Mr. Powys Philosophises !

IN this book Mr. Powys discusses the thebry and practice of happiness ; the theory belongs to philosophy, the practice to worldly wisdom. Mr. Powys is not as a philosopher either original or profound, and as a man of the world he does not seem to me to be very wise. His philosophical position may be stated very simply. lie believes happiness to be the highest—indeed, he believes it to be the only ultimate good. Happiness, however, he holds, is not the same as pleasure. Pleasure is "a sensual feeling " ; happiness is pleasure plus "the idea of something mental and emotional; of something intellectual and what used to be called spiritual.' " It is characteristic of Mr. Powys's method that, although he is purporting to write popular philosophy, he gives practically no evidence of having read any of the philosophers. It is perhaps to this fact that we must attribute his habit of producing the most time-honoured philosophical platitudes with an innocent air of novelty, and of repeatedly falling into the errors which previous philosophers have made and their successors have exposed. As, for example, in this matter of the distinction between happiness and pleasure.

It was John Stuart Mill who, having proclaimed pleasure to be the only good, proceeded to distinguish pleasures in terms of quality very much on Mr. Powys's lines, the purely bodily pleasures being stigmatised as "pleasures of low luality," intellectual and spiritual pleasures being denomi- nated "high quality." Now this, it is obvious, w'll not do. For, if pleasure is the only good, pleasure is the only standard of value. While, then, we may justly rate one pleasure to be superior to another in point of its pleasantness, we cannot do so on any other score. What, then, can the expression "high quality pleasure " mean ? Either "more pleasure quanti- tatively," in which event the word " high " is meaningless, or pleasure enriched by some good other than pleasure, in virtue of which we judge the pleasure to have height, and value it accordingly, although, perhaps, it may be of smaller quantity. In his distinction between pleasure and happiness Mr. Powys,

it is clear, is trying to adopt the latter view, but totally fails to see that its adoption involves giving up the position that

pleasure is the only good. The fallacy is one which almost every writer on the subject since Mill has been at pains to point out. It is only a disdain of logic combined with an ignorance of history which could enable Mr. Powys to make a howler sufficient to wreck the Ethics paper of any first-year philosophical student.

In his capacity of professor of the practical art of living Mr. Powys attacks the by-product theory of pleasure. Through- out the history of civilised mankind, it has been noted that pleasures must not be pursued directly. You cannot take the kingdom of happiness any more than you can take the kingdom of beauty by storm. Happiness comes unsought to grace activities directed to other ends ; it is, in fact, a by- product, like coke, or, as Aristotle puts it, like the bloom on

the cheek of a young man in perfect health. Mr. Powys will have none of-this. He dismisses the by-product theory as " pathological superstition." When we pursue truth, goodness, fame or beauty, we do so, he holds, only because of the happiness we expect to gain from their attainment. So sacred, however, is the feeling of happiness that we do not

admit this to ourselves, but deceive ourselves with 'the belief that we arc valuing these other things for fear that Nye should.

"so much as name in our hearts what we know tO be the feeling that really keeps us going." I do not believe that this is true. I do not, for example, when I smoke a cigar because I think I shall enjoy it, deliberately deceive myself as to my- motive because the happiness which attaches to cigar-smoking is too sacred to be named. As to the by-product theory in general', I was for a considerable period of my life a hedonist of the Powys school and went to and fro in the world delibe-

rately seeking pleasure. I gave up the quest not, as Mr. Powys would seem to think, because I did not like to tell myself what I was looking for, but because all too- often I did

not find it. Hence my conversion to the by-product view! Almost everyone whom I have talked to or read on the subject has had the same experience.

In the light of these and other considerations I have come to the conclusion that Mr. Powys is a literary man rather

than a philosopher, a psychologist, or a sage. As such he writes interestingly enough about the relations of men and women. Women, he holds, achieve happiness in and through the men with whom they live. Men achieve happiness, when they do achieve it, in spite of the women with whom they live.

This is quite a plausible view, which is not less true than any other generalisation on the subject of the relations between the sexes. Mr. Powys sees that even in a happy marriage a man too -often undergoes what Stevenson called "a fatty degeneration of his moral being," and points out that a happiness is achieved which lacks" all elements of imagination, intellect, or spirit."

The book contains a number of practical precepts on how to overcome the main enemies of happiness, boredom, worry, sense of futility and what not. These principles are very well in their way and we shall no doubt be the better for reading them. But I do wish Mr. Powys would learn to write a little less volcanically. Saying everything, as lie does, at the top of his voice, he deprives himself of all power of emphasis by constant over-statement. Here are a pair 01 examples :

"The thing to do when you begin to feel over-powered by your worries is to say to yourself, Damn it ! I am still alive ; and some I love are still alive. Hell I What then I '."

"This sub-aqueous pleasure of theirs "—that is to say, of women's —" in the chaotic motion of the life-stream belongs to the inmost nerves of their being ; and only the wisest of thorn, those whose consciousness . . . can plumb this under tide at will, are aware ' of the nature of their deepest happiness," C. E. M. JOAD.