright impossi- 
 bility. To the question, How do reasonable men 
 under these circumstances naturally and inev- 
 itably incline to act toward their fellow-beings? 
 there is but one common-sense, matter-of-fact 
 answer, namely, they incline to serve and co- 
 operate with them. That civilized society exists 
 at all is a demonstration that this inclination in 
 the main governs human relations. Every great 
 city is dependent for food, drink, and fuel on a 
 few bridges, dams, canals, or aqueducts which 
 a dozen intelligent human devils, armed with 
 suitable explosives and fire-bombs, could de- 
 stroy in a night. If the doctrine of total deprav- 
 ity were anjrthing but the invention of a morbid 
 human imagination, the massing of people by 
 hundreds of thousands would be too dangerous 
 to be attempted. Civilized society assumes that 
 the great majority of men will combine to pro- 
 cure advantages, resist evils, defend rights, and 
 remedy wrongs. Following this general and in- 
 
 25 
 
(^^c evitable inclination, the individual finds that by 
 ibappy serving others he best serves himself; because 
 ^ifc he thus conforms to the proniptings of his own 
 and their best nature. The most satisfactory 
 thing in all this earthly life is to be able to serve 
 our fellow-beings, — first those who are bound 
 to us by ties of love, then the wider circle of fel- 
 low-townsmen, fellow-countrymen, or fellow- 
 men. To be of service is a solid foundation for 
 contentment in this world. For our present 
 purpose it does not matter where we got these 
 ideas about our own better nature and its best 
 satisfaction ; it is enough that our generation, 
 as a matter of fact, has these ideas, and is ruled 
 by them. 
 
 The amount of the service is no measure of 
 the satisfaction or happiness which he who 
 renders the service derives from it. One man 
 founds an academy or a hospital ; another sends 
 one boy to be educated at the academy, or one 
 sick man to be treated at the hospital. The se- 
 cond is the smaller service, but may yield the 
 greater satisfaction. Sir Samuel Romilly at- 
 tacked the monstrous English laws which af- 
 fixed the death penalty to a large number of 
 petty offences against property, like poaching, 
 sheep-stealingand pocket-picking. Inthedawn 
 of a February morning, when the wind was 
 26 
 
blowing a gale and the thermometer was below (^R^ 
 zero, Captain Smith, of the Cuttyhunk Light- foopotf 
 house, took three men off a wreck which the j^ifg 
 heavy sea was fast pounding to pieces on a reef 
 close below the light. Sir Samuel R'omilly's la- 
 bors ultimately did an amount of good quite 
 beyond computation; but he lived to see ac- 
 complished only a small part of the beneficent 
 changes he had advocated. The chances are 
 that Captain Smith got more satisfaction for 
 the rest of his life out of that rescue, done in an 
 hbur, than Sir Samuel out of his years of labor 
 for a much-needed reform in the English penal 
 code. There was another person who took 
 satisfaction in that rescue ever after, and was 
 entitled to. When day dawned on that wintry 
 morning, Captain Smith's wife, who had been 
 listening restlessly to the roar of the sea and 
 the wind, could lie still no longer. She got up 
 and looked out of the window. To her horror 
 there was a small schooner on the reef in plain 
 sight, one mast fallen over the side, and three 
 men lashed to the other mast. Her husband 
 was ^till fast asleep. Must she rouse him? If she 
 did, she knew he would go out there into that 
 furious sea and freezing wind. If she waited 
 only a little while, the men would be dead, and 
 it would be of no use to go. Should she speak 
 
 27 
 
f^a^ to him? She did. Oh, it is jlot the amount of 
 
 iboppv Sood done which measures the love or heroism 
 
 jTifg which prompted the serviceable deed, or the 
 
 happiness which the doer gets from it ! It is the 
 
 spirit of service which creates both the merit 
 
 and the satisfaction. 
 
 One of the purest and most enduring of hu- 
 man pleasures is to be found in the possession 
 of a good name among one's neighbors and 
 acquaintances. As Shakespeare puts it: 
 
 "The purest treasure mortal times afford 
 Is spotless reputation." 
 
 This is not fame, or even distinction ; it is local 
 reputation among the few scores or hundreds 
 of persons who really know one. It is a satis- 
 faction quite of this world, and one attained by 
 large numbers of quiet men and women whose 
 names are never mentioned beyond the limits 
 of their respective sets of acquaintance. Such 
 reputation regards, not mental power or man- 
 ual skill, but character; it is slowly built upon 
 purity, integrity, courage, and sincerity. To 
 possess it is a crowning sa.tisfaction which is 
 oftenest experienced to the full rather late in 
 life, when some other pleasures begin to fade 
 away. 
 
dttje ^eCection of T5e(ief$ 
 
 ASTLY, I shall venture to call your 
 attention to the importance — with 
 a view to a happy life — of making a 
 judicious selection of beliefs. Here 
 we are living on a little islet of sense and fact 
 in the midst of a boundless ocean of the un- 
 known and mysterious. From year to year and 
 century to century the islet expands, as new 
 districts are successively lifted from out the 
 encompassing sea of ignorance ; but it still re- 
 mains encircled by this prodigious sea. In this 
 state of things every inquisitive, truth-seeking 
 human being is solicited by innumerable be- 
 liefs, old and new. The past generations, out 
 of which we spring, have been believing many 
 undemonstrated and undemonstrable things; 
 and we inherit their beliefs. Every year new be- 
 liefs appeal to us for acceptance, some of them 
 clashing with the old. Everybody holds nu- 
 merous beliefs on subjects outside the realm of 
 knowledge; and, moreover, everybody has to 
 act on these beliefs from hour to hour. All men 
 
 29 
 
I^Rg of science walk by faith and not by sight in ex- 
 C\(innn ploring and experimenting, the peculiarity of 
 jTifl their walk being that they generally take but 
 one step at a time, and that a short one. All 
 business proceeds on beliefs, or judgments of 
 probabilities, and not on certainties. The very 
 essence of heroism is that it takes adverse 
 chances ; so that full foreknowledge of the issue 
 would subtract from the heroic quality. Beliefs, 
 then, we must have and must act on ; and they 
 are sure to affect profoundly our happiness in 
 this world. How to treat our old beliefs and 
 choose our new ones, with a view to happiness, 
 is in these days a serious problem for every re- 
 flective person. 
 
 The first steps toward making a calm choice 
 are to observe strictly the line of demarcation 
 between facts on the one hand and beliefs on 
 the other, and to hold facts as facts and beliefs 
 as nothing more than beliefs. Next we need a 
 criterion or touchstone for beliefs old and new. 
 The surest touchstone is the ethical standard 
 which through inheritance, education, and the 
 experience of daily life has, as a matter of fact, 
 become our standard. It is- not for our happi- 
 ness to. believe any proposition about the na- 
 ture of man, the universe, or God, which is 
 really at war with our fundamental instincts 
 30 
 
of honor and justice, or with our ideals of gen- (^Rg 
 tieness and love, no matter how those instincts jbappp 
 and ideals have been implanted or arrived at. ^jfe 
 The man or woman who hopes to attain reflec- 
 tive happiness, as he works his strenuous way 
 through the world, must bring all beliefs, old 
 and new, to this critical test, and must reject, or 
 refuse to entertain, beliefs which do not stand 
 the test. 
 
 One obvious fact of observation seems to con- 
 tradict this correlation of beliefs with ethical 
 content and, therefore, with happiness. Mil- 
 lions of comfortable men and women do, as a 
 matter of fact, believe various long-transmitted 
 doctrines which are clearly repulsive to the 
 moral sense of the entire present generation. 
 How can this be? Simply because, these mil- 
 lions accept also antidotal doctrines which 
 neutralize the natural effect of the first beliefs. 
 This process may persist for generations with- 
 out affecting much the happiness of mankind, 
 but nevertheless it has its dangers ; for if faith 
 in the antidotes be lost first, a moral chaos may 
 set in. 
 
 Sudden and solitary changes of belief are sel- 
 dom happy. A gentle, gradual transformation 
 of beliefs, in company with kindred, neighbors 
 and friends, is the happiest. Men have always 
 
 31 
 
I^^e been gregarious in beliefs ; if they cannot re- 
 j^appp main with their own herd, itwill befortheir hap- 
 j^jfp piness to join a more congenial herd as quickly 
 as possible. 
 
 Of the two would-be despots in beliefs — the 
 despot who authoritatively commands men to 
 believe as he says, and the despot who forbids 
 men to believe at all — the first is the more tol- 
 erable to the immense majority of mankind. 
 Under the first despot millions of people have 
 lived, and now live, in contented faith ; but no- 
 body can live happily under the other. To curi- 
 ous, truth-seeking, pioneering minds one seems 
 as bad as the other, and neither in any way en- 
 durable. 
 
 A certain deliberation in accepting new be- 
 liefs is conducive to happiness, particularly if 
 the new ideas are destructiye rather than con- 
 structive. Emerson recommends us, as a mea- 
 sure of intellectual economy, not to read a book 
 until it is at least one year old — so many books 
 disappear in a year. In like manner, of novel 
 speculative opinions all but the best built and 
 most buoyant will go underwithin ten years of 
 their launching. 
 
 We may be sure that cheerful beliefs about 
 the unseen world, framed in full harmony with 
 the beauty of the visible universe and with the 
 32 
 
sweetness of the domestic affections and joys, (^^e 
 and held in company with kindred ^nd friends, 
 will illuminate the dark places on the pathway j£,ife 
 of earthly life, and brighten all the road. 
 
 33 
 
(€ffe Cottfeict mttj fBviC 
 
 AVING thus surve3^d the various 
 joys and satisfactions which may 
 make civilized life happy for multi- 
 tudes upon multitudes of our race, 
 I hasten to admit that there are physical and 
 moral evils in this world which impair or inter- 
 rupt earthly happiness. The wofst of the physi- 
 cal evils are lingering diseases* and untimely 
 deaths. I admit, too, that not a few men do, as 
 a matter of fact, lead lives not worth living. I 
 admit, also, that there are dreadful, as well as 
 pleasing, sights and sounds in this world, and 
 that many seemingly cruel catastrophes and 
 destructions mark the course of nature. Bio- 
 logical science has lately impressed many peo- 
 ple with the prevalence of cruelty and mutual 
 destruction in the animal and vegetable world. 
 From man down, the creatures live by preying 
 on each other. Insidious parasites infest all 
 kinds of plants and animals. Every living thing 
 seems to have its mortal foe. The very ants go 
 to war, for all the world like men, and Venus's 
 34 
 
fl3rtrap (Dionsea) is as cruel as a spider. So (^Rg 
 human society is riddled with mischiefs and ^aapv 
 wrongs, some, like Armenian massacres, due jTifg 
 to surviving savagery, and some, like slums, 
 to sickly civilization. It would seem impossible 
 to wring satisfaction and thoughtful happiness 
 from such evils ; yet that is just what men of 
 noble natures are constantly doing. They fight 
 evil, and from the contest win content and even 
 joy. Nobody has any right to find life uninter- 
 esting or unrewarding who sees within the 
 sphere of his own activity a wrong he can help 
 to remedy, or within himself an evil he can hope 
 to overcome. It should be observed that the in- 
 animate creation does not lend itself, like the 
 animate creation, to the theory that for every 
 good in nature there is an equivalent evil, and 
 for every beautiful thing an ugly offset. There 
 is no offset to the splendor of the heavens by 
 night or to the glories of the sunset, no draw- 
 back on the beauty of perfect form and various 
 hue in crystalline minerals, and no evil counter- 
 balancing the serenity of the mountains or the 
 sublimity of the ocean. 
 
 Again, the existence of evils and mysteries 
 must not blind us to the abounding and intel- 
 ligible good. We must remember that the mis- 
 fortunes hardest to bear are those which never 
 
 35 
 
(1^^( come, as Lowell said. We must clear our minds, 
 ^appv so far as possible, of cruel imaginings about 
 ^iff the invisible world and its rulers ; and, on the 
 other hand, we must never allow imagined con- 
 solations, or compensatory delights, in some 
 other world to reconcile u$ to the endurance 
 of resistible evils in this. We must never dis- 
 tress ourselves because we cannot fully under- 
 stand the moral principles on which the uni- 
 verse is conducted. It would be vastly more 
 reasonable in an ant to expect to understand 
 the constitution of the sun. 
 We must be sure to give due weight in our 
 minds to the good side of every event which 
 has two sides. A fierce northeaster drives some 
 vessels out of their course and others upon the 
 ruthless rocks. Property and life are lost. But 
 that same storm watered the crops upon ten 
 thousand farms, or filled the springs which 
 later will yield to millions of men and animals 
 their necessary drink. A tiger springs upon an 
 antelope, picks out the daintiest bits from 
 the carcass, and leaves the rest to the jackals. 
 We say. Poor little antelope! We forget to 
 say, Happy tiger ! Fortunate jackals ! who were 
 seeking their meat from God, and found it. A 
 house which stands in open ground must have 
 a sunny side as well as a shady. Be sure to live 
 3<S 
 
on the sunny side, and even then do not expect (^^e 
 the world to look bright, if you habitually wear ^appf 
 gray-brown glasses. iTift 
 
 We must assiduously cultivate a just sense 
 of the proportion between right and wrong, 
 good and evil, in this world. The modern news- 
 paper press is a serious obstacle to habitual 
 cheerfulness, because it draws con$tant atten- 
 tion to abnormal evils and crimes, and makes 
 no account of the normal successes, joys, and 
 well-doings. We read in the morning paper 
 that five houses, two barns, three shops, and a 
 factory have burned up in the night; and we 
 do not say to ourselves that within the same 
 territory five hundred thousand houses, three 
 hundred thousand barns, as many shops, and 
 a thousand factories have stood in safety. We 
 observe that ten persons have been injured on 
 railways within twenty-four hours, and we for- 
 get that two million have travelled in safety. 
 Out of every thousand persons in the city of 
 Cambridge twenty die in the course of a year, 
 but the other nine hundred and eighty live ; and 
 of the twenty who die some have filled out the 
 natural span of life, and others are obviously 
 unfit to live. Sometimes our individual lives 
 seem to be full of troubles and miseries — our 
 own or those of others. Then we must fall back 
 
 37 
 
(^Rg on this abiding sense of the real proportion 
 
 ibappv between the lives sorrowful and the lives glad 
 
 jrrjfg at any one moment ; and of the preponderance 
 
 of gain over loss, health over sickness, joy over 
 
 sorrow, good over evil, and life over death. 
 
Conctmion 
 
 SHALL not have succeeded in 
 treating my subject clearly if I have 
 not convinced you that earthly hap- 
 piness is not dependent on the 
 amount of one's possessions or the nature of 
 one's employment. The enjoyments and satis- 
 factions I have described are accessible to poor 
 and rich, to humble and high alike, if only they 
 cultivate the physical, mental, and moral facul- 
 ties through which the natural joys are won. 
 Any man may win them who by his daily labor 
 can earn a wholesome living for himself and 
 his family. I have not mentioned a single plea- 
 sure which involves unusual expense, or the 
 possession of any uncommon mental gifts. It 
 follows that the happiness of the entire com- 
 munity is to be most surely promoted, not by 
 increasing its total wealth, or even by distri- 
 buting that wealth more evenly, but by improv- 
 ing its physical and moral health. A poorer 
 population may easily be happier than a richer, 
 if it be of sounder health and morality. 
 
 39 
 
(^Bg In conclusion, let me ask you to consider 
 
 ^appp whether the rational conduct of life on the this- 
 
 ^ifg world principles here laid down would differ in 
 
 any important respect from the right conduct 
 
 of life on the principles of the Christian gospels. 
 
 It does not seem to me that it would. 
 
 (tfje <Bnb