that their faculties are not to be
trusted, it will no doubt be difficult or impossible to refute them; but
a scepticism of this kind has no real influence on either conduct or
feeling.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] _Aids to Reflection_, p. 68.

CHAPTER II

Men continually forget that Happiness is a condition of Mind and not a
disposition of circumstances, and one of the most common of errors is
that of confusing happiness with the means of happiness, sacrificing the
first for the attainment of the second. It is the error of the miser,
who begins by seeking money for the enjoyment it procures and ends by
making the mere acquisition of money his sole object, pursuing it to the
sacrifice of all rational ends and pleasures. Circumstances and
Character both contribute to Happiness, but the proportionate attention
paid to one or other of these great departments not only varies largely
with different individuals, but also with different nations and in
different ages. Thus Religion acts mainly in the formation of
dispositions, and it is especially in this field that its bearing on
human happiness should be judged. It influences, it is true, vastly and
variously the external circumstances of life, but its chief power of
comforting and supporting lies in its direct and immediate action upon
the human soul. The same thing is true of some systems of philosophy of
which Stoicism is the most conspicuous. The paradox of the Stoic that
good and evil are so entirely from within that to a wise man all
external circumstances are indifferent, represents this view of life in
its extreme form. Its more moderate form can hardly be better expressed
than in the saying of Dugald Stewart that 'the great secret of
happiness is to study to accommodate our own minds to things external
rather than to accommodate things external to ourselves.'[2] It is
eminently the characteristic of Eastern nations to place their ideals
mainly in states of mind or feeling rather than in changes of
circumstances, and in such nations men are much less desirous than in
European countries of altering the permanent conditions of their lives.

On the other hand, the tendency of those philosophies which treat
man--his opinions and his character--essentially as the result of
circumstances, and which aggrandise the influence of the external world
upon mankind, is in the opposite direction. All the sensational
philosophies from Bacon and Locke to our own day tend to concentra