SOME NEW BOOKS 



The Pursuit of Happiness: A Book of Studies and Strowings. By Daniel G. 

 Brinton, A.M., M.D., D.Sc. 8vo. Pp. 2S0. Philadelphia: David McKay, 

 1893. 



In his new book Professor Brinton, philologist, ethnologist, and 

 Americanist — gifted with " the pen of a ready writer " — discourses as 

 a physiologist, moralist, and philosopher. He takes for his subject 

 the pursuit of happiness — to the Pessimist a chimera, to the Puritan a 

 crime. Happiness he defines as not pleasure but built on it ; its 

 pursuit as the incessant prompting to a higher form of existence. 

 Biologists have discovered, he states, that the avoidance of painful 

 and the search for pleasurable sensations are the first principles of 

 organic animal life, and those which have developed the amoeba into 

 the man, in whom it has blossomed into that self-consciousness to 

 which he owes all the growth of his higher nature, his essentially 

 human powers. " The yearning for joy is a cry of Nature." " It 

 is the secret of evolution." Happiness is the reward of effort, but 

 the truth of the Spencerian concept that "the greatest efficiency is 

 the greatest happiness " is denied on the ground that it is historically 

 false, for men most famous by their enormous personal capacity have 

 certainly not been the happiest of their kind. Nor is childhood the 

 happiest age, nor old age the , wisest ; there is a rabbinical saying, 

 " He who teacheth the old is like one who writeth on blotted paper." 



The fact that women are less happy than men is attributed first 

 to inherent physiological differences and their consequences ; secondly, 

 to the errors of a false system of education. The author then pro- 

 ceeds to discuss the effects that our bodily and mental constitution, 

 the laws of heredity, environment, and climatic influences produce on 

 our happiness in general. Dr. Brinton does not, like Ibsen, make 

 heredity accountable for everything, but shows how its sinister con- 

 ditions can be ameliorated, if not actually annulled. He attributes 

 his individual incapacity for the appreciation of music to the fact that 

 musical instruments were excluded from the houses of his Quaker 

 ancestors for five generations. The author then considers how far 

 our happiness depends on ourselves and how much on others ; reviews 

 the pleasures of the senses, the emotions, the intellect ; advocates the 

 cultivation of Individuality as opposed to Egotism, the promotion of 

 social happiness, and, in conclusion, recapitulates the consolations of 

 the afflicted. In fact, Dr. Brinton's Studies might teach us all " how 

 to be healthy and wealthy and wise." The Stroivings consist of inter- 

 spersed " Whitmanese " in the form of aphorisms more or less original 

 and quaintly expressed, such as " Distrust the current estimates of 

 great men. They alone are not tried by their peers." " Self distrust 

 is nowhere more appropriate than in discussing difficult (Questions, 

 and nowhere less displayed." 



Dr. Brinton's latest contributions to physiology, phychology, and 



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