Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords. — Samuel Johnson
Hope as a Distinct Form of Joy
Samuel Johnson’s claim begins by redefining happiness: not as a single peak experience, but as a family of related states. In that view, hope is not merely a tool for reaching happiness later; it is already a kind of happiness now, because it sweetens the present with the possibility of a better future. This is why hope can feel uplifting even when circumstances have not improved. Before any external change arrives, the mind gains room to breathe, and that inner expansion—anticipation, meaning, forward motion—becomes its own quiet pleasure.
Why It May Be Our “Chief” Happiness
Johnson goes further, suggesting hope may be the primary happiness available in this world. The transition from “a species” to “the chief” implies a practical realism: many pleasures are fragile, expensive, or brief, while hope is comparatively accessible, renewable, and portable. Even in times of hardship, hope can survive where other joys cannot, because it depends less on possession and more on orientation. In this sense, Johnson’s hierarchy is not sentimental but economical: hope offers the greatest return under the most common human conditions—uncertainty, limitation, and change.
The Time Dimension of Human Contentment
Another way to read Johnson is through time. Much of life is lived in the interval between desire and fulfillment, effort and reward, illness and recovery. Because so many days are spent waiting, a happiness that can exist during waiting becomes disproportionately important. As a result, hope functions like emotional interest accruing on an incomplete reality. Instead of demanding that happiness arrive only after outcomes are secured, it allows some happiness to be experienced in advance, making the long middle stretches of life more bearable and, at times, even meaningful.
Philosophical and Literary Echoes
Johnson’s thought resonates with older reflections on expectation and endurance. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (4th century BC) links well-being to a life shaped by purpose and virtue over time, and hope often supplies the forward-looking structure that makes sustained purpose possible. In a different register, Dante’s Inferno (c. 1320) famously marks hell with the abandonment of hope, implying that to lose hope is not just to lose a strategy but to lose a fundamental good. By contrast, Johnson frames hope as a positive presence—less dramatic than salvation perhaps, but central to ordinary human thriving.
Hope as Psychological Resilience
Modern psychology helps clarify why hope can feel like happiness. Research on hope as goal-directed thinking—such as C. R. Snyder’s work in Positive Psychology (1990s)—emphasizes agency (“I can act”) and pathways (“I can find a route”). When those elements are intact, people often report greater well-being even before outcomes change. Consequently, hope does not only soothe; it energizes. It converts vague wishing into a livable sense of possibility, and that felt possibility can reduce despair, widen attention, and improve coping—effects that resemble happiness in both tone and function.
The Risks and Discipline of Hope
Yet Johnson’s praise also invites a caution: hope can inflate into delusion if it detaches from reality. The transition from hopeful expectation to chronic disappointment is a familiar human arc, and it suggests that hope needs cultivation, not mere intensity. Disciplined hope stays responsive to evidence, adjusts goals, and accepts setbacks without surrendering direction. In everyday terms, it is the difference between “everything will magically work out” and “something better is possible, and I will keep moving toward it.” In that steadier form, hope can remain a durable happiness rather than a recurring heartbreak.