ABSTRACT
Happiness, in the literal sense, is the great pleasure of life; in essential terms, happiness is the psychological experience of the realization of the great needs, desires, and purposes of life; ultimately, happiness is the psychological experience of the perfection of survival and development. To attain happiness, an individual must follow three objective laws of happiness. (1) The higher-level the happiness is, the smaller its value for survival, the greater its value for development, and the less intense but more enduring will be its experience; the lower-level the happiness is, the greater its value for survival, the smaller its value for development, the more intense but less enduring will be its experience. This is the law of the value of happiness. (2) Desire, talent, effort, opportunity, and virtue are the five sufficient and necessary factors for the realization of happiness. Desire is the motivating factor as well as the negative correlation factor of the realization of happiness: the greater the desire, the harder it is to realize happiness. Talent, effort, opportunity, and virtue are the non-motivating factors and positive correlation factors of the realization of happiness; the greater the talent one has, the greater the effort he makes, the better opportunity he gets; the greater the virtue he has, the easier will it be for him to obtain happiness. If the desire is perfectly consistent with talent, effort, opportunity, and virtue, happiness will be perfectly realized. This is the realization law of happiness. (3) In terms of the sum of each person’s behaviors, the number of times when virtue is consistent with happiness and in positive correlation with happiness is bound to be more than the number of times when virtue deviates from happiness and is in negative correlation with happiness: virtue is bound to be generally consistent with happiness. The fact that people without virtue are happy all their life, or that people with virtue are unhappy all their life, indicates only that the deciding factors such as talent, effort, opportunity etc available to the people without virtue are good, while the same is not so good for the people with virtue; it does not mean that their virtue deviates from their happiness generally. This is the law of consistency between virtue and happiness.
