Then appears that idea common to the great leaders of thought in that age, that man’s true purpose in the world is the pursuit of happiness. To this pursuit, they said, every human being has a complete right. It was part of liberty; a necessary consequence of liberty. This principle of the right to pursue happiness, which is merely another way of stating the right of self-development, has played as great a part in subsequent history as equality. It is one of the foundation principles of the Declaration of Independence. It is given there as the ground-work of the right of revolution, the right of a people to throw off or destroy a power which interferes with this great pursuit, “and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its power in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” It has been interpreted in all sorts of ways—as the right to improve your condition, to develop your talents, to grow rich, or to rise into the class of society above you. It is now in its broadest meaning so axiomatic in this country that Americans can hardly realize that it was ever disputed. But it was, and still is, disputed in England and on the continent. Even so liberal an Englishman as Kingsley resented with indignation the charge that he favored the aspiration of the lower classes to change their condition. Once a cobbler, remain a cobbler, and be content to be a good cobbler. In other words, the righteousness which he so loudly professed was intended to exalt certain fortunate individuals, and not to advance society. This desire and pursuit of happiness being part of nature, or part of the system of Providence, and as essential to every man and as inseparable from him as his reason, it should be freely allowed him, and not repressed. This, Burlamaqui declares, is a great principle, “the key of the human system,” opening to vast consequences for the world. The consequences have certainly been vaster than he dreamed of. Millions of people now live their daily life in the sunshine of this doctrine. Millions have fled to us from Europe to seek its protection. Not only the whole American system of laws, but whole philosophies and codes of conduct have grown up under it. The abolitionists appealed to it, and freed six millions of slaves. The transcendental philosophy of New England, that extreme and beautiful attempt to develop conscience, nobility, and character from within; that call of the great writers like Lowell to every humble individual to stand by his own personality, fear it not, advance it by its own lines; even our education, the elective system of our colleges—all these things have followed under that “pursuit of happiness,” which the patriot colonists seized upon so gladly in 1765 and enshrined in their Declaration of Independence in 1776.