HOW TO INVITE HAPPINESS 



"rise above" the pleasure-dispelling influences of minor 

 ills is matter of everyday experience. And the amount 

 of self-effacement attainable grows in proportion to 

 the strength and concentration of the mental action. 

 The man of great reasoning power, when solving some 

 profound problem, becomes notoriously oblivious of 

 his surroundings " absent-minded" as the saying is; 

 a curious paradox by the bye, since the mind is never 

 elsewhere so preponderantly present. 



When the philosopher is under the spell of such a 

 mental exercise, even so dominant an appeal as the 

 bodily need of food fails to reach his conscious Ego. 

 A Newton forgets to eat when the food is brought to 

 him, a Descartes sits for hours on the side of the bed, 

 half dressed, forgetting to complete his toilet, his mind 

 in the clouds. Archimedes, intent upon his problem, 

 heeds not the presence of the soldier who has come to 

 take his life. 



But while intense mental action thus seems to raise 

 the actor above the plane of the emotions, it must not 

 be overlooked that these are ever near-at-hand. Every 

 form of constructive mental activity is accompanied 

 by a certain sense of satisfaction, and the self-elimina- 

 tion of great mental effort may be associated with a 

 sense of well-being that rises to the heights of ecstacy. 

 So by another of those paradoxes that greet us every- 

 where in nature, it appears that the intending of the 

 mind away from the Ego leads us finally in a circle 

 back to the Ego: the attempt to attain self-forgetful- 

 ness through cultivation of objectivity of mind, leads 

 in the end to the highest heights of egoistic happiness. 



