Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 126.djvu/340

328 and less noticed features of either mode of existence, and to attempt to strike some kind of balance of the results as regards individuals of different character and the same individual in youth and old age.

When we ask seriously the question which, of any two ways of spending our years, is the most conducive to happiness, we are apt to overlook the fact that it is not the one which supplies us with the most numerous isolated items of pleasure, but the one whose whole current tends to maintain in us the capacity for enjoyment at the highest pitch and for as long a time as possible. There is something exceedingly stupid in our common practice of paying superabundant attention to all the external factors of happiness down to the minutest rose-leaf which can be smoothed out for our ease, and all the time forgetting that there must always be an internal factor of delightability to produce the desired result; just as there must be an eye to see with, as well as candles to give light. The faculty of taking enjoyment, of finding sweetness in the rose, grandeur in the mountain, refreshment in food and rest, interest in books, and happiness in loving and being loved, is — as we must perceive the moment we consider it — indefinitely more precious than any gratiification which can be offered to the senses, the intellect, or the affections; even as eyesight is more valuable than the finest landscape, and the power of loving better than the homage of a world. Yet, as Shelley lamented —

and we allow it to remain absent from our souls, and grow accustomed to living without it, while all the time we are plodding on multiplying gratifications and stimulants, while the delicate and evanescent sense they are meant to please is becoming numb and dead. We often, indeed, make religio-philosophical remarks on the beautiful patience and cheerfulness of sufferers from agonizing disease, and we smile at the unfailing hilarity wherewith certain Mark Tapleys of our acquaintance sustain the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. We quote, with high approval, the poet who sings that —

Nevertheless, the singular phenomenon of evident, unmistakable happiness enjoyed, in despite of circumstances, never seems to teach us how entirely secondary all objective circumstances needs must be to the subjective side of the question; and how much more rational it would be on our part to look first to securing for ourselves the longest and completest tenure of the internal elements of enjoyment, before we turn our attention to the attainment of those which are external.

The bearing of this remark on the present subject is, of course, obvious. Which mode of life is it, life in town or life in the country, wherein the springs of happiness are most likely to flow with perennial freshness, and wherein the spirit of delight will burn brightest and longest? To solve this problem we must turn over in our minds the various conditions of such a state of mind and spirits — the most generally recognized being bodily health.

There is not the smallest danger in these days that any inquirer, however careless, should overlook the vast importance of physical soundness to every desirable mental result. Indeed, quite on the contrary; we may rather expect shortly to find our teachers, like the people of Erewhon, treating disease as the only real delinquency in the world, and all crimes and vices as mere symptoms of disordered nerves or overloaded stomach: kleptomania, dipsomania, homicidal mania, or something equally pardonable on the part of automata like ourselves. Seriously speaking, a high state of health, such as the "Original" described himself as having attained, or even something a few degrees less perfect, is, undoubtedly, a potent factor in the sum of happiness, causing every separate sensation — sleeping, waking, eating, drinking, exercise, and rest — to be delightful; and the folly of people who seek for happiness, and yet barter away health for wealth or fame, or any other element thereof, is like that of a man who should sell gold for dross. Admitting this, it would seem to follow that life in the country, generally understood to be the most wholesome, must be the most conducive to the state of enjoyment. But there are two points not quite cleared up on the way to this conclusion. First, bodily health seems to be, to some people, anything but the blessing it ought to be, rendering them merely coarse and callous, untouched by those finer impulses and sentiments which pain has taught their feebler companions, and so shuting them out from many of the purest and most spiritual joys of humanity. Paley 