2 January: Boreham on Happiness

The Craft of Happiness
At this season, at any rate, happiness is acclaimed universally as the outstanding desideratum of human experience. Everybody is wishing everybody else a happy New Year. The phenomenon is suggestive, and raises a multitude of questions. Is the time-honoured wish usually realised? Are most people happy? Is happiness more difficult of attainment than it used to be? Mr. E. McCormick once argued in the pages of the "Edinburgh Review" that we are living in an unhappy world and that our misery tends to increase as our civilisation becomes more complex. He admits that, superficially, appearances are against him and that a certain show of gaiety is generally prevalent. But this, he maintains, is purely an illusion born of the fact that joy is essentially noisy and assertive, while despair is dumb and shuns the public gaze.

Savagery, according to Mr. McCormick, may lack the exuberance of civilisation, but its general level of enjoyment is more stable. A savage has but few wants and is easily satisfied. The advance of our civilisation appears to Mr. McCormick like the march of an army that is moving further and further from its supply base. The greater the chasm that divides us from the primitive simplicity of barbarism, the less we know of happiness and the more we have to endure of disease, suffering, and abject wretchedness.

Does Humanity Lose Laughter As It Ascends?
The heresy is a very ancient one. Jean Jacques Rousseau worked the argument to its last gasp a couple of centuries ago, and in the process nearly drove poor old Dr. Johnson out of his wits. Johnson had no patience with Rousseau's bleak pessimism. When Boswell insisted on reading to him the brilliant Frenchman's glorification of savagery, Johnson burst into one of his most terrible paroxysms of volcanic fury. "Sir," he thundered, "there can be nothing more false. The savages have no advantages over civilised men: none! They have not better health, and, as to anxiety and mental uneasiness, they are not above it but below it, like bears. Rousseau is talking nonsense, and he knows he is talking nonsense." Do not allow yourself to be imposed upon by such gross absurdity. It is sad stuff: It is brutish." The facts are all on Dr. Johnson's side. What he has said in prose, Tennyson, in "Locksley Hall," has said in lilting verse. Nobody who has acquired first-hand experience of barbaric conditions would impute to the average savage any measure of happiness that his civilised contemporary need covet.

Somebody has suggested that, in order to put the matter to the test, we should take a census on happiness. Let every man be invited to tell us whether or not he finds life to his taste. Perhaps the obstacles in the way of such a universal confessional are more formidable than we light-heartedly assume. Sir William Robertson Nicoll once attempted something of the kind and was astonished at the result. The experiment convinced him that the vast majority of people are extremely happy. Most people indeed, are happier than they know. Many of those to whom the questionnaire was submitted confessed that, until they attempted to analyse their emotions, they did not realise how happy they really were. Scores of husbands spoke of the happiness that they found in the companionship and affection of their wives. Wives wrote in similar terms of their husbands. After examining thousands of papers, Sir William Nicoll came to the conclusion that the average home is a particularly happy place.

A Doctor Prescribes For Happy New Year
It may give us confidence in the practicability of realising our New Year wishes if we remember that Sir Alfred Fripp, the eminent surgeon, laid it down as an axiom that happiness is an art which any student, with a little pains, may acquire. "It is certain," Sir Alfred declares, "that success cannot come to everybody, nor health; but happiness is within everybody's grasp, whether he is successful or not, or even whether he is healthy or not. Happiness is an art. As an art, it requires fostering by practice till it becomes a habit. Any man or woman may master it." To assist eager students to attain proficiency in this exceedingly desirable craft, Sir Alfred lays down a number of rules.

Briefly summarised they may be stated as follows:
(1) Always be yourself. (2) Consider the feelings of others. (3) Keep the faith and simplicity of youth. (4) Don't cross bridges till you come to them. (5) Be patient with fools. (6) Keep your friendships in repair. (7) Don't get dragged into quarrels and controversies. (8) Remember that it takes all kinds of people to make a world. (9) Try to understand the man you condemn: to know all is to forgive all. (10) Maintain your independence. (11) Guard your sense of humour and your sense of proportion.
(12) Keep money in its proper place. (13) Don't do things simply because others do them. (14) Never brood over the past: memory consists in the art of forgetting.

We commend Sir Alfred Fripp's Design for Happiness to our readers. The pattern looks like one that, with a little care, can be woven securely. It is good to face the New Year believing in happiness. Our horizon is clouded, it is true, but happiness does not depend on skies of fleckless blue. In spite of much that might lead superficial observers to a contrary conclusion, the world is singularly rich in happiness of a quiet, modest, unobtrusive kind. And they are mankind's truest benefactors who bravely resolve, as they step into the New Year, that by every means in their power they will augment that priceless hoard.

F W Boreham

Image: 'we should take a census on happiness'