Essays on the Intellectual Lowers, Moral Sentiment Happiness and National Felicity (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1805 Excerpt: ... or what persuasion can turn the grimace of politeness into real sentiments of humanity and candour OF HAPPINESS. HAVING had under our consideration the active powers and the moral qualities which distinguish the nature of man, is it still necessary that we should treat of his happiness apart This significant term, the most frequent and the most familiar in our conversation, is perhaps, on reflection, the least understood. It serves to express our satisfaction when any desire is gratified: it is pronounced with a sigh when our object is distant: it means what we wish to obtain, and what we seldom stay to examine. We estimate the value of every subject by its utility, and its influence on happiness; but we think that utility itself, and happiness, require no explanation. Those men are commonly esteemed the happiest whose desires are most frequently gratified. But if, in reality, the possession of what they desire and a continued fruition were requisite to happiness, mankind for the most part would have reason to complain of their lot. What they call their enjoyments are generally momentary; and the object of sanguine expectation, when obtained, no longer continues to occupy the mind: a new passion succeeds, and the imagination, as before, is intent on a distant felicity. How many reflections of this sort are suggested by melancholy, or by the effects of that very lan.guor and inoccupation into which we would willingly sink under the notion of freedom from care and trouble I When we enter on a formal computation of the enjoyments or sufferings which are prepared for mankind, it is a chance but we find that pain, by its intenseness, its duration, or frequency, is greatly predominant. The activity and eagerness with which we press from one stage of life to ano...