"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

The belief in the intimate association of happiness and virtue was widely shared in the eighteenth century. The same man who coupled liberty and the pursuit of happiness so closely in the Declaration of Independence could later state without equivocation that “Happiness is the aim of life, but virtue is the foundation of happiness.” Jefferson’s collaborator on the draft of the Declaration and an early member of the American Academy, Benjamin Franklin, similarly observed in 1776 that “virtue and happiness are mother and daughter.” This assumption had for many the status of a received truth. But the evidence for it was not at all recent.