This is something very different from Ruskin’s ethics,--from the plain statement that we have no right to be happy while our brother suffers, no right to put feathers in our own child’s hat, while somebody else’s child goes featherless and ragged. But there is a certain staying power in the older and simpler doctrine, and an admirable truth in the gentle suggestion that we need not vex ourselves too deeply with the notion of our ultimate freedom from trial. It was not given to Madame de Rémusat, any more than it is given to us, to ride in untroubled gladness over a stony world. All that she attained, all that we can hope for, are distinct and happy moments, brief intervals from pain, or from that rational _ennui_ which is inseparable from the conditions of human life. But I cannot agree with the long list of philosophers and critics, from Kant and Schopenhauer down to Mr. Dallas, who have taught that these passing moments are negative in their character; that they are hidden from our consciousness and elude our scrutiny,--existing while we are content simply to enjoy them, vanishing, if, like Psyche, we seek to understand our joy. The trained intelligence grasps its pleasures, and recognizes them as such; not after they have fled, and linger only, a golden haze, in memory, but alertly, in the present, while they still lie warm in the hollow of the heart. There is indeed a certain breathless and unconscious delight in life itself, which is born of our ceaseless struggle to live, a sweetness of honey snatched from the lion’s mouth. This delight is common to all men, and is probably keenest in those who struggle hardest. When society is reorganized on a Utopian basis, and nobody has any further need to elbow his own way through hardships and difficulties, there will be one joy less in the world; and, missing it, many people will realize that all which made life worth having has been softened and improved out of existence. They will cease to value, and refuse to possess, that which costs them nothing to preserve.
This fundamental happiness in life, and in the enforced activity by which it is maintained, is hidden from our consciousness. We feel the hardships, and do not especially feel any relish in ceaselessly combating them, though the relish is there; not keen enough for palpable felicity, but vital enough to keep the human race alive. All other pleasures, however, we should train ourselves to enjoy. They flow from many sources, and are fitted to many moods. They are fed alike by our most secret emotions and by our severest toil, by the simplest thing in nature and by the utmost subtlety of art. A primrose by a river’s brim often makes its appeal as vainly as does Hamlet, or the Elgin Marbles. What we need is, not more cultivation, but a recognized habit of enjoyment. There is, I am told, though I cannot speak from experience, a very high degree of pleasure in successfully working out a mathematical problem. Burton confesses frankly that his impelling motive, in long hours of research, was primarily his own gratification. “The delight is it I aim at, so great pleasure, such sweet content, there is in study.” I think the most beautiful figure in recent literature is Mr. Pater’s Marius the Epicurean, whose life, regarded from the outside, is but a succession of imperfect results, yet who, deserted and dying, counts over with a patient and glad heart the joys he has been permitted to know.