attacherThe Conquest of Happiness (London; Allen & Unwin, 1930): Full Text
Preface
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criminalThis book is not addresd to the learned, or to tho who regard a practical problem merely as something to be talked about. No profound philosophy or deep erudition will be found in the follwing pages. I have aimed only at putting together some remarks which are inspired by what I hope is common n. All that I claim for the recipes offered to the reader is that they are such as are confirmed by my own experience and obrvation, and that they have incread my own happiness whenever I have acted in accordance with them. On this ground I venture to hope that some among tho multitudes of men and women who suffer unhappincss without enjoying it, may find their situation diagnod and a method, of escape suggested. It is in the belief that many people who are unhappy could become happy by well-directed effort that I have written this book.
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sky rakerPart I: Caus of Unhappiness
Chapter 1: What makes people unhappy?
Animals are happy so long as they have health and enough to eat. Human beings, one feels, ought to be, but in the modern world they are not, at least in a great majority of cas. If you are unhappy yourlf, you will probably be prepared to admit that you are not exceptional in this. If you are happy, ask yourlf how many of your friends are so. And when you have reviewed your friends, teach yourlf the art of reading faces; make yourlf receptive to the moods of tho whom you meet in the cour of an ordinary day.
A mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe,
says Blake. Though the kinds are different, you will find that unhappiness meets you everywhere. Let us suppo that you are in New York, ...
少儿歌曲下载Or, again, watch people at a gay evening. All come determined to be happy, with the kind of grim resolve with which one determines not to make a fuss at the dentist's. It is held that drink and petting are the gateways to joy, so people get drunk quickly, and try not to notice how much their partners disgust them. After a sufficient amount of drink, men begin to weep, and to lament how unworthy they are, morally, of the devotion of their mothers. All that alcohol does for them is to liberate the n of sin, which reason suppress in saner moments .
The caus of the various kinds of unhappiness lie partiy in the social system, partly in individual psychology -- which, of cour, is itlf to a considerable extent a product of the social system. I have written before about the changes in the social system required to promote happiness. Concerning the abolition of war, of economic exploitation, of education in cruelty and fear, it is not my intention to speak in this volume.
To discover a system for the avoidance of war is a vital need for our civlisation; but no such system has a chance while men are so unhappy that mutual extermination ems to them less dreadful than continued endurance of the light of day. To prevent the perpetuation of poverty is necessary if the benefits of machine production are to accrue in any degree to tho most in need of them; but what is the u of making everybody rich if the rich themlvcs are mirable? Education in cruelty and fear is bad, but no other kind can be given by tho who are themlves the slaves of the passions. The considerations lead us to the problem of the individual: what can a man or woman, here and now, in the midst of our nostalgic society, do to achieve happines for himlf or hetlf? In discussing this problem, I shall confine my attention to tho who are not subject to any extreme cau of outward miry. I shall assume a sufficient income to cure food and shelter, sufficient health to make ordinary bodily activities possible. I shall not consider the great catastrophes such as loss of all one's children, or public disgrace. There are things to be said about such matters, and they are important things, but they belong to a different order from the things that I wish to say. My purpo is to sug
gest a cure for the ordinary day-to-day unhappiness from which most people in civilid countries suffer, and which is all the more unbearable bscau, having no obviious external cau, it appears inescapable. I believe this unhappiness to be very largely due to mistaken views of the world, mistaken 'ethics, mistaken habits of life, leading to destruction of that natural zest and appetite for possible things upon which all happiuess, whether of men or animals, ultimately depends. The are matters which lie within the power of the individual, and I propo to suggest the changes by which his happiness, given average good fortune, may be achieved.
Perhaps the best introduction to the philosophy which I wish to advocate will be a few words of autobiography. I was not born happy. As a child, my favourite hymn was: 'Weary of earth and laden with my sin'. At the age of five, I reflected that, if I should live to be venty, I had only endured, so far, a fourteenth part of my whole life, and I felt the long-spreadout boredom ahead ot me to be almost unendurable. In adolescence, I hated life and was continuary on the verge of suicide, from which, however, I was restrained by the
desire to know more mathematics.
alleviateNow, on the contrary, I enjoy life; I might almost say that with every year that pass I enjoy it more. This is due partly to having discovered what were the things that I most desired and having gradually acquired many of the things. Partly it is due to having successfully dismisd certain objects of desire - such as the acquisition of indubitable knowledge about something or other - as esntially unattainable. But very largely it is due to a diminishing preoccupation with mylf.
Like others who had a Puritan educatim, I had the habit of meditating on my sins, follies, and shortcomings. I emed to mylf - no doubt justly - a mirable specimen.
Gradually I learned to be indifferent to mylf and my deficiencies; I came to centre my attention increasingly upon external objects: the state of the world, various branches of knowledge, individuals for whom I felt affection. External interests, it is true, bring each its own possibility of pain: the world may be plunged in war, knowledge in some direction may be hard to achieve, friends may die. But pains of the kinds do not destroy the esntial quality of life, as do tho that spring from disgust with lf. And every external i英语速成方法
nterest inspires some activity which, so long as the interest remains alive, is a complete preventive of ennui. Interest in onelf, on the contrary, leads to no activity of a progressive kind. It may lead to the keeping of a diary, to getting psycho-analyd, or perhaps to becoming a monk. But the monk will not be happy until the routine of the monastery has made him forget his own soul. The happiness which he attributes to religion he could have obtained from becoming a crossing-sweeper, provided he were compelled to remain one. External discipline is the only road to happiness for tho unfortunates who lf-absorption is too profound to be cured in any other way.
The psychological caus of unhappiness, it is clear, are many and various. But all have something in common. The typical unhappy man is one who, having been deprived in youth of some normal satisfaction, has come to value this one kind of satisfaction more than any other, and has therefore given to his life a one-sided direction, together with a quite undue emphasis upon the achievement as oppod to the activities connected with it. There is, however, a further development which is very common in the prent day. A
man may feel so completely thwarted that he eks no form of satisfaction, but only distraction and oblivion. He then becomes a devotee of 'pleasure'. That is to say he eks to make life bearable by becoming less alive. Drunkenness, for example, is temporary suicide; the happiness that it brings is merely negative, a momentary cessation of unhappiuess. The narcissist and the megalomaniac believe that happiness is possible, though they may adopt mistaken means of achieving it; but the man who eks intoxication, in whatever form, has given up hope except in oblivion. In his ca, the first thing to be done is to persuade him that happhess is desirable. Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact. Perhaps their pride is like that of the fox who had lost his tail; if so, the way to cure it is to point out to them how they can grow a new tail. Very few men, I believe, will deliberately choo unhappiness if they e a way of being happy. I do not deny that such men exist, but they are not sufficiently numerous to be important. I shall therefore assume that the reader would rather be happy than unhappy. Whether I can help him to reali this wish, I do not know; but at any rate the attempt can do no harm.
