444 



ON HUMAN HAPPINESS. 



abilities of a Mansfield. After long experience of the world, 1 afiirm, 

 before God, I never knew a rogue who was not unhappy."'^ 



It is not necessary to pursue the catalogue. Man is by nature a social 

 being : every one is purposely made dependent upon every other ; and 

 consequently the happiness or well-being of the whole and of every one, 

 who constitutes an integral part of the whole, must be the same happiness. 

 Yet as the happiness or well-being of the individual demands, in his private 

 capacity, as we have already seen it does, a system of private abstinences, 

 or restraints, the happiness or well-being of society demands a more ex- 

 tensive system of public duties of the same kind. We must consent to 

 rehnquish a part of our liberty, a part of our property, a part of all our 

 personal propensities and appetites, or the well-being of the society to 

 which we belong, and consequently our own social well-being could not 

 continue. We may indeed take ourselves away from society, and live in 

 the solitude of forests ; but our happiness is bound up in social hfe, and, 

 whatever is the cost, it is consistent with the same happiness that we pay it. 



Freethinkers are accustomed to sneer at the precepts of the Bible, which 

 inculcate upon us the virtues of self-denial and mortification in the present 

 life, in order to our making sure of a life of uninterrupted happiness here- 

 after. But if there be any degree of truth in the remarks now offered, 

 they find themselves called upon to practise a similar restraint and denial 

 even in the purchase of present enjoyment. And the analogy is so striking 

 between the natural and the moral government of the Deity in this respect, 

 that Bishop Butler has forcibly laid hold of the same argument, not only 

 in vindication of the Gospel-precepts upon this point, but in illustration of 

 the paramount importance of our attending to them, if we would be wise 

 to our future and everlasting interest. " Thought," says he, " and con- 

 sideration, the voluntary denying ourselves many things which we desire, 

 and a course of behaviour far from being always agreeable to us, are ab- 

 solutely necessary to our acting even a common decent and common pru- 

 dent part, so as to pass with any satisfaction through the present world, and 

 be received upon any tolerably good terms in it. Since this is the case, all 

 presumption against self-denial and attention to secure our higher inte- 

 rest is removed. The constitution of nature is as it is. Our happiness 

 and misery are trusted to our conduct, and made to depend upon it. Some- 

 what, and, in many circumstances, a great deal too, is put upon us either 

 to do or to suffer, as we choose. And all the various miseries of hfe 

 which people bring upon themselves by negligence and folly, and might 

 have avoided by proper care, are instances of this ; which miseries are, 

 beforehand, just as contingent and undetermined as their conduct, and left 

 to be determined by it."t 



It is from this common consent to put a restraint upon our personal 

 feelings in the pursuit of relative pleasures, from this social impulse of 

 our constitution with which we are so wisely and benevolently endowed, 

 that every man belonging to the same state or community becomes a part 

 of every man, and cannot, even if he would, be an indifferent spectator of 

 the wo or the weal of his neighbour. And hence arises the sacred bond 

 of sympathy or fellow-feeling ; 



Audtrae seif-Iove, and social, are the same. 



While as the line is drawn still closer, and we associate together more fre- 

 * Letter, No. xliii. ■]- Analysis of Religion, Natural and Revealed, part i. ch, iv. 



