Since, therefore, man in every thing that he does proposes pleasure to himself, it follows that in pleasure consists his happiness. But though he always proposes it, he very often falls short of it; for pleasure is not in his own power, since, if it were, it would follow from thence that happiness were in his power. The want of which has been always the complaint of men both sacred and secular, in all ages, in all countries, and in all conditions. "Man that is born of a woman is but of few days, and full of trouble" says Job (4, i). Of the same nature are the two complaints of Horace, which are so fine and so poetical and so becoming of the best antiquity.
Scandit aeratas vitiosa naves
Cura; nec turmas equitum relinquit,
Ocior cervis et agente nimbos
(Ocior Euro. Hor., Ode 16, Lib. 2.)
And that other, in the first ode of the third book.
Timor et Minae
Scandunt eodem quo dominus: neque
Decedit aerata triremi et
Post equitem sedel atra Cura.
In short, they who have made the most reflections on it have been the most satisfied of it; and above all, philosophers who, by the voluminous instructions, by the laborious directions, which they have left to posterity, have declared themselves sensible that to be happy is a very difficult thing.
And the reason why they, of all men, have always found it so difficult is because they always propounded to owe their happiness to reason, though one would think that experience might have convinced them of the folly of such a design, because they had seen that the most thinking and the most reasonable had always most complained.
For reason may often afflict us and make us miserable by setting our impotence or our guilt before us; but that which it generally does is the maintaining us in a languishing state of indifference, which, perhaps, is more removed from pleasure than it is from affliction, and which may be said to be the ordinary state of men.
It is plain then that reason, by maintaining us in that state, is an impediment to our pleasure which is our happiness: for to be pleased a man must come out of his ordinary state; now nothing in this life can bring him out of it but passion alone, which reason pretends to combat.
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