Such happiness as life is capable of comes from the full participation of all our powers in the endeavor to wrest from each changing situations of experience its own full and unique meaning.

Dewey links happiness to active, intelligent engagement rather than to passive pleasure or fixed ends. The phrase “full participation of all our powers” reflects his pragmatist and educational emphasis on integrated human capacities—perception, emotion, imagination, and reflective thought—working together in lived activity. Happiness, on this view, is not a stable possession but an achievement within experience: we meet changing situations, inquire into them, and “wrest” from them a meaning that is specific to their circumstances. The stress on “unique meaning” underscores Dewey’s anti-dogmatism: value is discovered and made in concrete contexts, not derived from abstract formulas.