How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
22/400
- Publication/creation
- London : George Routledge, 1932.
- Physical description
- xiv, 374 pages ; 22 cm
- Contributors
- Wolfe, W. Béran 1900-1935.
- Notes
-
This edition was reprinted in 1933, 1934, 1935, 1937, 1942, 1944, 1945, 1946 and 1948.
Copy 1 Note: 1937 reprint. X158203
- Attribution and usage
-
Wellcome Collection
Conditions of use: it is possible this item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).
The image contains the following text:
of this attitude we find as confirmation of this point of
view that history remembers best those who have con¬
tributed most richly to the welfare of their fellow men.
And when we examine the lives of these great contributors
we find that their genius was never one of aggressive self-
seeking, but one of contribution to the welfare of their
fellows. The more we investigate and the more we learn
about living the more we become convinced that the
artistic attitude is the only one which is consistent with
human happiness. Our book, therefore, will be devoted
to the investigation of living as a fine art, and our thesis
will be that happiness is a quality of successful artistry
in living.
Definition of Happiness
But what is happiness ? We ought to define our terms
in the very first sentence lest misunderstandings arise
from the very beginning. But we are going to evade the
challenge and leave the definition of human happiness to
metaphysicians and undergraduates, because happiness
is not a thing that can be defined by mathematical
formulas. Happiness is no apple that you can peel and
eat. Happiness is a quality and an attribute of the good
life. The more you try to define it the less you know
about it. It is as ineluctable as electricity, as evanescent
as melody, as indefinable as health, as variable as speed,
time, matter, and the other fictions on which life itself is
built. Happiness knows no standards and no limits.
If we want to know what happiness is we must seek it,
therefore, not as if it were a pot of gold at the end of the
rainbow, but among human beings who are living, richly
and fully, the good life.
Nearly every human being is looking for happiness, but
very few know what happiness is. Nevertheless if you
observe a really happy man you will find him building a
boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing
double dahlias in his garden, or looking for dinosaur eggs
in the Gobi desert. He will not be searching for
happiness, as if it were a collar stud that has rolled under