How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
97/400
- 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
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The image contains the following text:
assets. It is part of the art of living to realize that no
piece of marble is perfect, but that nevertheless its flaws
can often be utilized as valuable details in the general
design. In the present chapter, therefore, we. shall
consider the craftsmanship of physical and spiritual
compensation in greater detail.
Nature provided us with an unbelievably rich arsenal
of tools and techniques when she endowed us as
individuals and as a race with the ability to compensate
for our inferiorities. So elastic are the devices of compensa¬
tion that it may be stated as an axiom that there is hardly
an inferiority that cannot he compensated in some socially
useful fashion. The workings of this principle of com¬
pensation may be observed throughout the entire world
of nature and matter. The story of the human race is
the story of the compensation and overcompensation of
its human frailties. It began when some pre-human
anthropoid was born with a degenerate foot and was
compelled to relinquish an arboreal life because he could
no longer use his feet to climb. This great inferiority
(from an ape’s point of view) compelled him to descend
to the plain. The degenerate foot, hov/ever, enabled him
to stand erect, and thus left his hands free for use.
Presently he developed a thumb that was opposable to his
other fingers, and finally his brain developed its hidden
resources, and man as we know him was born. These
first anthropoids who deserve the name of human beings
were able to recognize their own weakness and in¬
security. They banded together for mutual help and
defence. Thus there arose the need for speech, ideas,
writing, society. The flower of our present civilization
is the final compensation of the sense of insecurity
which our weak primitive ancestors felt in the primeval
forests.
When we examine this civilization we find that the very
accomplishments we pride ourselves on most originate
in primitive man’s feeling of inferiority. Animals with
good eyes do not need microscopes or telescopes. Strong¬
muscled gorillas do not invent levers, wheels, axes, spades,