If you ask a man what matters most to him in the world, his natural answer will be: my life, my health, my well-being. But put the same question to a whole society of men gathered together, and the answer suddenly changes: each then places his own good above that of others, while the society as a whole proclaims that the good of all comes before the good of the individual. Here already is a first contradiction, warning us that the question of happiness is darker than it appears.

Happiness, indeed, cannot be defined in a positive manner: it belongs to the order of the negative. Every pleasure is nothing other than the cessation of a pain; every joy is but the release of a need. It is suffering, and suffering alone, that has a positive reality in life; pleasure is only its disappearance. When our desires are satisfied, the sensation that accompanied them soon ceases, and we fall back into a relative calm, which is nothing other than the very ground of our existence. That ground is latent suffering, perpetual need, which keeps us in breath and drives us from desire to desire. Hence this profound truth: life swings ceaselessly, like a pendulum, between pain and boredom. When poverty and necessity torment us, pain reigns; when our needs are satisfied, we are delivered to boredom, which is no less unbearable. Boredom, in fact, is merely the sensation of the emptiness of existence: being presents itself to us as it is, and pleasure consists solely in the illusion of desire, so that this emptiness becomes visible as soon as the need subsides.

From this negative character of happiness follows a consequence of the first importance for the wisdom of life. The natural and primitive aim of all effort is defense against pain, against misfortune, not the pursuit of pleasure and happiness. Hence it is a mark of wisdom to direct one's efforts, not toward happiness, but toward warding off the greatest unhappiness; not to go forth to meet pleasure, but to flee misery. Whoever grasps this principle will build no more castles in Spain; he will no longer try to swell the sum of his joys; he will begin by asking himself how many misfortunes and pains he can keep off his road. And even if he should not succeed in removing them all, he would not have to reproach himself with complete failure, and would at least have spared himself many an affliction.

It has often been said that human life resembles a feast in which all the guests stand upon an unsteady platform: each tries to keep his balance there, and from one moment to the next he slips and falls. So too man, abandoned to want and need, strives to hold himself above the abyss of pain; but scarcely has he succeeded when pain assails him in another form, and boredom threatens him from above as misery threatens him from below.

Therefore a wise man does not seek the summit of some exceptional joy: he knows that every violent joy is purchased by a proportionate suffering, for every heightening of pleasure is the expression of a greater need, and thus of a greater pain. The joy of joys, it was said already among the ancients, is never pure. What one should aim at is a moderate and secure state, in which pain is reduced to a minimum and boredom is kept at bay by an occupation that answers our strength, neither above nor below it. Poverty of mind and poverty of possessions produce boredom; the excess of powers and desires produces pain. Whoever, endowed with strength above the common, finds himself nonetheless in a narrow sphere will suffer doubly: his superabundant energies, having no employment, will turn against him and engender that sombre restlessness seen in so many gifted men.

Hence a simple criterion for judging the wisdom of an existence: it is the degree of freedom from pain, not the degree of fullness of pleasure. The happiest life is not the one that counts the most joys; it is the one that counts the fewest positive sufferings. The word happiness, applied to a life, has meaning only in this negative sense: to live without great pain — that is already the highest degree of well-being that nature grants us. Whoever demands more does not know human nature; whoever has obtained this little without being aware of it is a happy man without knowing it; whoever, having obtained it, recognizes it and holds to it, is a wise man. The wisdom of life thus begins where the illusion ends that pleasure is a positive good, a lasting possession: it begins when one understands that the best life can grant is an existence free of pain, tranquil and bearable, to which one gives measure by measuring it.