possible, its innumerable evils. If this were not the right course to
take, that saying of Voltaire's, _Happiness is but a dream and sorrow
is real_, would be as false as it is, in fact, true. A man who desires
to make up the book of his life and determine where the balance of
happiness lies, must put down in his accounts, not the pleasures which
he has enjoyed, but the evils which he has escaped. That is the
true method of eudaemonology; for all eudaemonology must begin by
recognizing that its very name is a euphemism, and that _to live
happily_ only means _to live less unhappily_--to live a tolerable
life. There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed,
but to be overcome--to be got over. There are numerous expressions
illustrating this--such as _degere vitam, vita defungi_; or
in Italian, _si scampa cosi_; or in German, _man muss suchen
durchzukommen; er wird schon durch die Welt kommen_, and so on. In old
age it is indeed a consolation to think that the work of life is over
and done with. The happiest lot is not to have experienced the keenest
delights or the greatest pleasures, but to have brought life to a
close without any very great pain, bodily or mental. To measure the
happiness of a life by its delights or pleasures, is to apply a false
standard. For pleasures are and remain something negative; that
they produce happiness is a delusion, cherished by envy to its own
punishment. Pain is felt to be something positive, and hence its
absence is the true standard of happiness. And if, over and above
freedom from pain, there is also an absence of boredom, the essential
conditions of earthly happiness are attained; for all else is
chimerical.

It follows from this that a man should never try to purchase pleasure
at the cost of pain, or even at the risk of incurring it; to do so is
to pay what is positive and real, for what is negative and illusory;