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

in her disinclination to reconcile herself with life as it is, her folly in her obstinate refusal to admit that life was other than she would have liked to have imagined it. The attempt to escape from the inevitable responsibility for what we have made of ourselves by our own creative self-sculpture leads directly to mysticism and the allied hocus-pocus of numerology, astrology, spiritualism, and other pious forms of voodooism. No one likes to assume the responsibility for his own failures when it is so much easier to believe in luck than to put one’s shoulder to the wheel and push for one’s own salvation. Gambling and the cult of good luck are but other aspects of the tendency to shift the responsibility for one’s shortcomings to fate and destiny. Superstition and the belief in magic, as well as the search for a second chance in another world (while con¬ tributing little or nothing to life on this planet), together with the various theories and beliefs in reincarnation, are woven of the stuff of escape. The frantic, and tragically vain, attempts of spiritualists, clairvoyants, telepathists and others of their kind to pierce the veils of the super¬ natural originate simultaneously from their sense of frustration in this world and their obstinate denial of scientific data. The cult of the side-show is evidence of a sense of defeat, as is the denial of the validity of life itself. The meaning of life is not to be found in the denial of life. Medals have never been struck for those who ran—no matter how well—from the battle-front ; nor has anyone found the elusive * quality of happiness in life’s side¬ shows. The side-shows are the false goals of life, and those who pursue these false goals require special techniques to attain them. We call such false patterns the neuroses.