Happiness is about doing good, not feeling good.

Happiness is active, not passive.

Happiness is not selfish.

The Declaration of Independence names “the pursuit of happiness” as an unalienable right, alongside life and liberty. By including the pursuit of happiness, Thomas Jefferson altered John Locke’s claim that men have a right to life, liberty, and property.[1]

Jefferson followed George Mason in doing so. Mason included the phrase “pursuing and obtaining happiness” in the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776), and Jefferson heavily drew on this document in drafting the Declaration. There are many competing explanations for why he did so.

Including the “pursuit of happiness” may have been a simple rhetorical flourish because it creates an ennobling picture of government.[2] John Adams remarked that Jefferson had a gift of writing and “peculiar felicity of expression.”[3] Another account is that Jefferson removed “property” because he wanted to avoid perpetuating the property ownership of slaves.[4]

A third explanation is that this phrase accords with natural law—the classical idea that there are moral truths in nature, which are discoverable by reason. Central to this philosophy is the human aim at a flourishing or happy life, which “whether conscious and explicit or not, is the universal occupation and preoccupation of mankind.”[5] By affirming the pursuit........

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