at you cannot get happinessby pursuing it. This is The most important of these things is an activity which at mostgradually builds up something that you are glad to see coming intoexistence. Women who take an instinctive pleasure in their childrencan get this kind of satisfaction out of bringing up a family.Artists and authors and men of science get happiness in this way iftheir own work seems good to them. But there are many humbler formsof the same kind of pleasure. Many men who spend their working lifein the city devote their weekends to voluntary and unremuneratedtoil in their gardens, and when the spring comes, they experienceall the joys of having created beauty. The whole subject ofhappiness has, in my opinion, been treated too solemnly.
It had been thought that man cannot be happy without a theory oflife or a religion. Perhaps those who have been rendered unhappy bya bad theory may need a better theory to help them to recover, justas you may need a tonic when you have been ill. But when things arenormal a man should be healthy without a tonic and happy without atheory. It is the simple things that really matter. If a mandelights in his wife and children, has success in work, and findspleasure in the alternation of day and night, spring and autumn, hewill be happy whatever his philosophy may be. If,>’snoise unendurable, and the office a nightmare; if in the daytime helongs for night, and at night sighs for the light of day, then whathe needs is not a new philosophy but a new regimen--a differentdiet, or more exercise, or what not. Man is an animal, and hishappiness depends.
