Felicity is the permanent state, or a least a prolonged one, of a soul that is content, and this state is quite rare. Happiness comes from outside, it is in its origin a good hour . [1] A moment of happiness comes, and one possesses happiness; but one cannot say, a moment of felicity has come to me, I've possessed felicity ; [2] and when it is said, this man enjoys a perfect felicity , a here is not understood numerically and signifies only that it is believed that this felicity is perfect. One can have a moment of happiness without being happy. A man has had the happiness of escaping from a trap, and is sometimes therefore only the more unhappy; one cannot say of him that he has experienced felicity . There is also a difference between a happiness and happiness itself, [3] a difference of which felicity does not admit. A happiness is a pleasant event. Happiness considered indefinitely is a succession of these events. Pleasure is an agreeable and fleeting sensation, happiness considered as a feeling is a succession of pleasures, prosperity a succession of happy events, felicity a personal enjoyment of one's prosperity. The author of the synonyms says that happiness is for the rich, felicity for the wise, beatitude for the poor in spirit ; but happiness appears the province of the rich more than it is in reality, and felicity is a state that one speaks of more than one experiences. This word is rarely uttered in prose in the plural, for the reason that it is a state of the soul, like tranquility, wisdom, rest; yet poetry that raises itself above prose allows one to say, in Polyeucte : "Their felicities must be infinite. May your felicities, if it's possible, be perfect." Words, in passing from the substantive to the verb, rarely keep the same meaning. To felicitate , which is used in place of to congratulate , does not mean to make happy , it does not even express to rejoice oneself with someone else about his felicity ; it simply means to compliment on a success, on an pleasant event. It has taken the place of to congratulate because of its sweeter and more ringing pronunciation.

Notes

1. There is an untranslatable etymological pun here on the relation between the word for happiness, bonheur , and a good hour, bonne heure .

2. The author is pointing out how, as the French grammar and semantics work, it is possible to have a happiness but not a felicity.

3. " un bonheur et le bonheur"