The key ideas

The Pleasures of Life

John Lubbock, 1887

Why does one village ring its church bells over the ending of a novel, while someone else sits bored in front of a full bookshelf? John Lubbock, a 19th-century scientist and banker, has an answer: we are not short of pleasures, we are short of the skill to enjoy them. His essays on books, friends, time, nature and troubles show how to take hold of what is already within reach.

Who it is for

For anyone whose ordinary days feel short on wonder, and who wants to find fresh delight in books, art and nature.

It is wonderful how little most of us see of the beautiful world we live in.

Happiness, learned by a man prone to gloom

At school and university prize days, John Lubbock often had to hand out awards and send young people off with a few words. He could have talked about careers and hard work. Instead he chose another subject: the pleasures and blessings we already have. The reason was personal. In his preface Lubbock admits that as a young man he was prone to low spirits.

Those speeches grew into The Pleasures of Life, a book in two parts. Each chapter is an essay, a free reflection built on examples. Almost every one is a mosaic of quotations: Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Ruskin, poets and scientists. Critics complained that there were too many quotations and too little of the author himself. Lubbock took this as a compliment. He had never tried to be original, he said. He simply wanted to share the thoughts that had comforted him.

His question is simple. Why does the world offer so much of interest, while people are so often bored and miserable? Lubbock recalls a line from Ruskin: the wonder is not how much people suffer, but how much they lose. You can own a library and never read. You can live by the sea and see nothing in it but the weather.

Ahead are a blacksmith who set the church bells ringing, prisoners saved by poetry, and a sea that became many different seas in a single day. There are also Lubbock's rules about friends, about time, and about troubles that mostly do not exist. You are already giving these thoughts your time, and that, he says, is exactly where to begin.

The duty of happiness: a cheerful friend is like a sunny day

Teachers, Lubbock writes, say a great deal about the happiness of doing your duty. He wants them to speak of the other side too, and so he coins a phrase: the duty of happiness. The reason is simple. Being happy yourself is one of the surest ways to add to the happiness of others. Everyone knows that a cheerful friend is like a sunny day, shedding light on everyone around. And almost anyone, the author adds, can make their own world into a palace or a prison.

Cheerfulness often takes effort. Gloom has its own secret pleasure: seeing yourself as a victim of fate and chewing over grievances, especially half-imagined ones. So Lubbock advises you to manage yourself much as you would manage someone else. Staying cheerful is an art too, and it can be learned.

Here the author is tougher than most people would be today. He writes that whether our life is happy depends largely on us, and that no one has ever been made utterly wretched except by himself. He sets the limit himself. Saint Bernard claimed that nothing can harm us but ourselves. Few can go that far, Lubbock admits: pain, illness, loss and coldness from the people we love wound us for real.

But most of our troubles, in Lubbock's view, are of another kind. Life is darkened not by great sorrows but by the small daily deaths, as someone aptly called them: silly quarrels and misunderstandings. People are often said to have broken down from overwork, he notes. Nine times out of ten, he believes, what really wore them out was worry.

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About the author

John Lubbock was a British naturalist, banker and public figure. In The Pleasures of Life, published in two parts in 1887 and 1889, he gathered the reflections and passages from literature that had kept him going.

All books by this author: John Lubbock

Terms from the book

  • Goethe
  • Emerson
  • Darwin
  • Hudson
  • Socrates
  • Pyrrhus
  • Huxley
  • Richardson
  • Ruskin
  • Wordsworth
  • Pascal
  • Euripides
  • Essay
  • Epictetus
  • Marcus Aurelius
  • Seneca
  • Helmholtz
  • Duty of happiness: Lubbock's phrase: trying to be cheerful and happy, because that is the best thing you can do for the happiness of those around you. A moral stance of the author, not a scientific term.
  • Bernard: Bernard of Clairvaux, a medieval French theologian and monk. Lubbock thinks his view that nothing can harm us but ourselves goes too far.
  • Cineas: A Greek orator and adviser to King Pyrrhus, known from a story told by Plutarch.
  • Herschel: John Herschel, a British astronomer of the 19th century. Lubbock credits him with the story of a village reading of Pamela.
  • Anvil: A heavy iron block on which a blacksmith shapes metal with blows of a hammer.
  • Derby: Lord Derby, a British statesman of the 19th century. Lubbock quotes his words on exercise and illness.
  • Brougham: Lord Henry Brougham, a British politician of the 19th century and a champion of education for ordinary people.
  • Plutarch: A Greek writer and historian of the 1st and 2nd centuries, author of lives of famous Greeks and Romans.
  • Morlot: Adolphe Morlot, a Swiss archaeologist of the 19th century who studied ancient lake dwellings built on stilts.
  • Helps: Arthur Helps, an English writer and historian of the 19th century.
  • Gosse: Philip Henry Gosse, a British naturalist and co-author of the work on rotifers.
  • Rotifers: Tiny water animals. In many of them the beating of the fine hairs around the mouth looks like a turning wheel.
  • Natural history: The old name for the study of living nature: observing animals, plants and minerals.
  • Guido: Guido Reni, an Italian painter of the 17th century.
  • Turner: William Turner, an English landscape painter of the 19th century.
  • Reynolds: Joshua Reynolds, an English painter of the 18th century who also wrote discourses on art.
  • Gainsborough: Thomas Gainsborough, an English painter of the 18th century, known for his portraits and landscapes.
  • Landscape: A view of the countryside, or a painting of one.
  • Syracuse: A Greek city on Sicily. In 413 BC an Athenian army was destroyed outside its walls.
  • Farinelli: A famous Italian singer of the 18th century.
  • Lyme Regis: A seaside town in the south of England where Lubbock spent a holiday.
  • Hamlet: The Danish prince who is the hero of Shakespeare's tragedy of the same name.
  • Milton: John Milton, an English poet of the 17th century, author of Paradise Lost.
  • Davy: Humphry Davy, an English chemist of the early 19th century who studied the effects of laughing gas.
  • Laughing gas: Nitrous oxide, a gas that dulls pain and makes people mildly giddy. It was later used to relieve pain during surgery.

All terms

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