SIR JOHN LUBBOCK ON THE DUTY OF HAPPINESS.
SIR JOHN LUBBOCK divides with Lord Iddesleigh the special power which politicians have gained for them- selves in this generation of diverting attention from politics to those vaguer, but after all more important subjects, to which very few except politicians can persuade modern audiences carefully to attend. It is some compensation, perhaps, for the dreary condition of politics that the reputation of political dis- tinction enables a few wise men who are too moderate to lead the van in political strife, to give us advice which the people would certainly not accept with equal deference from any man who had not shown his capacity in the political field. And even Lord Iddesleigh does not give good counsel with more ease and grace and humour and variety of illustration, than Sir John Lubbock. His address at Preston yesterday week, on "The Conduct of Life," was a perfect model of the kind of address which charms by its wisdom, and renders us wiser by its charm. What a range of attractive reading it covers ! Bacon, Pliny, Theognis (in a translation of high poetical merit), "Alice in Wonderland," Epicurus, Hearne's "Journey to the Mouth of the Coppermine River," Simonides, Cicero, Brown the author of "Christian Morals," Ruskin, Lord Brougham, La Bruplre, Goethe, "The Imitation of Christ," St. Bernard, Marcus Aurelius, Helmholtz, Mr. Pater, Luther, Mr. W. R. Greg, besides not a few proverb writers, are all laid under contribution without the smallest effort, or the smallest trace of pedantry, to add to the life and interest of the lecture, and it is difficult to say which of the quotations is the more pertinent or the more fascinating in form. Perhaps the one which gave most pleasure to the present writer was the old-fashioned one from Brown, the author of "Christian Morals,"—one which was per- fectly new to him,—on the two classes of men who, for opposite reasons, are afraid of solitude. "Unthinking heads who have not learnt to be alone are a prison to themselves if they be not with others; whereas, on the contrary, those whose thoughts are in a fair and hurry within, are sometimes fain to retire into company, to be out of the crowd of themselves." We quote this, however, not so much for the quaintness and originality of the saying, as because it has a bearing on the subject on which Sir John Lubbock enunciated the only doubtful doctrine of his address, —the subject of the duty of happiness. In the opening, he deprecated a life of drudgery, and insisted that though abilities, like property, imply duties as well as rights, these duties
ought not to be of a kind to make life a life of drudgery ; that even for the ablest man "time spent in innocent and rational enjoyments, in social and family intercourse, in
healthy games, is well and wisely spent. Moreover, there are other temptations in youth which strong exercise enables us
better to resist. Indeed, so far from wishing to put drudgery as the ideal of life, I would do the very reverse, and impress on you the duty of happiness, as well as the happiness of duty."
Well, but if happiness be a duty, surely unhappiness is a sin, and in that case, those who make it one of their chief aims in life to drive away unhappiness of every kind, are following the guidance of conscience no less than the impulse of self-love, in their endeavour. Yet in that case, Goethe's teaching,—and Goethe was not at all inclined to be too spiritual in his ideal of conduct,—that the first great lesson which man has to learn is renanciation,—what Christ calls self-denial,—is not a true lesson. You cannot make the duty of happiness a leading prin- ciple of your creed, if you are to teach yourself to renounce wil- lingly; for these are contradictory doctrines,—the one teaching that there is a greater spiritual force in renouncing happiness when any higher claim comes into collision with it, than in tenaciously pursuing happiness ; the other teaching that it is one of the highest duties of life to secure happiness. Now, we are far from thinking that Sir John Lubbock, the great author of Bank holidays though he be, does hold that in any true sense it is a duty to be happy,—that is, if you can only gain happiness, we do not say merely by injuring others, but even by forgetting your true self. He evidently does not approve either the man who seeks refuge from his own vacancy of mind in constant recourse to the society of others, or the man who seeks refuge there from the engrossing character of his own feelings, who retires into company to be out "of the crowd" of himself. Rather he holds, with Marcus Aurelius, that "that which causes us unhappiness is not misfortune ; but that to bear it nobly is good fortune." We suffer much more, he thinks, with Marcus Aurelius, from our own vexation at little misadventures than we do from those misadventures themselves. Indeed, we should misread the drift of Sir John Lubbock's whole address if we supposed him really to say that there is any duty in happiness so imperative as to make us seek distrac- tions from all kinds of troublesome thoughts, instead of boldly facing such thoughts and extracting from them all they have to teach us as to our own weaknesses and sins. He quotes with approval the saying of Epicurus, that "the man who is not content with little is content with nothing," and that clearly tells strongly against the doctrine that we have any absolute right to happiness such as would justify a man in trying to avoid or evade pain, as he would avoid or evade moral evil. If it were a sin to be unhappy, the man who rushed into society to distract his mind from his own unhappy thoughts, would be pursuing virtue in the very act ; and if happiness were the main end of life, the man who contented himself with little instead of eagerly grasping at much, would be neglecting his duty instead of showing his sobriety and wisdom. It is obvious, we think, that what Sir John Lubbock really meant when he insisted on the duty of happiness, was not the duty of happiness, but the duty of cheerfulness and thankful- ness, both of which virtues are often seen at their maximum in lives which it is impossible to call in any natural sense happy. There may be the utmost cheerfulness where the true basis of life is not happiness but fortitude. There may be the utmost thankfulness where men who enjoy no more than an average share of happiness would see no room for any- thing but despair.
''We are the more anxious that Sir John Lubbock's address should not be misunderstood, because his own just repu- tation for zeal in allotting more time for popular amusement and recreation, and his wise panegyric on healthy sports and games, might, if interpreted by the light of the saying that happiness is a duty, disguise the drift of the greater part of his address, which consists in impressing on us that we shall not only be better, b,ut in the end happier too, if we do not anxiously pursue happiness, but hold on to it very loosely, and are willing to give it up cheerfully rather than resign any greater good. Ours is a time when the young, at least, think too much of recreation, and devote too much of the real energies of their life to the strategy of amusement. To some extent, the very disinterested beneficence of the day which has contrived so many palliatives for the misery of the toilworn classes, has lent countenance to the prevalent notion that those who do not enjoy their lives are defrauded of their absolute
rights, and has encouraged the young people of a class which has more than its share of the pleasures of life, to regard those pleasures as their just inheritance. Yet nothing can be more certain than that the lives which are pervaded by the belief that the pursuit of happiness is the natural and legitimate aim of men, are neither the noblest nor the happiest. The lesson of renunciation (Goethe's Entsagen), or the lesson of sell-denial,- what Matthew Arnold calls "the secret of Jesus,"—is, indeed, at the root of true cheerfulness, though no in this world, of absolute happiness ; and however good Sir John Lubbock's teaching may be as to the wisdom of embodying recreation in the scheme of life, the justification of it lies not in the fact that pleasure is one of the chief ends of man, but in the fact that for the most part those who play well, work better than they play, and could not work so well as they do if they did not play also. It is not that the pleasurable occupation is the right one because it is pleasurable, but that the pleasurable occupa- tion gives zest to the more arduous occupation, and lends to the enthusiasm of labour something of the delightful glow of conscious enjoyment. Sir John Lubbock, strenuous as he has been in providing opportunity for leisure and for pleasure among the hard-worked classes, is the last man to teach that it is a duty to avoid unhappiness in the same sense in which it is a duty to avoid moral evil, or that any life will really be anything but ignoble in which the pursuit of happiness is not made comparatively light of, wherever it comes into collision with true duty. In insisting that a man should not be afraid of his own company,—that he should neither be without resources in himself, nor afraid of the throng of his own desires,—neither aghast at being thrown back on himself, nor so aghast at the passions he finds within himself that he is reluctant to face the world within,—Sir John Lubbock virtually teaches that, instead of aiming at satisfying our most eager cravings, we should aim at craving that which most deserves to be won. And if that be so, there cannot be said to be any duty of happiness. It is our duty to make others happy, so far as we can do so lawfully ; it is a duty not to make them unhappy by whining over our troubles ; it is a duty to put a cheerful face on life ; it is a duty to enjoy the blessings we have, and to show that we are grateful for them ; but it is not a duty to be happy, for if it were, we should be quite right in fleeing from unhappiness as from absolute evil, and in drowning in amusement all those anxieties and discontents with ourselves which it is of the highest im- portance to us to confront. The only case in which it may be truly said that it is a duty to seek happiness, is where we are fully convinced that a certain measure of happiness will make us stronger for our duties, just as a certain measure of recrea- tion makes us stronger for our professional tasks. The strong man can do with less happiness than the weaker man ; but in either case alike, the happiness which it is a duty to aim at is only so much as is subservient to the higher work of life ; and when all is said, the duty of happiness can never really compare, in its significance to human life, with the happiness of duty.
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