TUE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS. 473 



not alone. To creatures full of life death comes in company with 

 pain and suffering. It may be these which move all living creatures to 

 struggle for life, and not mere fear of death. 



Now, to the question, Is life worth living? it would be impos- 

 sible to give an answer that would suit all. Probably there have not 

 been two human beings since the world was made who, could they 

 express their precise opinion on this point, would give precisely the 

 same answer. Many whose whole lives have been full of sorrow and 

 trouble, who have had occasion many times to say that man was bom 

 to sorrow, would yet, even taking survey of their own sad lives, say — 

 life is sweet. That many whose own lives have been bitter enough, 

 think yet that life is sweet, is shown by this, that among them have 

 been found those who have done most to foster the lives of others. 

 But many of them would say that life is sweet, speaking even from 

 their own experience of life. And on the other hand many who are 

 held by those around them to have had little sorrow, who from child- 

 hood to old age have scarce ever known pain or suffering, who have 

 had more than their fill of the pleasures of life, and have escaped the 

 usual share of life's afflictions, would speak of life as dull and dreary 

 if not bitter. It has been indeed from such men that the doubting 

 cry has come, Is life worth living ? Men of more varied experience 

 would give other answers to that vain question. All answers, indeed^ 

 must be as idle as the question itself. Yet most men would give the 

 answer which says most for the pleasantness of life — that, as a whole, 

 life is neither bitter nor sweet, neither sharp nor cloying, but that it 

 "has all the charm in bitter-sweetness found." 



We are not concerned, however, to inquire what is the true answer 

 to the question. Is life worth living ? Though it is clear that if life is 

 not worth living the observed action of evolution has been unfortunate, 

 and the resulting laws of conduct are a mistake, while the reverse 

 must be held if on the whole life is well worth living, yet, so far as our 

 subject of inquiry is concerned, it matters not which view we take. 

 That which is common to both views is all we have to consider. The 

 man who holds that life is worth living, so thinks because he believes 

 that the pleasures of life on the whole outweigh its pains and sorrows. 

 The man who holds that life is not worth living does so because he 

 thinks that the pains and sorrows of life outweigh its pleasures. So 

 much is true independently of all ideas as to what are the real pleas- 

 ures or the real pains of life, or whether life here is most to be con- 

 sidered or chiefly a future life with pleasures or pains far greater in 

 intensity and in duration than any known here. 



Where or what the chief pleasures or pains of life may be, when 

 or how long endured, in no sort affects the conclusion that life is to be 

 considered worth living or the reverse according as happiness outvies 

 misery or misery happiness, and that therefore the rightness or wrong- 

 ness of conduct must be judged not by its direct action on life and the 



