who, failing to savour the struggle itself, anticipate the end of the
struggle as the beginning of joy and happiness--these people are simply
missing life; they are longing to exchange life for death. The hemlock
would save them a lot of weary waiting.

* * * * *

We shall now perceive, I think, what is wrong with the assumptions of
the average successful man as set forth in the previous chapter. In
postulating that happiness is what one is not, he has got hold of a
mischievous conception of happiness. Let him examine his conception of
happiness, and he will find that it consists in the enjoyment of love
and luxury, and in the freedom from enforced effort. He generally wants
all three ingredients. Now passionate love does not mean happiness; it
means excitement, apprehension and continually renewed desire. And
affectionate love, from which the passion has faded, means something
less than happiness, for, mingled with its gentle tranquility is a
disturbing regret for the more fiery past. Luxury, according to the
universal experience of those who have had it, has no connection
whatever with happiness. And as for freedom from enforced effort, it
means simply death.

Happiness as it is dreamed of cannot possibly exist save for brief
periods of self-deception which are followed by terrible periods of
reaction. Real, practicable happiness is due primarily not to any kind
of environment, but to an inward state of mind. Real happiness consists
first in acceptance of the fact that discontent is a condition of life,
and, second, in an honest endeavour to adjust conduct to an ideal. Real
happiness is not an affair of the future; it is an affair of the
present. Such as it is, if it cannot be obtained now, it can never be