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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAP. VI. HUMAN HAPPINESS. The word happy is a relative term; that is, when we call a man happy, we mean that he is happier than some others with whom we compare him; than the generality of others; or than he himself was in some other situation: thus, speaking of one who has just compassed the object of a long pursuit, ? Now, we say, he is happy; and in a like comparative sense, compared, that is, with the general lot of mankind, we call a man happy who possesses health and competency. In strictness, any condition may be denominated happy, in which the amount or aggregate of pleasure exceeds that of pain; and the degree of happiness depends upon the quantity of this excess. And the greatest quantity of it ordinarily attainable in human life, is, what we mean by happiness, when we inquire or pronounce what human happiness consists in. If any positive signification, distinct from what we mean by pleasure, can be affixed to the term happiness, I should take it to denote a certain state of the nervous system in that part of the human frame in which we feel joy and grief, passions and affections. Whether this part be the heart, which the turn of most languages would lead us to believe, or the diaphragm, as Buffon, or the upper orifice of the stomach, as Van Helmont, thought; or rather be a kind of fine net-work, lining the whole region of the prascordia, as others have imagined; it is possible, not only that each painful sensation may violently shake and disturb the fibres at the time, but that a series of such may at length so derange the very texture of the system, as to produce a perpetual irritation, which will show itself by fretfulness, impatience, and restlessness. It is possible, also, on the other hand, that a succession of pleasureable sensations m...
| ISBN-13 | 9780217402101 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 0217402100 |
| Weight | 1.05 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.00 x 6.00 x 0.72 In |
| List Price | $22.63 |
| Format | Paperback |
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| Pages | 322 pages |
| Publisher | |
| Published On | 2009-08-01 |
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