To obtain them, he will be
willing to moderate his desires and harbor his resources, all the more
because he is not, like others, restricted to the external world for
his pleasures. So he will not be misled by expectations of office, or
money, or the favor and applause of his fellowmen, into surrendering
himself in order to conform to low desires and vulgar tastes; nay, in
such a case he will follow the advice that Horace gives in his epistle
to Maecenas.[3]
[Footnote 1: _Vie de Descartes_, par Baillet. Liv. vii., ch. 10.]
[Footnote 2: vii. 12.]
[Footnote 3: Lib. 1., ep. 7.]
_Nec somnum plebis laudo, satur altilium, nec
Otia divitiis Arabum liberrima muto_.
It is a great piece of folly to sacrifice the inner for the outer man,
to give the whole or the greater part of one's quiet, leisure and
independence for splendor, rank, pomp, titles and honor. This is what
Goethe did. My good luck drew me quite in the other direction.
The truth which I am insisting upon here, the truth, namely, that the
chief source of human happiness is internal, is confirmed by that most
accurate observation of Aristotle in the _Nichomachean Ethics_[1] that
every pleasure presupposes some sort of activity, the application of
some sort of power, without which it cannot exist. The doctrine of
Aristotle's, that a man's happiness consists in the free exercise
of his highest faculties, is also enunciated by Stobaeus in his
exposition of the Peripatetic philosophy[2]: _happiness_, he says,
_means vigorous and successful activity in all your undertakings_; and
he explains that by _vigor [Greek: aretae]_ he means _mastery_ in any
thing, whatever it be.
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