Autobiography by John Stuart Mill (easy books to read txt) 📖

not dependent on our will and feelings; natural laws,

by virtue of which, in many cases, one thing is inseparable from another

in fact; which laws, in proportion as they are clearly perceived and

imaginatively realized, cause our ideas of things which are always

joined together in Nature, to cohere more and more closely in our

thoughts. Analytic habits may thus even strengthen the associations

between causes and effects, means and ends, but tend altogether to

weaken those which are, to speak familiarly, a _mere_ matter of feeling.

They are therefore (I thought) favourable to prudence and clear-

sightedness, but a perpetual worm at the root both of the passions and

of the virtues; and, above all, fearfully undermine all desires, and

all pleasures, which are the effects of association, that is, according

to the theory I held, all except the purely physical and organic; of the

entire insufficiency of which to make life desirable, no one had a

stronger conviction than I had. These were the laws of human nature, by

which, as it seemed to me, I had been brought to my present state. All

those to whom I looked up, were of opinion that the pleasure of sympathy

with human beings, and the feelings which made the good of others, and

especially of mankind on a large scale, the object of existence, were

the greatest and surest sources of happiness. Of the truth of this I was

convinced, but to know that a feeling would make me happy if I had it,

did not give me the feeling. My education, I thought, had failed to

create these feelings in sufficient strength to resist the dissolving

influence of analysis, while the whole course of my intellectual

cultivation had made precocious and premature analysis the inveterate

habit of my mind. I was thus, as I said to myself, left stranded at the

commencement of my voyage, with a well-equipped ship and a rudder, but

no sail; without any real desire for the ends which I had been so

carefully fitted out to work for: no delight in virtue, or the general

good, but also just as little in anything else. The fountains of vanity

and ambition seemed to have dried up within me, as completely as those

of benevolence. I had had (as I reflected) some gratification of vanity

at too early an age: I had obtained some distinction and felt myself of

some importance, before the desire of distinction and of importance had

grown into a passion: and little as it was which I had attained, yet

having been attained too early, like all pleasures enjoyed too soon, it

had made me _blasé_ and indifferent to the pursuit. Thus neither selfish

nor unselfish pleasures were pleasures to me. And there seemed no power

in nature sufficient to begin the formation of my character anew, and

create, in a mind now irretrievably analytic, fresh associations of

pleasure with any of the objects of human desire.

 

These were the thoughts which mingled with the dry, heavy dejection of

the melancholy winter of 1826-7. During this time I was not incapable of

my usual occupations. I went on with them mechanically, by the mere

force of habit. I had been so drilled in a certain sort of mental

exercise, that I could still carry it on when all the spirit had gone

out of it. I even composed and spoke several speeches at the debating

society, how, or with what degree of success, I know not. Of four years'

continual speaking at that society, this is the only year of which I

remember next to nothing. Two lines of Coleridge, in whom alone of all

writers I have found a true description of what I felt, were often in my

thoughts, not at this time (for I had never read them), but in a later

period of the same mental malady:

 

   "Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,

     And hope without an object cannot live."

 

In all probability my case was by no means so peculiar as I fancied it,

and I doubt not that many others have passed through a similar state;

but the idiosyncrasies of my education had given to the general

phenomenon a special character, which made it seem the natural effect of

causes that it was hardly possible for time to remove. I frequently

asked myself, if I could, or if I was bound to go on living, when life

must be passed in this manner. I generally answered to myself that I did

not think I could possibly bear it beyond a year. When, however, not

more than half that duration of time had elapsed, a small ray of light

broke in upon my gloom. I was reading, accidentally, Marmontel's

_Mémoires_, and came to the passage which relates his father's death,

the distressed position of the family, and the sudden inspiration by

which he, then a mere boy, felt and made them feel that he would be

everything to them--would supply the place of all that they had lost. A

vivid conception of the scene and its feelings came over me, and I was

moved to tears. From this moment my burden grew lighter. The oppression

of the thought that all feeling was dead within me was gone. I was no

longer hopeless: I was not a stock or a stone. I had still, it seemed,

some of the material out of which all worth of character, and all

capacity for happiness, are made. Relieved from my ever-present sense of

irremediable wretchedness, I gradually found that the ordinary incidents

of life could again give me some pleasure; that I could again find

enjoyment, not intense, but sufficient for cheerfulness, in sunshine and

sky, in books, in conversation, in public affairs; and that there was,

once more, excitement, though of a moderate, kind, in exerting myself

for my opinions, and for the public good. Thus the cloud gradually drew

off, and I again enjoyed life; and though I had several relapses, some

of which lasted many months, I never again was as miserable as I

had been.

 

The experiences of this period had two very marked effects on my opinions

and character. In the first place, they led me to adopt a theory of life,

very unlike that on which I had before I acted, and having much in common

with what at that time I certainly had never heard of, the anti-self-

consciousness theory of Carlyle. I never, indeed, wavered in the conviction

that happiness is the test of all rules of conduct, and the end of life.

But I now thought that this end was only to be attained by not making it

the direct end. 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. Aiming thus at

something else, they find happiness by the way. 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.

Once make them so, and they are immediately felt to be insufficient.

They will not bear a scrutinizing examination. Ask yourself whether you

are happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, not

happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life. 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. This theory now became the

basis of my philosophy of life. And I still hold to it as the best

theory for all those who have but a moderate degree of sensibility and

of capacity I for enjoyment; that is, for the great majority of mankind.

 

The other important change which my opinions at this time underwent, was

that I, for the first time, gave its proper place, among the prime

necessities of human well-being, to the internal culture of the

individual. I ceased to attach almost exclusive importance to the

ordering of outward circumstances, and the training of the human being

for speculation and for action.

 

I had now learnt by experience that the passing susceptibilities needed

to be cultivated as well as the active capacities, and required to be

nourished and enriched as well as guided. I did not, for an instant,

lose sight of, or undervalue, that part of the truth which I had seen

before; I never turned recreant to intellectual culture, or ceased to

consider the power and practice of analysis as an essential condition

both of individual and of social improvement But 1 thought that it had

consequences which required to be corrected, by joining other kinds of

cultivation with it. The maintenance of a due balance among the

faculties now seemed to be of primary importance. The cultivation of the

feelings became one of the cardinal points in my ethical and philosophical

creed. And my thoughts and inclinations turned in an increasing degree

towards whatever seemed capable of being instrumental to that object.

 

I now began to find meaning in the things, which I had read or heard

about the importance of poetry and art as instruments of human culture.

But it was some time longer before I began to know this by personal

experience. The only one of the imaginative arts in which I had from

childhood taken great pleasure, was music; the best effect of which (and

in this it surpasses perhaps every other art) consists in exciting

enthusiasm; in winding up to a high pitch those feelings of an elevated

kind which are already in the character, but to which this excitement

gives a glow and a fervour, which, though transitory at its utmost

height, is precious for sustaining them at other times. This effect of

music I had often experienced; but, like all my pleasurable

susceptibilities, it was suspended during the gloomy period. I had

sought relief again and again from this quarter, but found none. After

the tide had turned, and I was in process of recovery, I had been helped

forward by music, but in a much less elevated manner. I at this time

first became acquainted with Weber's _Oberon_, and the extreme pleasure

which I drew from its delicious melodies did me good by showing me a

source of pleasure to which I was as susceptible as ever. The good,

however, was much impaired by the thought that the pleasure of music

(as is quite true of such pleasure as this was, that of mere tune) fades

with familiarity, and requires either to be revived by intermittence, or

fed by continual novelty. And it is very characteristic both of my then

state, and of the general tone of my mind at this period of my life,

that I was seriously tormented by the thought of the exhaustibility of

musical combinations. The octave consists only of five tones and two

semi-tones, which can be put together in only a limited number of ways,

of which but a small proportion are beautiful: most of these, it seemed

to me, must have been already discovered, and there could not be room

for a long succession of Mozarts and Webers, to strike out, as these had

done, entirely new and surpassingly rich veins of musical beauty. This

source of anxiety may, perhaps, be thought to resemble that of the

philosophers of Laputa, who feared lest the sun should be burnt out. It

was, however, connected with the best feature in my character, and the

only good point to be found in my very unromantic and in no way

honourable distress. For though my dejection, honestly looked at, could

not be called other than egotistical, produced by the ruin, as I thought,

of my fabric of happiness, yet the destiny of mankind in general was ever

in my thoughts, and could not be separated from my own. I felt that the

flaw in my life, must be a flaw in life itself; that the question was,

whether, if the reformers of society and government could succeed in

their objects, and every person in the community were free and in a state

of physical comfort, the pleasures of life, being no longer kept up by

struggle and privation, would cease to be pleasures. And I felt that

unless I could see my way to some better hope than this for human

happiness in general, my dejection must continue; but that if I could

see such an outlet, I should then look on the world with pleasure;

content, as far as I was myself concerned, with any fair share of the

general lot.

 

This state of my thoughts and feelings made the fact