Your Mind and How to Use It: A Manual of Practical PsychologyAtkinson, William Walker
Science
Your Mind and How to Use It: A Manual of Practical Psychology
Atkinson, William Walker
Psychology
Wisdom shows the individual that the greatest happiness comes to him who
controls and restrains many of his feelings. Dissipation results in pain
and unhappiness ultimately. The doctrine of thoughtless indulgence is
unphilosophical and is contradicted by the experience of the race.
Moreover, wisdom shows that the highest happiness comes not from the
indulgence of the physical feelings alone, or to excess, but rather from
the cultivation, development, and manifestation of the higher
feelings--the social, æsthetic, and intellectual emotions. The higher
pleasures of life, literature, art, music, science, invention,
constructive imagination, etc., yield a satisfaction and happiness
keener and more enduring than can possibly the lower forms of feeling.
But the human being must not despise any part of his emotional being.
Everything has its uses, which are good; and its abuses, which are bad.
Every part of one's being, mental and physical, is well to use; but no
part is well used if it uses the individual instead of being itself
used.
A recent writer has held that the end and aim of life should not be the
pursuit of happiness, but rather the building of character. The obvious
answer is that the two are identical in spirit, for to the man who
appreciates the value of character, its attainment is the greatest
happiness; the wise teach that the greatest happiness comes to him who
is possessed of a well-rounded, developed character. Another writer has
said that "the aim of life should be self-improvement, with a due regard
to the interest of others." This is but saying that the greatest
happiness to the wise man lies in this course. Any one who is wise
enough, or great enough, to make these ends the aim and goal of life
will find the greatest happiness therefrom. Arnold Bennett advances as a
good working philosophy of life: "cheerfulness, kindliness, and
rectitude." Can any one doubt that this course would bring great
ultimate happiness?
Happiness consists in that which "contents the spirit," and the latter
depends entirely upon the character of the feelings and emotions
entertained by one, as weighed in the balance of reason, and as passed
upon by judgment and the sense of right action. The greatest degree of
happiness, or at least the greatest ratio of pleasure over pain, is
obtained by a careful and intelligent cultivation of the feeling side of
one's being in connection with the cultivation of the intellect and the
mastery of the will. To be able to bring the capacity for enjoyment to
its highest; to be able to intelligently choose that which will bring
the greatest ultimate happiness in accordance with right action; and,
finally, to be able to use the will in the direction of holding fast to
that which is good and rejecting that which is bad--this is the power of
creating happiness. The feelings, the intellect, and the will--here, as
ever--combine to manifest the result.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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