One might well fancy that these visions of wishes fulfilled were the
work of some evil spirit, conjured up in order to entice us away from
that painless state which forms our highest happiness.

A careless youth may think that the world is meant to be enjoyed, as
though it were the abode of some real or positive happiness, which
only those fail to attain who are not clever enough to overcome the
difficulties that lie in the way. This false notion takes a stronger
hold on him when he comes to read poetry and romance, and to be
deceived by outward show--the hypocrisy that characterizes the
world from beginning to end; on which I shall have something to say
presently. The result is that his life is the more or less deliberate
pursuit of positive happiness; and happiness he takes to be equivalent
to a series of definite pleasures. In seeking for these pleasures he
encounters danger--a fact which should not be forgotten. He hunts for
game that does not exist; and so he ends by suffering some very
real and positive misfortune--pain, distress, sickness, loss, care,
poverty, shame, and all the thousand ills of life. Too late he
discovers the trick that has been played upon him.

But if the rule I have mentioned is observed, and a plan of life is
adopted which proceeds by avoiding pain--in other words, by taking
measures of precaution against want, sickness, and distress in all its
forms, the aim is a real one, and something may be achieved which will
be great in proportion as the plan is not disturbed by striving after
the chimera of positive happiness. This agrees with the opinion
expressed by Goethe in the _Elective Affinities_, and there put into
the mouth of Mittler--the man who is always trying to make other
people happy: _To desire to get rid of an evil is a definite object,
but to desire a better fortune than one has is blind folly_. The same