Happiness: Essays on the meaning of lifeHilty, Karl
Philosophy
Happiness: Essays on the meaning of life
Hilty, Karl
Conduct of life; Happiness
“_The prophet host, the martyr throng,
Reckoned, the world as dross,
Despised the shame, endured the wrong,
Counting their gain, their loss;
And He, to whom they sang their song,
Was nailed upon the cross._”
Suffering, then, lies on the road to life, and one must expect to meet
it if he would be happy. Many a person, when he sees this lion in
his path, turns about and contents himself with something less than
happiness. And yet it is also true, as experience teaches, that in
our misfortunes, as in our enjoyments, imagination greatly outruns
reality. Our pain is seldom as great as our imagination pictures it.
Sorrow is often the gate which opens into great happiness. Thus the
true life calls for a certain severity of dealing, as if one should
say to himself: “You may like to do this thing, or you may not like
to do it, but you must do it”; and true education rests on these two
foundation stones,--love of truth and courage for the right. Without
them, education is worthless. It is like the kingdom of God which is to
be taken by violence, “And the violent take it with force.” And thus,
of all the human qualities which lead to happiness, certainly the most
essential is courage.
We look back, then, finally, over what has been said, and repeat what
a gifted authoress of our time, Gisela Grimm, has said in her drama
of Old Scotland: “Happiness is communion with God, and the central
spiritual quality which attains this communion is courage.” Other
happiness than this is not to be found on earth, and if there were
happiness without these traits, it would not be the happiness we
should desire. And this kind of happiness is real. It is not, like
every other dream of happiness, an illusion from which sooner or
later one must wake. It does not issue from our achievements or our
compulsions. On the contrary, when we have once accepted and made our
own the view of life which I have described, and have ceased to look
about us for some other view, then happiness comes to us by the way.
It is a stream of inward peace; broadening as we grow older, first
enriching our own souls and then pouring itself forth to bless other
lives.
This is the goal to which our life must attain, if it hope for
happiness, and to this goal it can attain. Indeed, if once the first
decision be made, and the first steps taken, then, as Dante says:
... “_This mount is such, that ever
At the beginning down below ’tis tiresome,
And aye the more one climbs, the less it hurts.
Therefore, when it shall seem so pleasant to thee,
That going up shall be to thee as easy
As going down the current in a boat,
Then at this pathway’s ending thou wilt be._”[7]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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