happiness,--the fact that pleasure is only the negation of pain, and
that pain is the positive element in life. Though I have given a
detailed proof of this proposition in my chief work,[1] I may supply
one more illustration of it here, drawn from a circumstance of daily
occurrence. Suppose that, with the exception of some sore or painful
spot, we are physically in a sound and healthy condition: the sore of
this one spot, will completely absorb our attention, causing us to
lose the sense of general well-being, and destroying all our comfort
in life. In the same way, when all our affairs but one turn out as
we wish, the single instance in which our aims are frustrated is a
constant trouble to us, even though it be something quite trivial. We
think a great deal about it, and very little about those other and
more important matters in which we have been successful. In both these
cases what has met with resistance is _the will_; in the one case, as
it is objectified in the organism, in the other, as it presents
itself in the struggle of life; and in both, it is plain that the
satisfaction of the will consists in nothing else than that it meets
with no resistance. It is, therefore, a satisfaction which is not
directly felt; at most, we can become conscious of it only when we
reflect upon our condition. But that which checks or arrests the will
is something positive; it proclaims its own presence. All pleasure
consists in merely removing this check--in other words, in freeing us
from its action; and hence pleasure is a state which can never last
very long.

[Footnote 1: _Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_. Vol. I., p. 58.]

This is the true basis of the above excellent rule quoted from
Aristotle, which bids us direct our aim, not toward securing what is
pleasurable and agreeable in life, but toward avoiding, as far as