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

belief, now proved beyond all peradventure, that the character of a human being is often the result of the existence of some defect or inadequacy of his body. Thus we find men and women who have suffered from defects, often very minor ones, of the eyes, whose entire lives seem to be directed toward translating the world about them into visual values, while children who have suffered in childhood from rickets, a disease which affects the development of the bones and muscles in such a way as to increase the difficulties of movement, become distinctly “ motor ” characters in later life, bending every effort to increase the efficiency of their locomotion, either by athletic training or by the invention of motor appliances, from wheels to aeroplanes, to aid them in their efforts. Universality of the Inferiority Feeling The next step in the investigation of these interesting aspects of human behaviour was the discovery that the entire human race suffers from a feeling of inadequacy, and has, throughout the ages of man’s existence, evolved its unique human character as a compensation for its weakness. To test this universal human sense of inferiority we need but recall our complete inability to master the fickle elements or to solve the problems of death, disease, and the degeneration of our bodies. It is only in the most recent years that we have learned to understand something of the physical world in which we live, and we are still at the mercy of lightning, floods, earthquakes, or capricious hurricanes. Primitive man, with his hairless body, his ignorance of hygiene, his imperfect sense organs, his relatively weak muscular development, was in a far more serious plight; and if we can allow our imaginations to recall those early days when some man-like ape first descended from the trees to the open plain because some fortuitous degeneration of his feet compelled him to relinquish a life of climbing, thereby leaving his forelegs completely free and forcing him to stand erect and become a “ man ”, we can well