ON HUMAN HAPPINESS. 



It shows itself at all. Behold the happiness of the infant or of the school- 

 boy : he is full of frolic ; he cannot contain the current of self-delight : in 

 the bold significancy of vulgar language, it runs out at his fingers' ends. 

 Upon the whole, the listless and idle have less pretensions to happiness 

 than the characters we have just surveyed, — the libertine, the^ gamester, 

 and the spendthrift : for should you distil the aggregate of insignificant in- 

 cidents that compose the whole tenour of the feeble life of the former, not 

 a drop, perhaps, of the essence of happiness would ascend in the alembic. 

 They may be at perfect quiet if you please, and look fat and in good liking, 

 but this is not happiness ; for if so, capons and Cappadocian slaves would 

 have a better title to it than themselves. 



Let us now apply these observations to the question before us. No 

 man can be happy without exercising the virtue of a cheerful industry or 

 activity. No man can lay in his claim to happiness, I mean the happiness 

 that shall last through the fair run of life, without chastity, without tempe- 

 rance, without sobriety, without economy, without self-c<3mmand,and con- 

 sequently without fortitude ; and, let me add, without a liberal and forgiving 

 spirit. The whole of this follows as the necessary result of our argument. 

 The exercise of these virtues may perhaps cost a man something at the 

 time, but the full scope and aggregate of his happiness depend upon the 

 exercise. It is a tax upon the sum-total, that must be regularly paid to 

 secure the rest. And it ought never to be forgotten that we are so much 

 the creatures of habit that the more we are accustomed to the exercise, 

 like an old garment, the easier it will sit upon us. 



But these are private virtues, and only a few of them. Man has also, 

 if he would be happy, to practise a still longer list of public virtues ; and 

 he cannot be happy without practising them. Or, in other words, (for I am 

 now to consider him in a social capacity,) the happiness of the community 

 to which he belongs, and of which his own forms a constituent part, could 

 not continue without his practising them. 



He may steal, indeed, from his neighbour, and hereby increase his means 

 of gratifying some predominant passion ; but then his neighbour may also 

 steal from him in return, and to a greater extent ; and his happiness there- 

 fore (ever regarding it in the aggregate) is connected with his exercising 

 the virtues of justice and honesty. He may break his promise, or lie to 

 his neighbour, upon a point in which his own interest appears to be con- 

 cerned; but then his neighbour may also return him the compliment, and 

 in a way in which his interest may be still more deeply concerned ; and 

 his interest, therefore, or, which is the same thing, his happiness, obliges 

 h'lm to practise the virtue of veracity. 



I« Woodfall's edition of the Letters of Junius, there is a passage upon 

 the subject before us, contained in one of his private letters, which has pe- 

 euUarly struck me, considering the quarter it has proceeded from, and the 

 manner of its communication. Whoever was the writer of these cele- 

 brated Letters, it wiil be readily admitted, that he had a most extensive ac- 

 quaintance with men of all ranks an<i characters, particularly with the vi- 

 cious and profligate ; and that he had a most extraordinary facility of pe- 

 netrating into the human heart. In the private letter I refer to, he unbosoms 

 himself to his printer, for whom he appears to have had a great est^ern^ 

 and, amidst the regulations he gives him for his future conduct, makes the 

 following forcible remark : With a sound heart be assured you are better 

 gifted, even for worldly happiness, than if you had been cursed with the 



