INTRODUCTION.


In these pages I shall speak of _The Wisdom of Life_ in the common
meaning of the term, as the art, namely, of ordering our lives so as
to obtain the greatest possible amount of pleasure and success; an art
the theory of which may be called _Eudaemonology_, for it teaches us
how to lead a happy existence. Such an existence might perhaps be
defined as one which, looked at from a purely objective point of
view, or, rather, after cool and mature reflection--for the question
necessarily involves subjective considerations,--would be decidedly
preferable to non-existence; implying that we should cling to it for
its own sake, and not merely from the fear of death; and further, that
we should never like it to come to an end.

Now whether human life corresponds, or could possibly correspond,
to this conception of existence, is a question to which, as is
well-known, my philosophical system returns a negative answer. On the
eudaemonistic hypothesis, however, the question must be answered in
the affirmative; and I have shown, in the second volume of my chief
work (ch. 49), that this hypothesis is based upon a fundamental
mistake. Accordingly, in elaborating the scheme of a happy existence,
I have had to make a complete surrender of the higher metaphysical and
ethical standpoint to which my own theories lead; and everything I
shall say here will to some extent rest upon a compromise; in so far,
that is, as I take the common standpoint of every day, and embrace