How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.

little time for the communal fellowship that is so necessary for true happiness. Most of the individuals who succeed in “ making their million’’, promptly keep on making more millions because they become so involved in the toils of their ambition that they can no longer extricate themselves. Frequently they are forced to have a “ nervous breakdown ” after they have “ arrived ” because they have developed none of the art of living while they are making their “ pile ”. In the psychological laboratory, ambition is laid bare as a partially approved form of egoism and vanity. Beware of ambitious men and women. They are usually more courageous than those who are patently vain and egoistic—but the unsocial nature of their striving is apparent the moment its goals are examined. Like vanity and egoism, ambition may become a socially useful force. The ambition to make the world a better place for your fellow-men to live in is the only ambition that is consistent with happiness. When ambition is directed toward socially useful ends it usually brings its possessor the wealth and prestige that are the objectives of the ambitious and aggressive men and women who consciously go out “ to make a name ” for themselves because they feel so inferior that life would be intolerable without the prestige of name, of wealth, or of power. Nature does not deal lightly with the aggressively ambitious. More often than not, they ask a prestige which is entirely incommensurate with their actual contribution. In the course of their unfair competi¬ tion—and it is impossible to be a good sportsman in the battle of life if you have staked too much on the outcome —they make enemies of everyone. Society does not treat them well. The ambitious are constantly in a state of tension. In their hurry and scurry strategy, the ambitious not only ruin their own health and make enemies of those with whom they should be cooperating, but involve them¬ selves to such an extent in the particular technique they have chosen that they become slaves of their own