Felicity

Use in the book

The account of university learning opens onto many arts and sciences, yet no tutor explicitly teaches felicity, the mistress of them all. This is not a dismissal of learning. The studies provide seeds and awaken powers; what is lacking is the governing end that would allow knowledge to be possessed as enjoyment. Felicity orders the sciences by asking what they disclose about the world’s worth and the human powers able to receive it.

That ordering requires extensive knowledge because goods exist in relations. The sun matters through its services to seas, fields, eyes, and other creatures; even gold takes its value from a network of human uses. An isolated fragment cannot disclose the whole good to which it belongs. This explains a recurrent difficulty: the reader needs knowledge to perceive felicity’s attractiveness, but must already be attracted enough to undertake the labour of learning. Natural desire helps bridge the interval. The intensity of an initially obscure longing can move inquiry before understanding is complete.

Traherne then distinguishes two indispensable perfections: the objects enjoyed and the manner of enjoying them. He gives special emphasis to the latter, since even perfect gifts can be received inadequately. The manner itself becomes another object of joy. One can delight not only in creation but in the wisdom, liberty, and love through which it is enjoyed. Felicity consequently cannot be reduced to the possession of desirable circumstances.

Its practical character is made explicit through the account of powers and objects. Faculties become actual in being exercised: knowing, living, and loving extend the person to what lies beyond the self. Traherne recognises this in the definition of felicity that he attributes to Aristotle, but develops it through a life embracing all objects in knowledge and love. Felicity is therefore an activity of a fully awakened creature, not inert security or a fortunate sensation. The perfection language describes the scope of the good being sought; the book’s education trains the reader toward it through increasingly faithful acts of enjoyment.

Places to read

1. III.37Felicity should govern the sciences, whose knowledge otherwise remains alien to the student.
2. III.55The good of each object must be understood through its place and relations.
3. III.56Desire for unknown felicity supplies an initial impetus where understanding is incomplete.
4. III.57Perfect objects and a perfect manner of enjoyment are distinguished.
5. III.68Knowing, loving, and the exercise of virtue bring the soul’s powers into act.
6. II.100The criticism of negative definitions culminates in objects, powers and rules of enjoyment.

In this edition

Do not impose a rigid distinction between “felicity” and “happiness” that the text does not maintain. Nor should “perfect” be weakened into merely pleasant: the demand for completeness gives the argument its force, even when the reader’s present exercise falls short.

Against a merely negative felicity

At II.100 Traherne objects to defining happiness chiefly by what it excludes. A prohibition of riches, honours or pleasures leaves the desirous person asking what is positively to be enjoyed. His answer is not to discard virtue, contentment or the government of passion. These require their grounds and objects: true riches must be distinguished from false ones, and clear pleasures from muddy ones. Passions are rightly governed when freed from impediments and directed toward their proper good. Contentment arises from perceiving treasures fully, rather than from making the soul barren of anything to receive. The polemic belongs to Traherne’s account of these philosophers; it is not a neutral summary of every ancient account of happiness.