Counsels and Maxims | Page 3

from
that painless state which forms our highest happiness.
A careless youth may think that the world is meant to be enjoyed, as
though it were the abode of some real or positive happiness, which only
those fail to attain who are not clever enough to overcome the
difficulties that lie in the way. This false notion takes a stronger hold on
him when he comes to read poetry and romance, and to be deceived by
outward show--the hypocrisy that characterizes the world from

beginning to end; on which I shall have something to say presently.
The result is that his life is the more or less deliberate pursuit of
positive happiness; and happiness he takes to be equivalent to a series
of definite pleasures. In seeking for these pleasures he encounters
danger--a fact which should not be forgotten. He hunts for game that
does not exist; and so he ends by suffering some very real and positive
misfortune--pain, distress, sickness, loss, care, poverty, shame, and all
the thousand ills of life. Too late he discovers the trick that has been
played upon him.
But if the rule I have mentioned is observed, and a plan of life is
adopted which proceeds by avoiding pain--in other words, by taking
measures of precaution against want, sickness, and distress in all its
forms, the aim is a real one, and something may be achieved which will
be great in proportion as the plan is not disturbed by striving after the
chimera of positive happiness. This agrees with the opinion expressed
by Goethe in the _Elective Affinities_, and there put into the mouth of
Mittler--the man who is always trying to make other people happy: _To
desire to get rid of an evil is a definite object, but to desire a better
fortune than one has is blind folly_. The same truth is contained in that
fine French proverb: _le mieux est l'ennemi du bien_--leave well alone.
And, as I have remarked in my chief work,[1] this is the leading
thought underlying the philosophical system of the Cynics. For what
was it led the Cynics to repudiate pleasure in every form, if it was not
the fact that pain is, in a greater or less degree, always bound up with
pleasure? To go out of the way of pain seemed to them so much easier
than to secure pleasure. Deeply impressed as they were by the negative
nature of pleasure and the positive nature of pain, they consistently
devoted all their efforts to the avoidance of pain. The first step to that
end was, in their opinion, a complete and deliberate repudiation of
pleasure, as something which served only to entrap the victim in order
that he might be delivered over to pain.
[Footnote 1: _Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_, vol. ii., ch. 16.]
We are all born, as Schiller says, in Arcadia. In other words, we come
into the world full of claims to happiness and pleasure, and we cherish
the fond hope of making them good. But, as a rule, Fate soon teaches
us, in a rough and ready way that we really possess nothing at all, but
that everything in the world is at its command, in virtue of an

unassailable right, not only to all we have or acquire, to wife or child,
but even to our very limbs, our arms, legs, eyes and ears, nay, even to
the nose in the middle of our face. And in any case, after some little
time, we learn by experience that happiness and pleasure are a _fata
morgana_, which, visible from afar, vanish as we approach; that, on the
other hand, suffering and pain are a reality, which makes its presence
felt without any intermediary, and for its effect, stands in no need of
illusion or the play of false hope.
If the teaching of experience bears fruit in us, we soon give up the
pursuit of pleasure and happiness, and think much more about making
ourselves secure against the attacks of pain and suffering. We see that
the best the world has to offer is an existence free from pain--a quiet,
tolerable life; and we confine our claims to this, as to something we can
more surely hope to achieve. For the safest way of not being very
miserable is not to expect to be very happy. Merck, the friend of
Goethe's youth, was conscious of this truth when he wrote: _It is the
wretched way people have of setting up a claim to happiness_--_and,
that to, in a measure corresponding with their desires_--_that ruins
everything in this world. A man will make progress if he can get rid of
this claim,[1] and desire nothing but what he sees before him_.
Accordingly it is advisable to put very moderate limits upon our