This essay was written in 1953.
—The Merchant of Venice
Happiness is the sense of a right relation between oneself and the world of all time. To be alive is to have some of this sense; for a person is never wholly disconnected from, or in antagonism to, the world he’s in. Yet we also feel a separation from other things, an enmity to them, a lack of interest in them; and it is this that fights the always present feeling that somehow the world and ourselves are a true, pleasing, indissoluble pair. This feeling of separation has to be somewhat for us to see ourselves as individuals; to be an individual may easily mean againstness to other things. The feeling of oneness with the world, and the feeling we have as individuals, are in us all the time; and how they are in us makes what happiness we have.
The individual is and is related. When isness and relation are one in a person, art is taking place, for art is beauty caused by mind. Likewise, where what a person is, and what he’s related to, are together, that person is happy. If a person could look at the past, all that he sees now, and all that may be, and feel, “I and all that go together,” he would be happy. All happiness has this art-situation; the more it has of the art-situation, the greater the happiness is.
When what an individual is meets rightly, mingles rightly with, himself as relation, two things happen at once. The first is, the individual feels he has met something different, new, surprising. There is the pleasure of adventure, excitement, change. The second is, the individual feels two things in him are at last one, are in a peaceful togetherness. The first of these happenings is the pleasure of stability or repose; the second is the pleasure of stir or movement.
If a happy person contemplates the universe, he is able to say: how pleasingly quieting it is; how serenely satisfying; how gently magnificent it is. He is also able to say: how deeply moving, how profoundly stirring, how tremendously exciting. The whole universe must give him this feeling, or these feelings; for if only a part of the universe is thought of, the happiness is uncertain; and that much something else. Happiness is the presence of repose and excitement at once, arising from reality adequately, courageously seen. All happiness other than this is lesser, incomplete, doubtful.
Pleasure is a sample or instance of happiness. The seen constancy of pleasure is the essence of happiness. So, if an object is seen with pleasure, that occurs which, seen as continuous, would make for happiness. Happiness to pleasure is as a series to an instant in a series.
Every true impulse to the making of beauty is an instance of happiness. When a man is moved to make something beautiful, there are in his mind both stability and excitement. This arises, as I have said, from the fact that he himself as one being is at one with himself as related to something else. If a man is truly disposed to paint a calf among tall waving grass, the sight of the calf and the grass has made for a oneness of the man as himself and the man as having to do with something else. So the man, called William Lonn, is in a state of repose and excitement about the calf and the grass. He sees a possibility through animal and green, growing things to see the whole world as great serenity and great interest. His artistic impulsion is also an instance of happiness.
If one is happy, there must be in his life repose and stir. It is clear that repose by itself makes for boredom; and stir by itself makes for restlessness, uncertainty, fidgetiness. In the same way that happiness cannot be without repose and stir, so art cannot be.
A baby getting along well is one who is in motion enough and who is reposeful enough. Life itself goes on art principles. But as one goes on in life, it is necessary to affirm what in life has truly pleased us. What has made us happy in life is the art in it. The pleasing motion of a muscle is motion and repose. Eating can make for surprise and repose. Walking can make for difference and sameness, the new and the reposeful. Running can be excitement and serenity. So can talking. The simplest things in life have the things that art has. We do not see, however, that what has pleased us is a oneness of ourselves and outside reality. As we fail to see this, we work against our happiness. We are false to the art in happiness. Artists, too, can be false.
Life is either an affirmation that the self is what it is and relation, or it is a denial of this, a failure to see it. We are all somewhat aware that we have to do with things, but we don’t see that our very selves are a having-to-do-with. Art makes us feel this, but even art we can lessen.
The self where it begins is art and happiness. It is art because it is a possibility in action of a thing and the relation of that thing to every other reality. It is happiness because this selfness and relation, accepted, is what pleases us. Life, as life, is an acceptance of the oneness of individuality and relation. However, the self always has the possibility, which constitutes an aspect of its freedom, to deny this oneness, to weaken it, to muffle it, by seeing its happiness as coming only from what it is in a narrow way. When this happens, these three things occur: bad ethics begins, art is neglected, reality is gone away from. What ensues, also, is that a spurious kind of happiness is gone for: the happiness that seems to come because the self denies relation and has an autonomy of a kind; because the self can see other things as unimportant; and because the self can annul or destroy all that different from it. The meaning of sin is, then, the denial of art in the self; the denial of the happiness that is the making one of individual and relation.
Art is never out of the life of a person, but it is the easiest thing to deny or insult. We do insult ourselves by not seeing that we are point and line, definition and relation, single and multitudinous. The possibility we all have, the most tempting possibility we have of denying ourselves as art, is what used to be called “original sin”; and can still be called that.
Art can never be wholly appreciated unless we see it like a situation in ourselves. Artists used to identify themselves with “their art”; what is necessary now is to identify art with ourselves.
Our selves, in their art and happiness, are as various as the arts. We should like to affirm in ourselves the space and massiveness of architecture. To be transparent and heavy—or existing—at once, goes for happiness. And when a beautiful building changes while it maintains its constancy of design, it tells us that we can be happy through constancy in change or flexibility. The color and line in a painting tell us that if there are energy and form in us, we can be pleased. The quietness in strength, the grace in weightiness of sculpture, describe a self in felicity. The impetuosity and restraint, the sweetness and assertiveness of a good line of poetry, say to us that the self is what it wants to be when it is energetic and humble, gentle and strong. The motion in sameness, the surprise and expectancy of the dance, tell us that we are different and continuous, new and familiar. The inevitable and free, the wideness and delicacy in music, tell us that we can be happy seeing ourselves as caused by the whole world, and free because the world is in us; and we can be happy while having scope and fingertips, or exquisiteness, too.
The museums of the world are guides to our happiness. The concerts of the world are warnings about our happiness. The poems of the world are indispensable pointings to felicity. Man will not be happy until he sees what he is, as such, where he begins. Then he will see, I think, that he is utterly neat particularity with tremendously rich relation. He can meddle with this, or deny this, if he is so inclined. Millions of men have, and are doing it. If, however, he sees this clearly and boldly and generously and prudently, he will see himself as essentially art and happiness. Art is happiness, and the soul or self of man is both. It is for him to see this, and to go on from there.