The Conquest of Happiness

In its more extreme forms persecution mania is a recognized form of insanity. Some people imagine that others wish to kill them, or imprison them, or to do them some other grave injury. Often the wish to protect themselves against imaginary persecutors leads them into acts of violence which make it necessary to restrain their liberty. This, like many other forms of insanity, is only an exaggeration of a tendency not at all uncommon among people who count as normal. I do not propose to discuss the extreme forms, which are a matter for a psychiatrist. It is the milder forms that I wish to consider, because they are a very frequent cause of unhappiness, and because, not having gone so far as to produce definite insanity, they are still capable of being dealt with by the patient himself, provided he can be induced to diagnose his trouble rightly and to see that its origin lies within himself and not in the supposed hostility or unkindness of others. We are all familiar with the type of person, man or woman, who, according to his own account, is perpetually the victim of ingratitude, unkindness, and treachery. People of this kind are often extraordinarily plausible, and secure warm sympathy from those who have not known them long. There is, as a rule, nothing inherently improbable about each separate story that they relate. The kind of ill-treatment of which they complain does undoubtedly sometimes occur. What in the end rouses the hearer’s suspicions is the multiplicity of villains whom it has been the sufferer’s ill-fortune to meet with. In accordance with the doctrine of probability, different people living in a given society are likely in the course of their lives to meet with about the same amount of bad treatment. If one person in a given set receives, according to his own account, universal ill-treatment, the likelihood is that the cause lies in himself, and that he either imagines injuries from which in fact he has not suffered, or unconsciously behaves in such a way as to arouse uncontrollable irritation. Experienced people therefore become suspicious of those who by their own account are invariably ill-treated by the world; they tend, by their lack of sympathy, to confirm these unfortunate people in the view that everyone is against them. The trouble, in fact, is a difficult one to deal with, since it is inflamed alike by sympathy and by lack of sympathy. The person inclined to persecution mania, when he finds a hard-luck story believed, will embellish it until he reaches the frontier of credibility; when, on the other hand, he finds it disbelieved, he has merely another example of the peculiar hard-heartedness of mankind towards himself. The disease is one that can only be dealt with by understanding, and this understanding must be conveyed to the patient if it is to serve its purpose. My purpose in this chapter is to suggest some general reflections by means of which each individual can detect in himself the elements of persecution mania (from which almost everybody suffers in a greater or less degree), and, having detected them, can eliminate them. This is an important part of the conquest of happiness, since it is quite impossible to be happy if we feel that everybody ill-treats us. One of the most universal forms of irrationality is the attitude taken by practically everybody towards malicious gossip. Very few people can resist saying malicious things about their acquaintances, and even on occasion about their friends; yet when people hear that anything has been said against themselves, they are filled with indignant amazement. It has apparently never occurred to them that, just as they gossip about everyone else, so everyone else gossips about them. This is a mild form of the attitude which, when exaggerated, leads on to persecution mania. We expect everybody else to feel towards us that tender love and that profound respect which we feel towards ourselves. It does not occur to us that we cannot expect others to think better of us than we think of them, and the reason this does not occur to us is that our own merits are great and obvious, whereas those of others, if they exist at all, are only visible to a very charitable eye. When you hear that so-and-so has said something horrid about you, you remember the ninety-nine times when you have refrained from uttering the most just and well-deserved criticism of him, and forget the hundredth time when in an unguarded moment you have declared what you believe to be the truth about him. Is this the reward, you feel, for all your long forbearance? Yet from his point of view your conduct appears exactly what his appears to you; he knows nothing of the times when you have not spoken, he knows only of the hundredth time when you did speak. If we were all given by magic the power to read each other’s thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be that almost all friendships would be dissolved; the second effect, however, might be excellent, for a world without any friends would be felt to be intolerable, and we should learn to like each other without needing a veil of illusion to conceal from ourselves that we did not think each other absolutely perfect. We know that our friends have their faults, and yet are on the whole agreeable people whom we like. We find it, however, intolerable that they should have the same attitude towards us. We expect them to think that, unlike the rest of mankind, we have no faults. When we are compelled to admit that we have faults, we take this obvious fact far too seriously. Nobody should expect to be perfect, or be unduly troubled by the fact that he is not. Persecution mania is always rooted in a too exaggerated conception of our own merits. I am, we will say, a playwright; to every unbiased person it must be obvious that I am the most brilliant playwright of the age. Nevertheless, for some reason, my plays are seldom performed, and when they are, they are not successful. What is the explanation of this strange state of affairs? Obviously that managers, actors, and critics have combined against me for one reason or another. The reason, of course, is highly creditable to myself: I have refused to kow-tow to the great ones of the theatrical world; I have not flattered the critics; my plays contain home truths which are unbearable to those whom they hit. And so my transcendent merit languishes unrecognized. Then there is the inventor who has never been able to get anyone to examine the merits of his invention; manufacturers are set in their ways and will not consider any innovation, while the few who are progressive keep inventors of their own, who succeed in warding off the intrusions of unauthorized genius; the learned societies, strangely enough, lose one’s manuscripts or return them unread; individuals to whom one appeals are unaccountably unresponsive. How is such a state of affairs to be explained? Obviously there is a close corporation of men who wish to divide among themselves the plums to be obtained by means of invention; the man who does not belong to this close corporation will not be listened to. Then there is the man who has a genuine grievance founded upon actual fact, but who generalizes in the light of his experience and arrives at the conclusion that his own misfortune affords the key to the universe; he discovers, let us say, some scandal about the Secret Service which it is to the interest of the Government to keep dark. He can obtain hardly any publicity for his discovery, and the most apparently high-minded men refuse to lift a finger to remedy the evil which fills him with indignation. So far the facts are as he says they are. But his rebuffs have made such an impression upon him that he believes all powerful men to be occupied wholly and solely in covering up the crimes to which they owe their power. Cases of this kind are particularly obstinate, owing to the partial truth of their outlook; the thing that has touched them personally has made, as is natural, more impression upon them than the much larger number of matters of which they have had no direct experience. This gives them a wrong sense of proportion, and causes them to attach undue importance to facts which are perhaps exceptional rather than typical. Another not uncommon victim of persecution mania is a certain type of philanthropist who is always doing good to people against their will, and is amazed and horrified that they display no gratitude. Our motives in doing good are seldom as pure as we imagine them to be. Love of power is insidious; it has many disguises, and is often the source of the pleasure we derive from doing what we believe to be good to other people. Not infrequently, yet another element enters in. “Doing good” to people generally consists in depriving them of some pleasure: drink, or gambling, or idleness, or what not. In this case there is an element which is typical of much social morality, namely envy of those who are in a position to commit sins from which we have to abstain if we are to retain the respect of our friends. Those who vote, let us say, for a law against cigarette smoking (such laws exist, or existed, in several American States) are obviously non-smokers to whom the pleasure which others derive from tobacco is a source of pain. If they expect those who were previously cigarette fiends to come in a deputation and thank them for emancipation from this odious vice, it is possible that they may be disappointed. They may then begin to reflect that they have given their lives for the public good, and that those who have most reason for thanking them for their beneficent activities appear to be the least aware of any occasion for gratitude. One used to find the same kind of attitude on the part of mistresses towards domestic servants whose morals they safeguarded. But in these days the servant problem has become so acute that this form of kindness to maids has become less common. In the higher walks of politics the same sort of thing occurs. The statesman who has gradually concentrated all power within himself in order that he may be able to carry out the high and noble aims which have led him to eschew comfort and enter the arena of public life, is amazed at the ingratitude of the people when they turn against him. It never occurs to him that his work may have had anything but a public motive, or that the pleasure of controlling affairs may have in any degree inspired his activities. The phrases which are customary on the platform and in the Party Press have gradually come to him to seem to express truths, and he mistakes the rhetoric of partisanship for a genuine analysis of motives. Disgusted and disillusioned, he retires from the world after the world has retired from him, and regrets that he ever attempted so thankless a task as the pursuit of the public good. These illustrations suggest four general maxims, which will prove an adequate preventive of persecution mania if their truth is sufficiently realized. The first is: remember that your motives are not always as altruistic as they seem to yourself. The second is: don’t over-estimate your own merits. The third is: don’t expect others to take as much interest in you as you do yourself. And the fourth is: don’t imagine that most people give enough thought to you to have any special desire to persecute you. I shall say a few words about each of these maxims in turn. Suspicion of one’s own motives is especially necessary for the philanthropist and the