Science Quote by John Mason Good

Happiness, Good argues, is less a feeling you possess than a process you keep generating. The metaphor does the heavy lifting: “running steam” suggests pressure, heat, and motion - energy that only exists while something is burning and converting fuel into force. A “stagnant pool,” by contrast, isn’t merely still; it’s the kind of stillness that breeds decay. He’s not praising hustle for hustle’s sake. He’s warning that happiness treated as a thing to acquire - a settled state, a final arrival - goes bad the moment it stops moving.

That framing makes sense coming from an 18th/early-19th century scientist, writing in a culture newly intoxicated by engines, industry, and the language of mechanics. Steam power was the icon of modernity: invisible, potent, productive. By likening happiness to steam, Good smuggles an Enlightenment ethic into an emotional claim: the good life is experimental, iterative, and kinetic. You don’t “find yourself” and then relax; you act, test, build, revise.

The subtext is a quiet rebuke to leisure-as-salvation and to the romantic temptation to fetishize repose. Activity here isn’t just labor; it’s engagement - intellectual work, social movement, purposeful attention. The line also flatters the reader’s agency. If happiness is activity, it’s not a lottery ticket or a temperament you’re stuck with; it’s something you can practice, like keeping a fire lit.