THE SCIENCE OF HAPPINESS 



from that which he would undertake were he to live his 

 life over again. Then, surely, all the pleasure that 

 might come from success is tinctured and in part neu- 

 tralised by the bitterness of futile regret. 



Suppose that our healthy and successful man of 

 family finds himself practically without friends of similar 

 tastes, inclinations, and sympathies to his own; while 

 his lifelong attitude of mind has made him a discon- 

 tented pessimist, wont to minimise the virtues and 

 magnify the blessings of his neighbors. Such a man, 

 though seemingly surrounded with the good things of 

 life, knows not how to enjoy them. He cannot lay his 

 hand on the key to the domain of happiness, though he 

 be able to purchase every tangible luxury. If he seem 

 to secure the form, he still lacks the substance. 



For, as it chances, the substance of true happiness 

 is for the most part made up of filmy abstractions of 

 ideas rather than of things; of friendship with our 

 fellow-beings; the approbation of our kind; love of 

 family; appreciation of the beauties of Nature and of 

 art, literature, music, and the like. Honesty, honor, 

 virtue, sympathy, conscience all these are abstrac- 

 tions, yet all have their place among the social neces- 

 sities. A world without them would be the world of 

 brute or savage. It would not be a happy world in 

 the modern interpretation of the word. 



Hence it is that physical well-being and sensual 

 pleasures are not enough. They play their part, and 

 a most important part, but they are not the all in all. 

 Even physical beauty depends in no small measure upon 

 the profounder attributes of mind. A cheerful dis- 



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