Happiness: Essays on the Meaning of Life

Part 1

HAPPINESS: BY CARL HILTY

HAPPINESS

ESSAYS ON THE MEANING OF LIFE BY CARL HILTY

PROFESSOR OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY OF BERN. TRANSLATED BY FRANCIS GREENWOOD PEABODY PROFESSOR OF CHRISTIAN MORALS IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY, CAMBRIDGE

NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO. LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., L^{TD.} 1903

COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped January, 1903. Reprinted June, October, 1903.

Norwood Press: Berwick & Smith Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

CONTENTS

ESSAY I PAGE THE ART OF WORK 3

ESSAY II HOW TO FIGHT THE BATTLES OF LIFE 25

ESSAY III GOOD HABITS 45

ESSAY IV THE CHILDREN OF THIS WORLD ARE WISER THAN THE CHILDREN OF LIGHT 61

ESSAY V THE ART OF HAVING TIME 73

ESSAY VI HAPPINESS 97

ESSAY VII THE MEANING OF LIFE 127

NOTES 153

PREFACE

Great numbers of thoughtful people are just now much perplexed to know what to make of the facts of life, and are looking about them for some reasonable interpretation of the modern world. They cannot abandon the work of the world, but they are conscious that they have not learned the art of work. They have to fight the battle of life, but they are not sure what weapons are fit for that battle. They are so beset by the cares of living that they have no time for life itself. They observe that happiness often eludes those who most eagerly pursue it; and that the meaning of life is often hidden from those whose way would seem to be most free. To this state of mind--hesitating, restless, and dissatisfied, in the world but not content to be of the world--the reflections of Professor Hilty, as published in Switzerland and Germany, have already brought much reassurance and composure; and their message seems hardly less applicable to English and American life. Here also the fever of commercialism threatens the vitality of idealism, and here also the art of life is lost in the pace of living. Religion to a great many educated people still seems, as Bishop Butler wrote in 1736, “not so much as a subject of inquiry. This seems agreed among persons of discernment”; and a book about religion might still begin with the words which Schleiermacher wrote in 1806: “It may well surprise the wise men of this age that any one should still venture to ask their attention for a subject which they have so wholly abandoned.” And yet, in regions of experience which no one fails sooner or later to enter,--regions of great joy and sorrow, experiences of serious duty and bewildering doubts of the meaning of life,--many a mind that has seemed to itself to have outgrown religion looks about for a religion that is real. Such a mind will not be satisfied with a left-over faith; it will not be tempted by an ecclesiastical omniscience. It demands sanity, reserve, wisdom, and insight, a competent witness of the things of the Spirit. This is the state of mind to which this little book is addressed. The author makes his appeal not to discussion, but to life. He reports the story of a rational experience. He walks with confidence because he knows the way. He accepts the saying of Pico della Mirandola: “Philosophia veritatem quaerit, ... religio possidet.” Let us take life, he says, just as it is and must be, and observe that the doors which lead into its inner meaning open only to the key of a reasonable faith.

It might be fancied that a writer thus described must be a recluse or mystic, remote from the spirit of the modern world and judging experiences which he does not share. Quite the contrary is the fact. The philosophy of life which he teaches is wrought out of large experience, both of academic and political affairs, and that which draws readers to the author is his capacity to maintain in the midst of important duties of public service an unusual detachment of desire and an interior quietness of mind. His short Essays are the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, told in the language of modern life; the Imitation of Christ, expressed with the academic reserve of a modern gentleman.

Some years ago I obtained permission from Professor Hilty to translate for English and American readers a few of these Essays which had found such acceptance in Switzerland and Germany; and the present volume, containing his first series, has been a pleasant occupation of some vacation days. I have found it necessary, however, to use much freedom in dealing with his idiomatic and epigrammatic style, and have perhaps exceeded the legitimate right of a translator in the attempt to reproduce the tone and temper of the author. Nothing, I think, is here which Professor Hilty has not said; but there are many shiftings of phrase and many ruptures of German sentences; and here and there a passage has been omitted which seemed important to Swiss readers only. The Essay on Epictetus, being rather a compilation and review than an illustration of Hilty’s own philosophy of life, is omitted; as are also the copious and discursive footnotes which enrich the original. I trust that these liberties and omissions may not obscure the qualities of Professor Hilty’s mind--its insight, sagacity, humor, and devoutness--which no one who has had the privilege of his personal acquaintance can recall without affection and gratitude.

FRANCIS G. PEABODY.

Cambridge, Massachusetts, October 15, 1902.

NOTE

Carl Hilty was born February 28, 1833, at Chur, Switzerland. He was a student at Göttingen, Heidelberg, London, and Paris; and an advocate at Chur, 1855-1874. In 1874 he was appointed Professor of Constitutional Law (Staats- und Völkerrecht) in the University of Bern, which position he still holds. Since 1890 he has been a member of the Swiss House of Representatives (Nationalrat); and in 1901 he was Rector of the University of Bern. Among his scientific writings may be named the following: Theorists and Idealists of Democracy (Theoristen und Idealisten der Demokratie), Bern, 1868; Ideas and Ideals of Swiss Politics (Ideen und Ideale schweizerischer Politik), Bern, 1875; Lectures on the Swiss Political System (Vorlesungen über die Politik der Eidgenossenschaft), Bern, 1879; On Capital Punishment (Ueber die Wiedereinführung der Todesstrafe), Bern, 1879; The Neutrality of Switzerland (Die Neutralität der Schweiz in ihrer heutigen Auffassung), Bern, 1889 (French translation by Mentha, 1889); The Referendum in Switzerland (Das Referendum im schweizerischen Staatsrecht), Archiv für öffentliches Recht, 1887; The Boer War (Der Burenkrieg), Bern, 1900. He has also been the editor of the Journal of Swiss Jurisprudence (Politisches Jahrbuch der schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft) since 1886.

In the midst of this scientific activity Professor Hilty has expressed his inner life through a series of little books issued at intervals during the last ten years, as follows: Happiness (Glück), First Series, 1891, Second Series, 1895, Third Series, 1898; On Reading and Speaking (Lesen und Reden), 1891; For Sleepless Nights (Für schlaflose Nächte) [Brief Readings for each Day of the Year], 1901.

I. THE ART OF WORK

I. THE ART OF WORK

Part 2

The most important of all arts is the art of work; for if one could thoroughly understand this art, all other knowledge and conduct would be infinitely simplified. Few people, however, really know how to work, and even in an age when oftener perhaps than ever before we hear of “work” and “workers” one cannot observe that the art of work makes much positive progress. On the contrary, the general inclination seems to be to work as little as possible, or to work for a short time in order to pass the remainder of one’s life in rest.

Work and rest--are they then aims in life which are positively contradictory? This must be our first inquiry; for while every one is ready with praise of work, pleasure in work does not always come with the praising. So long as the disinclination to work is so common an evil, indeed almost a disease of modern civilization, so long as every one as soon as possible endeavors to escape from the work which he thus theoretically praises, there is absolutely no hope for any bettering of our social condition. Indeed, if work and rest were contradictories, our social conditions would be wholly beyond redemption.

For every human heart longs for rest. The humblest and least intellectual know the need of it, and in its highest moods, the soul seeks relief from constant strain. Indeed, the imagination has found no better name for a future and happier existence than a state of eternal rest. If work, then, is necessary, and rest is the cessation of work, then the saying--“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread”--is indeed a bitter curse and this earth is a “vale of tears.” In every generation there are but few who can on such terms be said to lead a worthy or a human life; and even these can do so only by dooming other human beings to the curse of work and by holding these others fast bound in its slavery. It was from this point of view that the ancient authors pictured the hopeless slavery of the many as the condition under which the few might become free citizens of a civilized State; and even in the nineteenth century, a considerable part of the population of one great nation, with Christian preachers, Bible in hand, directing them, maintained on the field of battle the proposition that one race should be from generation to generation condemned to be the slave of another. Culture, it is said, grows only under conditions of wealth, and wealth only through accumulation of capital, and capital only through accumulation of the work of those who are not justly paid; that is to say, through injustice.

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