What is true of love is true also of other permanent pleasures and enjoyments. They are real at least to the subjects of them, and there is every reason to consider them objectively real. And this is the refutation of pessimism. It simply aims to prove that pleasure is an objective reality and not a psychic illusion. It does not pretend to deal with the great indictment against the woes of life. I look upon it as a mark of healthy mental development that there should have arisen philosophers whose rational powers are keen enough to pierce the fogs of optimism in which the rest of the world is wrapped and who have been bold enough to announce that life is so largely made up of pain. Only by recognizing it can any mitigation of it be expected. But the despairing view that Schopenhauer and Hartmann take, borrowed from the philosophy of India, is based upon the supposed necessity of this state of things. With them it is the will perpetually driving its victims on toward some supposed goal of relief which is never attained, or if attained in the sense of the pain being simply ended, another and new scourge is applied, and so on indefinitely. Therefore they see no hope except in denying the will, resisting its power, abandoning all hope of happiness, refusing every proffered good, and letting every function cease until, with the cessation of life itself relief shall at last come through non-existence.

The answer to this side of the pessimistic philosophy is of a very different character from the last. It would be to anticipate my theme to undertake it here, but that final answer may be foreshadowed by reverting to the origin and function of pain as set forth in Chap. VII. The woes of mankind must be looked upon as the voices of nature telling him how hard they are being pressed by their environment, and how they are growing out of adaptation to it. (Pessimism is the product of a hostile social state. Its answer is the substitution of a friendly social state. If this can be done it will disappear. The greatest problem that science has before it is that of overthrowing pes

simism in the only way in which it can be overthrown by the amelioration of the social stateX/The philosophy that stands opposed to pessimism and must ultimately triumph over it is not optimism, which is the gospel of inaction, but meliorism, which is scientific utilitarianism, inspired by faith in the law of causation and the efficacy of well-directed action.

CHAPTER XII.

HAPPINESS.

It is quite remarkable that utilitarianism should have been most strongly defended by English-speaking writers, whose language is notably deficient in terms by which to convey the delicate shades of meaning required for its adequate elucidation. The need of a milder substitute for happiness has been seriously felt, and no doubt serves to obstruct the progress of rational views on this subject. That the defect is in the language and not in the conceptions is evident from the fact that most other languages possess better words. The French "bonheur" or the German "Glückseligkeit," had they their counterpart in English, would afford a delightful relief. Dynamic Sociology, II, 147.

Glückseligkeit ist die Befriedigung aller unserer Neigungen. — Kant : Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 532.

Thus recognizing, at the one extreme, the negative pains of inactions, called cravings, and, at the other extreme, the positive pains of excessive actions, the implication is that pleasures accompany actions lying between these extremes.—HERBERT SPENCER: Principles of Psychology, I, p. 276. Pleasure a

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The idea that happiness is something different from pleasure probably requires no serious refutation. It prevailed formerly because there was supposed to be something essentially bad about pleasure, while happiness was regarded as morally permissible. Now that we know that pleasure is the original good of the sentient world and the essential condition to vital existence, there is no room for anything bad in it, considered in and of itself.

But some will maintain that the idea of pleasure is associated more especially with the sensual feelings, while that of happiness connects itself with the higher emotional ones, and therefore requires special explanation. This is to some extent true, but it is perhaps more correct to define happiness as a

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condition of continuous or constantly recurring pleasures of whatever class, predominating largely over pains. It has various degrees from mere contentment to intense enjoyment. Giving the subject an analytical glance, happiness may be seen to require several conditions. The first of these is health. Unless the functions of the body are in harmonious operation nothing worthy of the name happiness can exist. And yet there is an immense difference in the power of different parts of the system to diminish happiness by their derangement. Consumptives are often happy, even buoyant, to the last moment of their lives, while dyspeptics are proverbially wretched, even when their ailment is so slight as to carry no serious menace of death. There seems to be no doubt that the reason for this wide difference lies in the fact that the lungs are supplied from the cerebro-spinal, while the stomach and intestines are supplied from the great sympathetic nervous system. Again, the extreme nervous suffering of women whose uterine systems are out of order is explicable in the same way, while persons suffering severe pain upon some external part, as the finger, may still enjoy much of what life otherwise affords.

It has been maintained that all that the most perfect health can do is to furnish the negative form of happiness known as contentment. But there are reasons to believe that the complete and harmonious performance by all the organs of the system of the normal functions assigned them possesses so great a volume of sustained satisfaction that it amounts to positive happiness in and of itself. The manner in which this takes place must be that described in Chap. VI (p. 32), where it was shown that the great ganglionic centers that preside over the so-called vegetative functions of the animal body are not wholly irresponsible to the supreme ganglion or brain, and that along with the proper regulation of the lower ganglia, plexuses, and specialized nerves, there goes a continuous gentle molecular discharge to the brain, notifying it, as it were, that all is well. It is only of this that the subject is conscious, and

these health reports, as they may be styled, are gratefully received and conduce to a general sense of well-being. Contentment pure and simple, as distinguished from happiness, would represent the condition of a healthy body in the absence of this intercourse between the great ganglionic centers and the brain.

The second condition to happiness to be noted is freedom, more or less complete, from pain. To some extent this condition coincides with that of health. For even if we refer to illhealth the accidental external pains due to injury or local diseases, there still remains the most important class of emotional pains — grief, disappointment, worriment, fear, regret, remorse, anxiety, etc., etc. In fact, this list of woes lies only just outside the boundaries of that vast ocean of prurient pains described in Chap. IX under the general name of desires. If any of these remain permanently unsatisfied, happiness is well nigh impossible.

This forms the natural transition to the third and last condition to happiness that need be specially insisted upon, viz., the means of satisfying desire. This is by far the most important of all conditions, because health and freedom from pain are the normal states and their opposites belong to pathology. Their occurrence to a greater or less extent is unavoidable, and we have only nature to blame. This third condition, on the contrary, is, in any state that man has yet attained, comparatively rare, whereas inability to satisfy desire is the almost universal, estate of man, and moreover, it is only to a limited extent the fault of nature, and is in the main the fault of social surroundings..

But this needs many qualifications. If only the desires to eat, drink and reproduce were considered, it would indeed be untrue that the means to them were generally wanting. From vast numbers even these are more or less withheld, but such must perish, therefore those that live must possess these primary means of satisfying want. But such satisfactions consti