How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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222 (canvas 242)
The image contains the following text:
who have become satisfied and reconciled to the narrow
life of their favourite side-show to follow it. It is true that
a great many people live and die within the confines of
this or that side-show, and seem none the worse for it.
Some of them become artists of the highest calibre, and
actually find their way back to the main rings by virtue of
their superlative side-show accomplishments. This is a
rare occurrence. Most of the side-show performers
become human derelicts, mental bankrupts, and
dilapidated failures. Nature, and not man, visits its
punishments on them, sometimes after so many extensions
of credit that the side-show performer has been led to
believe that he will never really have to pay up. This
generosity of nature deceives many into a false sense of
security.
Despite nature’s apparent kindness, her first principle
is that nothing comes to nothing. You cannot make
something, or get something, for nothing. Thousands
of people have died in the attempt to dispute this cardinal
principle of the cosmos ; thousands have succumbed in
the vain attempt to pit their private beliefs against the
inexorable logic of the universe. Boil it down to essentials
and the problem of life is as simple as a penny-in-the-slot
machine. You put in your penny and you get your piece
of chocolate nicely wrapped in silver foil. If you do not
risk your penny, you get nothing. And it will not avail
you one whit to call the machine bad names, to cast ashes
on your head and bewail your past sins, to shake your fist
at those who have contributed their pennies and are
enjoying their rewards, to believe that you have been
discriminated against by a harsh fate, to rail about the
uselessness of all penny-in-the-slot machines, or to
question the wisdom of this particular type of cosmic
arrangement. These are the facts : if you risk your
contribution, the chances are very much in favour of
your gaining peace, security, happiness and the esteem
of your fellow-men. If you risk nothing, you gain
nothing—-but heartache and regrets, sorrow, confusion,
conflict, pain, and loneliness.