THE SCIENCE OF HAPPINESS 



Yet how many minds come to be the "cold clear 

 logic engines" that Huxley says human minds should 

 be? How many persons have fairly good habits of 

 thinking even within the range of their ordinary 

 capacity ? 



Thackeray tells us somewhere that his mind was 

 always active in some definite direction. Whether 

 he walked or sat or what not, though he might seem 

 to be musing, he was never musing aimlessly. Some 

 definite problem was always before his mind's eye. 

 At the end of an hour or a day he could tell what he had 

 been thinking of during that hour or that day. How 

 many people can say as much ? 



Emerson, we are told, went daily to walk in the woods, 

 rambling aimlessly, or taking physical leisure in what- 

 ever way for the moment pleased him. But he never 

 liked to return till he had garnered some definite new 

 thought, much as some other wanderer might pluck 

 a flower. He too loved the flowers and the birds and 

 trees and all of Nature ; but he beheld them all with the 

 mental vision rather than the physical ; they were parts 

 of a plan, each one co-ordinate with all the rest. They 

 gave a penumbral setting to his thoughts, and out of 

 this setting there shone at last, brighter by contrast, a 

 new idea. 



How many people, even of intellectual power, have 

 ever discovered such a star of first magnitude as that ? 

 How many have their old ideas so clearly understood 

 and definitely classified that they could be sure to recog- 

 nise a new idea as such if they should chance upon one ? 

 How many have any ideas at all or any pronounced 



