A Nation In Search of Happiness

Any American who has gone past the third grade knows the phrase, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." He may ascribe it variously to the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, or the Emancipation Proclamation, but he knows vaguely that it is a significant phrase. Professor Jones agrees that the single concept of "the pursuit or happiness" is a very important one in American intellectual history, and he has written this book to explain its origin and significance. The result is a fascinating amalgam of constitutional law, political theory, literary analysis, and popular psychology, embracing topics as obscure as the citizen's constitutional right to smoke opium.

The pursuit of happiness as an inalienable right of mankind is an idea almost unrecognized in the development of other nations, but powerful in all aspects of American life. Happiness as a right first appeared in the pre-revolutionary Virginia Resolves, gained its most popular form in the Declaration of Independence, was cut out of the Constitution, but has bobbed up ever since as something to which all American felt they were entitled, but which none were able to define in the same terms.

The actual job of definition was left to the courts of the nation, which offered up assorted ideas as to what happiness was and how the government should best promote it. An early Massachusetts judge, defending the state's established church, argued that happiness could be achieved only by living up to the precepts of religion, specifically Congregationalism, and thus the state best served the right to happiness when it supported that church. An Indiana magistrate, ruling against a state prohibition bill, argued that since our government was "founded on a confidence in man's capacity to direct his own conduct," the duty of the government in promoting happiness was to put as few restrictions on his conduct as possible.

But by far the most prevalent and influential interpretation of the happiness phrase was that fostered by the famous post-Civil War Slaughterhouse cases; happiness hinged on, or was equal to, the right to employ and be employed as one pleased. For a nation in the awkward stage of its industrial adolescence, this was a fortuitous interpretation indeed, but it did little toward finding the ultimate definition.

If the courts could find no satisfactory answer, neither could the moral and political thinkers. Jones is at his best in working away at the ideas of Jefferson and the Adams on happiness, and how they affected the development of the American ethic.

Unfortunately, it is in his analysis of contemporary American attitudes about happiness that Professor Jones is weakest. He fails not so much from lack of insight as from lack of space--only thirty pages are devoted to present-day "techniques of happiness," as he calls them.

For example, a discussion of the conflict between group happiness and individual freedom brought on by the New Deal would have been a meaty subject for discussion. Another valuable vein to work would have been changes in popular definitions of happiness, something the author only hints at when he notes that the present concept "completely reverses the traditional American belief that there is discomfort in idleness, solid satisfaction in industry." And many would dispute this application of the Calvinist ethic of work as a good per so to the whole nation. The tradition of leisure has been especially strong in the South, was always present on the back-washes of the frontier, and is strongly ingrained in the Spanish Southwest.

In one of his many footnotes Professor Jones points out that not until he had finished the series of lectures upon which this book is based did he encounter "The Lonely Crowd" by David Riesman '31. Riesman's book is a lengthy study of contemporary American social patterns, particularly the change in recent years from a society centered around the individual to one based upon the group. Along with this change naturally came changes in social attitudes; what means happiness for the group often means a sacrifice for its members. By not tightening down the bolts of this theory but only mentioning it in passing, Professor Jones has lost the opportunity of bringing his work to a firm conclusion. Nevertheless, if it is slight in contemporary analysis, "The Pursuit of Happiness" is first-rate intellectual history. A lively synthesis of many fields, packed with amusing bits of judicial curiosa, it shows with precision the American, his ideas about happiness, and the ways he has tried to attain it.