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“when one writes in haste, one repents at leisure.”

Now, there’s an expression I’ve not heard in a long time . . . a long time indeed.

“I earlier complained that the “happiness” language was too “squishy” because every person would define “happiness” in a different way. Then I realized, we don’t need to concern ourselves with any multiplicity of definitions. For our present purposes it is sufficient to ask: What does Jefferson mean by this word?”

Actually, we ought properly ask what did Jefferson and that whole generation of founding fathers mean by the word.

As you read the writings of the Founding Fathers, and the various other documents recording their thoughts and ideas, you will come to wonder, more and more, at how often you encounter the word ‘happy’ or ‘happiness’ (and, likewise the word ‘affection’ or ‘affections’). These terms did not merely reflect a fad, or the fashion of the day, but, aside from their ordinary and daily meaning, also conveyed meaning as a specific philosophical consequence of a society existing in harmony with Natural Law. Such a society was said to promote the happiness and to bind the affections of its individual constituents, by permitting each of them to enjoy fully the benefits of living in a state of nature, while spreading evenly throughout the whole of society the burden of combating the negatives of living in a state of nature. All that is required of anyone is that they have respect (affection) for every member of the society.

Not only does ‘happiness’ belong in that sentence, it is in full partnership with its fellows. The meaning of none can be fully understood but in the context of all.

“It seems Jefferson was forthcoming with his answer in a letter to James Monroe dated 1782"

A well-known letter, full of matters of great import (but then, with Jefferson, there were so many of those). So then, as I reported in an earlier post, a society living in harmony with Natural Law, is a happy society, that would, . . . “in the first instance, let us alone in our beliefs, and leave us to provide for our own wants and needs according to the best of our own abilities, and, in the second instance, would protect us from the aggressions of . . . Prince and Commoner alike”. It would be a society which, as quoted from the first paragraph of Tom Paine’s Common Sense, “promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections . . .”

It was common with Jefferson and with many of his contemporaries, that when using a word or a term, they oft functioned on several levels at once, and with each level quite likely being fully integrated with some or all of the others. It takes a bit of study to appreciate this fact.