The-Conquest-of-Happiness-by-Bertrand-Russell

at best a consolation. If you are sailing in a ship on
a fine day along a beautiful coast, you admire the
coast and feel pleasure in it. This pleasure is one
derived entirely from looking outward, and has
nothing to do with any desperate need of your own.
If, on the other hand, your ship is wrecked and you
swim towards the coast, you acquire for it a new
kind of love: it represents security against the
waves, and its beauty or ugliness becomes an
unimportant matter. The better sort of affection
corresponds to the feeling of the man whose ship is
secure, the less excellent sort corresponds to that
of the shipwrecked swimmer. The first of these
kinds of affection is only possible in so far as a
man feels safe, or at any rate is indifferent to such
dangers as beset him; the latter kind, on the
contrary, is caused by the feeling of insecurity. The
feeling caused by insecurity is much more
subjective and self-centred than the other, since the
loved person is valued for services rendered, not
for intrinsic qualities. I do not, however, wish to
suggest that this kind of affection has no legitimate
part to play in life. In fact, almost all real affection