This happiness consisted of nothing else but the harmony of the few things around me with my own existence, a feeling of contentment and well-being that needed no changes and no intensification.

The speaker defines happiness not as excitement, acquisition, or continual self-improvement, but as a quiet congruence between the self and its immediate world. “Harmony” suggests an attunement: when one’s inner life and the “few things around” one are in balance, contentment arises without the pressure to alter circumstances or heighten sensation. The refusal of “changes” and “intensification” reads as a critique of restless striving and the modern habit of treating satisfaction as temporary. In Hessean terms, it aligns with a spiritual-psychological ideal: simplicity, presence, and an inwardly grounded peace that does not depend on novelty.