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

panic-stricken because they are so far from their goal, rush at their problems with an aggressive, over-active assault. Other equally unhappy souls who approach their tasks hesitatingly, seek to make a detour about them, or to divert the attention of their fellows by make-believe activity in some useless side-show. When they are even less courageous, they run away from the problems entirely and attempt to reconstruct the lost paradise of irresponsible childhood. The least courageous of all, perplexed by their own impotence, dazed by the seeming magnitude of the social task, prefer to destroy them¬ selves rather than to make any attempt to solve their problems. The self-annihilation may be actual—as in suicide—or psychological as in the more profound neuroses and insanities which are, in effect, living deaths. In all these aberrant solutions of the problems of human life we find the common key-notes of fear and discourage¬ ment, of personal power, as contrasted with social usefulness, of futility as contrasted with utility, of subjectivity as contrasted with the objectivity of the normal life, of tragedy as contrasted with the sense of humour and perspective of the normal individual, of egoism as contrasted with the optimistic belief in the value of constructive altruism, and, above all, of a private system of logic as opposed to common sense. Personal power is the goal of these individuals, and their goal of personal power may take any conceivable form, whether it be the supposed power of complete enjoyment, the power of irresponsibility, the power of sexual domination, the power of money or of position, or the power derived from the emotional enslavement of others. For want of a better word we call these individuals neurotics. Every man and woman, in all probability, has some neurotic traits of character. None of us can be entirely brave, none of us can be entirely selfless. No one always follows common sense, and no one has succeeded in compensating for his inferiority complex so completely that he is without vanity and without personal ambition. But it does lie within the power of every individual to