Happiness is not a reward - it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment - it is a result.

The saying rejects a moralistic, reward-and-punishment view of life in favor of a causal one: happiness follows from conditions and choices, and suffering follows from causes as well, rather than being dispensed by a judging authority. This aligns with Robert G. Ingersoll’s broader freethought and secular humanist rhetoric, which often challenged orthodox religious explanations of fortune and pain. Read this way, the quote urges responsibility and practical ethics—improving the causes that tend to produce well-being (education, liberty, compassion) and reducing the causes that tend to produce misery (ignorance, cruelty, oppression)—instead of interpreting experience as divine favor or wrath.