The proverb, "Bring up a child in the way he should go, and when he
is old he will not depart there from," has much truth in it. But no
parent and no man himself can ever breathe quite safe; we can never
tell when some submerged animal instinct will rise up in us, stun all
our laboriously acquired morality into inactivity, and bring on
consequences that in any cool headed moment we should have
known enough to avoid. Thus duty, although she is the truest friend
and servant of happiness, figures as her foe. And some moralists,
realizing vividly the frequent need of opposing inclination, have
generalized the situation by saying that happiness cannot be our
end. "Foolish Word-monger and Motive grinder," shouts Carlyle,
"who in thy Logic-mill hast an earthly mechanism for the Godlike itself,
and wouldst fain grind me out Virtuefrom the husks of Pleasure,
I tell thee, Nay! Is the heroic inspiration we name Virtue but
some Passion, some bubble of the blood, bubbling in the direction
others PROFIT by? I know not; only this I know, If what thou namest
Happiness be our true aim, then are we all astray. 'Happy,' my brother?
First of all, what difference is it whether thou art happy or not!
'Happiness our being's end and aim,' all that very paltry speculation
is at bottom, if we will count well, not yet two centuries old in the
world" [Footnote: Sartor Resartus: "The Everlasting No" Past and
Present: "Happy" Leaving aside this last statement, which is an
irrelevant untruth, we probably feel an instinctive sympathy with
Carlyle, and a sort of shame that we should have thought of happiness
as the goal of conduct.
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