That Men are not to Judge of our Happiness till after Death

The ancient Solon, being asked by Croesus — that king dazzled by his own riches and power — whether he knew any man whom he counted happy, answered that he did not, and that we should not be able to judge of any man’s happiness till he was dead. The meaning is that we cannot call any man happy who is still exposed to the vicissitudes of life; that the last act and the catastrophe alone must determine which of all the masks is the true one.

And indeed it happens every day that a man, seemingly well seated in fortune, is overturned in old age; that the son becomes wretched, the empire dissolves, the honour is blotted. All these things that seemed to compose happiness are but loans, and the creditors can recall them at pleasure. What is possessed under condition cannot be called possession; what is enjoyed only provisionally cannot be called enjoyment.

“Call no man happy before his end. He is at best but fortunate.”

This was the teaching not of one philosopher only but of the general voice of experience across the centuries. It is a hard sentence — we wish to count ourselves blest while the blessings are warm in our hands — but honesty compels us to admit that the computation must be deferred. Assurance, completeness, the rounding of a life: these belong only to what is finished.

I do not take this as counsel for melancholy. It is rather a reminder to hold lightly what we hold, to press neither too hard on our joys nor too bitterly on our sorrows, since neither is yet the final word. That the balance is not struck until the end ought to make us more patient, not more anxious; more generous with ourselves and others, knowing that the account remains open.