![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() “I had what might truly be called an object in life: to be a reformer of the world … This did very well for several years, during which the general improvement going on in the world and the idea of myself as engaged with others in struggling to promote it, seemed enough to fill up an interesting and animated existence. Let your self-consciousness, your scrutiny, your self-interrogation, exhaust themselves on that and if otherwise fortunately circumstanced you will inhale happiness with the air you breathe, without dwelling on it or thinking about it, without either forestalling it in imagination, or putting it to flight by fatal questioning.” The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life. Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. They will not bear a scrutinizing examination. Once make them so, and they are immediately felt to be insufficient. The enjoyments of life (such was now my theory) are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing, when they are taken en passant, without being made a principal object. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way. “Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. ![]()
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