There is little attempt on the part of our author at any scientific analysis of human happiness like that attempted by Aristotle, and in modern times by Hutcheson or Bentham. But if we take Aristotle's classification of the three principal classes of lives as indicative of the three main ideas of human happiness current in the world, namely, the life of pleasure, the life of ambition, and the life of contemplation and know- ledge, there is no doubt under which of these three types Adam Smith would have sought the nearest approximation to earthly felicity.
The life of pleasure, or that ideal of life which seeks happiness in the gratification of sensual enjoyment, he rejects rather by im- plication than otherwise, by not treating it as worthy of discussion at all. But his rejection of the life of ambition is of more interest, both because he constantly recurs to it, and because it seems to express his own general philosophy of life and to contain the key to his own personal character.
Happiness, he says, consists in tranquillity and enjoyment. Without tranquillity there can no be enjoyment, and with tranquillity there is scarcely anything but may prove a source of pleasure. Hence the Stoics were so far right, in that they maintained that as between one permanent situation and another there was but little difference with regard to real happiness; and the great source of all human misery is our constant tendency to overrate the difference between such situations. Thus avarice overrates the difference between poverty and wealth, ambition that between public and private life, vain-glory that between obscurity and renown. "In ease of body and peace of mind all the different ranks of life are nearly on a level, and the beggar who suns himself by the side of the highway possesses that security which kings are fighting for."The story, therefore, of what the favourite of the king of Epirus said to his master admits of general application to men in nil the situations of human life. When Pyrrhus had recounted all his intended conquests, Cincas asked him, "What does your majesty propose to do then?" "I propose," said the king, "to enjoy myself with my friends, and endeavour to be good company over a bottle." And the answer was, "What hinders your majesty from doing so now?"In the highest situation we can fancy, the pleasures from which we propose to derive our real happiness are generally the same as those which, in a humbler station, we have at all times at hand and in our power. The poor man's son, "whom heaven in its anger has visited with ambition," will go through, in the first month of his pursuit of the pleasures of wealth, more fatigue of body and uneasiness of mind than he could have suffered through the whole of his life for the want of them. "Examine the records of history, recollect what has happened in the circle of your own experience, consider with attention what has been the conduct of almost all the greatly unfortunate, either in private or public life, whom you have either read of or heard of or remember, and you will find that the misfortunes of by far the greater part of them have arisen from their not knowing when they were well, when it was proper for them to sit still and be contented."Pope taught the same lesson better and more briefly in his well-known lines:--Hope springs eternal in the human breast;Man never is, but always to be, blest.
And Horace asked Mecaenas the same question long ago:--Qui fit, Mecaenas, ut nemo quam sibi sortem Seu ratio dederit, sen fors objecerit illa Contentus vivat?
"What can be added," asks Adam Smith, "to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience?" And this condition, he maintains, is the ordinary condition of the greater part of mankind. Would you live freely, fearlessly, and independently, there is one sure way: "Never enter the place from whence so few have been able to return, never come within the circle of ambition." The love of public admiration admits of no rival nor successor in the breast, and all other pleasures sicken by comparison with it. It is very true, as was said by Rochefoucault, "Love is commonly succeeded by ambition, but ambition is hardly ever succeeded by love."The following passage is perhaps the best illustration of our philosopher's view of the objects of ambition. "Power and riches," he says, "are enormous and operose machines contrived to produce a few trifling conveniences to the body, consisting of springs the most nice and delicate, which must be kept in order with the most anxious attention, and which, in spite of all our care, are ready every moment to burst into pieces, and to crush in their ruins their unfortunate possessor. `They are immense fabrics which it requires the labour of a life to raise, which threaten every moment to overwhelm the person that dwells in them, and which, while they stand, though they may save him from some smaller inconveniencies, can protect him from none of the severer inclemencies of the season. They keep off the summer shower but not the winter storm, but leave him as much, and sometimes more, exposed than before to anxiety, to fear, and to sorrow;to diseases, to danger, and to death."