The Conquest of Happiness

executive; such people have a vision of how the world, or some part of it, should be, and they feel, sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly, that in realizing their vision they will be conferring a boon upon mankind or some section of it. They do not, however, adequately realize that the individuals affected by their operations have each an equal right to his own view as to the sort of world he wants. A man of the executive type is quite sure that his vision is right, and that any contrary one is wrong. But his subjective certainty affords no proof that he is objectively right. Moreover, his belief is very often only a camouflage for the pleasure that he derives from contemplating changes of which he is the cause. And in addition to love of power there is another motive, namely vanity, which operates strongly in such cases. The high-minded idealist who stands for Parliament—on this matter I speak from experience—is astonished by the cynicism of the electorate which assumes that he only desires the glory of writing the letters “M.P.” after his name. When the contest is over and he has time to think, it occurs to him that perhaps after all the cynical electors were in the right. Idealism causes simple motives to wear strange disguises, and therefore some dash of realistic cynicism does not come amiss in our public men. Conventional morality inculcates a degree of altruism of which human nature is scarcely capable, and those who pride themselves upon their virtue often imagine that they attain this unattainable ideal. The immense majority of even the noblest persons’ actions have self-regarding motives, nor is this to be regretted, since, if it were otherwise, the human race could not survive. A man who spent his time seeing that others were fed and forgot to feed himself would perish. He may, of course, take nourishment solely in order to provide himself with the necessary strength to plunge again into the battle against evil, but it is doubtful whether food eaten with this motive could be adequately digested, since the flow of saliva would be insufficiently stimulated. It is better therefore that a man should eat because he enjoys his food than that the time he spends at his meals should be solely inspired by a desire for the public good. And what applies to eating applies to everything else. Whatever is to be done can only be done adequately by the help of a certain zest, and zest is difficult without some self-regarding motive. I should include among self-regarding motives, from this point of view, those that concern persons biologically connected with oneself, such as the impulse to the defence of wife and children against enemies. This degree of altruism is part of normal human nature, but the degree inculcated in conventional ethics is not, and is very rarely attained genuinely. People who wish to have a high opinion of their own moral excellence have therefore to persuade themselves that they have achieved a degree of unselfishness that it is very unlikely that they have achieved, and hence the endeavour after saintliness comes to be connected with self-deception of a kind that easily leads on to persecution mania. The second of our four maxims, to the effect that it is unwise to over-estimate your own merits, is covered, so far as morals are concerned, by what we have already said. But merits other than moral should equally not be over-estimated. The playwright whose plays never succeed should consider calmly the hypothesis that they are bad plays; he should not reject this out of hand as obviously untenable. If he finds that it fits the facts, he should, as an inductive philosopher, adopt it. It is true that there are in history cases of unrecognized merit, but they are far less numerous than the cases of recognized demerit. If a man is a genius whom the age will not recognize, he is quite right to persist in his course in spite of lack of recognition. If, on the other hand, he is an untalented person puffed up with vanity, he will do well not to persist. There is no way of knowing to which of these two categories one belongs if one is afflicted with the impulse to produce unrecognized masterpieces. If you belong to the one category, your persistence is heroic; if to the other, ludicrous. When you have been dead a hundred years, it will be possible to guess to which category you belonged. In the meantime, there is a test, not perhaps infallible, but yet of considerable value, which you may apply yourself if you suspect that you are a genius while your friends suspect that you are not. The test is this: do you produce because you feel an urgent compulsion to express certain ideas or feelings, or are you actuated by the desire for applause? In the genuine artist the desire for applause, while it usually exists strongly, is secondary, in the sense that the artist wishes to produce a certain kind of work, and hopes that that work may be applauded, but will not alter his style even if no applause is forthcoming. The man, on the other hand, to whom the desire for applause is the primary motive, has no force within himself urging him to a particular kind of expression, and could therefore just as well do work of some wholly different kind. Such a man, if he fails to win applause by his art, had better give it up. And, speaking more generally, whatever your line in life may be, if you find that others do not rate your abilities as highly as you do yourself, do not be too sure that it is they who are mistaken. If you allow yourself to think this, you may easily fall into the belief that there is a conspiracy to prevent the recognition of your merit, and this belief is pretty sure to be the source of an unhappy life. To recognize that your merit is not so great as you had hoped may be more painful for a moment, but it is a pain which has an end, beyond which a happy life again becomes possible. Our third maxim was not to expect too much of others. It used to be customary for invalid ladies to expect at least one of their daughters to sacrifice themselves completely in performing the duties of a nurse, even to the extent of forgoing marriage. This is to expect of another a degree of altruism which is contrary to reason, since the loss to the altruist is greater than the gain to the egoist. In all your dealings with other people, especially with those who are nearest and dearest, it is important and not always easy to remember that they see life from their own angle and as it touches their own ego, not from your angle and as it touches yours. No person should be expected to distort the main lines of his life for the sake of another individual. On occasion there may exist such a strong affection that even the greatest sacrifices become natural, but if they are not natural they should not be made, and no person should be held blameworthy for not making them. Very often the conduct that people complain of in others is not more than the healthy reaction of natural egoism against the grasping rapacity of a person whose ego extends beyond its proper limits. The fourth maxim that we mentioned consists of realizing that other people spend less time in thinking about you than you do yourself. The insane victim of persecution mania imagines that all sorts of people, who, in fact, have their own avocations and interests, are occupied morning, noon, and night in an endeavour to work a mischief to the poor lunatic. In like manner, the comparatively sane victim of persecution mania sees in all kinds of actions a reference to himself which does not, in fact, exist. This idea, of course, is flattering to his vanity. If he were a great enough man, it might be true. The actions of the British Government for many years were mainly concerned to thwart Napoleon. But when a person of no special importance imagines that others are perpetually thinking about him, he is on the road towards insanity. You make a speech, let us say, at some public dinner. Photographs of some of the other speakers appear in the picture papers, but there is no picture of you. How is this to be accounted for? Obviously not because the other speakers were considered more important; it must be because the editors of the papers had given orders that you were to be ignored. And why should they have given such orders? Obviously because they feared you on account of your great importance. In this way the omission of your picture is transformed from a slight into a subtle compliment. But self-deception of this kind cannot lead to any solid happiness. In the back of your mind you will know that the facts are otherwise, and in order to conceal this from yourself as far as possible, you will have to invent more and more fantastic hypotheses. The strain of trying to believe these will, in the end, become very great. And since, moreover, they involve the belief that you are the object of widespread hostility, they will only safeguard your self-esteem by inflicting the very painful feeling that you are at odds with the world. No satisfaction based upon self-deception is solid, and, however unpleasant the truth may be, it is better to face it once for all, to get used to it, and to proceed to build your life in accordance with it.