The Five Great Philosophies of LifeHyde, William De Witt
Philosophy
The Five Great Philosophies of Life
Hyde, William De Witt
Ethics; Philosophy, Ancient
birthright of personality for a mess of pottage. Psychology and pedagogy
are recognising the important function of play in the development of
personality as never before. Professor Baldwin, in his "Social and
Ethical Interpretations," sums up the functions of play in these words:
"In the education of the individual for his life-work in a network of
social relationships play is a most important form of organic
exercise,--a most important method of realisation of the social
instincts; gives flexibility of mind and body with self-control; gives
constant opportunity for imitative learning and invention, and is the
experimental verification of the benefits and pleasures of united
action."
III
THE EPICUREAN PRICE OF HAPPINESS
Whoever contracts his work and expands his play, on Epicurean
principles, will of course have common sense enough to cut off hurry and
worry altogether. Both are sheer waste and wantonness,--the most foolish
and wicked things in the whole list of forbidden sins. The Epicurean
will live his life in care-tight, worry-proof compartments; working with
all his might while he works; and then cutting it off short; never
letting the cares of work intrude on the precious precincts of
well-earned leisure, or permitting the strain of remembered or
anticipated toil to mar the hours sacred to rest and recreation. Some
things are bound to go wrong in every life. That is our misfortune. But
there is no need of brooding over them in gratuitous grief after they
have gone, or dreading them in gloomy anticipation before they come. If
either in anticipation or in retrospect these evils are permitted to
darken the hours when they are physically absent, that is not our
misfortune; it is our folly and our fault.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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