Counsels and Maxims | Page 2

conscious of it only
when we reflect upon our condition. But that which checks or arrests
the will is something positive; it proclaims its own presence. All
pleasure consists in merely removing this check--in other words, in
freeing us from its action; and hence pleasure is a state which can never
last very long.
[Footnote 1: Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Vol. I., p. 58.]
This is the true basis of the above excellent rule quoted from Aristotle,
which bids us direct our aim, not toward securing what is pleasurable
and agreeable in life, but toward avoiding, as far as possible, its
innumerable evils. If this were not the right course to take, that saying
of Voltaire's, _Happiness is but a dream and sorrow is real_, would be
as false as it is, in fact, true. A man who desires to make up the book of
his life and determine where the balance of happiness lies, must put
down in his accounts, not the pleasures which he has enjoyed, but the
evils which he has escaped. That is the true method of eudaemonology;
for all eudaemonology must begin by recognizing that its very name is
a euphemism, and that to live happily only means _to live less
unhappily_--to live a tolerable life. There is no doubt that life is given
us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome--to be got over. There are
numerous expressions illustrating this--such as _degere vitam, vita
defungi_; or in Italian, _si scampa cosi_; or in German, _man muss
suchen durchzukommen; er wird schon durch die Welt kommen_, and
so on. In old age it is indeed a consolation to think that the work of life
is over and done with. The happiest lot is not to have experienced the
keenest delights or the greatest pleasures, but to have brought life to a
close without any very great pain, bodily or mental. To measure the
happiness of a life by its delights or pleasures, is to apply a false
standard. For pleasures are and remain something negative; that they
produce happiness is a delusion, cherished by envy to its own
punishment. Pain is felt to be something positive, and hence its absence
is the true standard of happiness. And if, over and above freedom from
pain, there is also an absence of boredom, the essential conditions of
earthly happiness are attained; for all else is chimerical.
It follows from this that a man should never try to purchase pleasure at

the cost of pain, or even at the risk of incurring it; to do so is to pay
what is positive and real, for what is negative and illusory; while there
is a net profit in sacrificing pleasure for the sake of avoiding pain. In
either case it is a matter of indifference whether the pain follows the
pleasure or precedes it. While it is a complete inversion of the natural
order to try and turn this scene of misery into a garden of pleasure, to
aim at joy and pleasure rather than at the greatest possible freedom
from pain--and yet how many do it!--there is some wisdom in taking a
gloomy view, in looking upon the world as a kind of Hell, and in
confining one's efforts to securing a little room that shall not be
exposed to the fire. The fool rushes after the pleasures of life and finds
himself their dupe; the wise man avoids its evils; and even if,
notwithstanding his precautions, he falls into misfortunes, that is the
fault of fate, not of his own folly. As far as he is successful in his
endeavors, he cannot be said to have lived a life of illusion; for the
evils which he shuns are very real. Even if he goes too far out of his
way to avoid evils, and makes an unnecessary sacrifice of pleasure, he
is, in reality, not the worse off for that; for all pleasures are chimerical,
and to mourn for having lost any of them is a frivolous, and even
ridiculous proceeding.
The failure to recognize this truth--a failure promoted by optimistic
ideas--is the source of much unhappiness. In moments free from pain,
our restless wishes present, as it were in a mirror, the image of a
happiness that has no counterpart in reality, seducing us to follow it; in
doing so we bring pain upon ourselves, and that is something
undeniably real. Afterwards, we come to look with regret upon that lost
state of painlessness; it is a paradise which we have gambled away; it is
no longer with us, and we long in vain to undo what has been done.
One might well fancy that these visions of wishes fulfilled were the
work of some evil spirit, conjured up in order to entice us away