How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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of instigations to stimulate the reader’s further study
and further labour. I shall feel that my purpose has
been accomplished if the reader has found a crystalliza¬
tion of knowledge which he has already sensed and
understood, in these pages, and if, here and there, he finds
an occasional practical suggestion applicable to his own
case. The reader is reminded that I set out to describe an
art, the fine art of living, not to prepare panaceas and
formulas ; and although I have attempted to describe
the processes, the ends, and goals of the art of living
richly, I can at best make only some hints and suggestions
which the reader must apply in the course of his own
individual creativeness.
The reader himself will have to practise his art. The
fine art of living is to be learned only by living, never by
thinking or talking about it, alone. There are countless
omissions in any textbook of art. Some are due to the
ignorance of the writer, some are due to the exigencies of
space, but many are due to the ineluctable and mysterious
characteristics of life and art themselves. Some readers
will find my descriptions over-simplified, others over¬
complicated. These flaws are inherent in any guide-book,
whether to a foreign city or to the soul of man. It has been
my sole purpose to awaken an interest in the most
thrilling of all arts, the art of being happy, to describe
the material of that art, and to stimulate and encourage
the reader to see and to do for himself.
It is inevitable that a book of this sort will be read by
certain timid individuals who have lost their courage and
mistaken their way, and it is just as inevitable that these
men and women will identify themselves with some of
the cases cited in the previous pages, choosing here a
symptom and there a characteristic, thus making out a
case against themselves. These readers will misuse the
book to discourage themselves further, saying, “You
see, I am a hopeless neurotic, and no good can ever come
of me. How can you expect me to begin all over again
when I have been making mistakes all my life ? ” For
these readers I must add a special postscript.