The Times. Published on Tuesday and Friday Afternoons. Motto: Public service. FRIDAY, JUNE 11, 1920. THE ETERNAL CHASE.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 9, Issue 539, 11 June 1920, Page 2

The Times. Published on Tuesday and Friday Afternoons. Motto: Public service. FRIDAY, JUNE 11, 1920. THE ETERNAL CHASE.

Is this grey would of ours growing- unhappier? This question, of uni versal interest, is discussed by writer in the Melbourne "Argus,' and its reasoning- is so cogent an< appealing as to warrant 110 apology for its reproduction in a New Zealand paper. Everywhere we turn our eyes, the #face of humanity L wrinkled in frowns. Open turbulence or seething menace defaces the troubled countenance of civilised society. Calm and Peace would appear to have fled the planet. And why ? To the writer the answer appears all the more incomprehensible because, as he says, all the main adjuncts of human happiness are in greater abundance amongst us than ever before. Great grinding tyrannies and despotisms—which rode on 'the burdened shoulders of many races of men, like the fabled Old Man of the Sea—have been cast off. and are no more. The means of wealth and comfort are more accessible to all classes than in tiny former age. Science has stepped out from her hidden cave and taken he" native veil from her face, stretching out her fingers and pointing to a hundred sources of power which she is ready to unlock for the gratuitous service of man. We cannot conceive of a time when knowledge ran to and fro upon the earth with a more potential j?ower of blessing in it. Human freedom has certainly a wider reach and exercise of its priceless gifts than man has ever known it to have before. On all matters of pith and moment, everywhere but in Bolshevik Russia, whether girt by friends or foes, a man may speak the thing he wSI. Human government is almost everywhere destined to be according to the wish of the governed. Even in chaotic Ireland, both North, and South, the people are offered self-government on the Dominion pattern. Human liberty almost completely spans the earth with its ineffable boncficence. To add to all this, the realms of moral and intellectual riches, where man may revel in the higher kind of enjoyment, are almost indefinitely extended as compared with oven a recent past. In material things, such as tood, clothing, lodging, sanitation, coping with disease, the amelioration of physical suffering, the lessening- of toil, and the spiead of education, racial betterment smiles upon us on every hand. And yet no man can say that the race is one fraction happier. On the contrary, if we may judge from the almost universal hatred and antagonism expressed and unexpressed in every clime, including our own, we shall be forced to the conclusion that human happiness has mateiiady diminished. Upon these premises the writer argues that these things being so, they amount to a demonstration that the world wiil never grew hap pier by its growth in intellectual and material progress. Its whole history is a stoiy of increase in mental and material well-being, from the condition in which half human kind were slaves to that in which they are now all free. And what, then, he asks, is this happiness which is I to elusive? Long ago Horace told us that we traverse the world in search of happiness, which is at home within the reach of every man. His remedy was a contented mind. 1 And of course that was the root of ihe Platonic philosophy also, that the only way to be hr.ppv is not to enlarge our estates, but to contract our desires: that it is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness; he is most unhappy who is troubled amidst much wealth. A good many moderns will agree with this, holding that happiness is like liberty - often lost in the search for it. Rut the writer reminds us that the great modern doctrine of "divine discontent" cutsclear across that teaching of the ancients. A certain cult of our modern philosophers teaches discontent as a duty, in order that the race may not stagnate, but tread the path of progress. We are to scorn delights and live laborious days, the central idea being that by so acting we shall climb upon our dead selves to nobler things. To some extent Dr. J Johnso ranges himself' with the disciples of discontent; for though he believes it possible to acquire the habit of being happy, and believes it a great blunder when a man pursues happiness without knowing when he has got it, vet he seems to argue, like Pope, that man never is blest, but always just about to be. We -nre thrown back, therefore, by this doctrine of divine discontent on ,

tlie theory that happiness is A thing which may be chased aiut caught; or that the multiplying of the good ancl beautiful things of life is a pursuit more noble than that of mere happi-1 ness. But as against either of these conclusions there stand up two pictures of the world as it was and as it is. Since the dawn of history men have been chasing happiness, as they have chased rainbows, and always with the same result. They have accumulated immensely upon their former heritage of knowledge; and they can now lodge a peasant almost as well as they once lodged a prince; but neither the prince nor the peasant of to-day is one whit happier in nis life than were their primeval forbears. All experiences seem in the last analysis to show that we must carry our happiness within us. Josh Billings appears to have had the hang of it—"lf ever you find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it, as the old woman did her lost spectacles, safe on her own nose all the time," The Socratic wisdom is found to stand — "Happiness is unrepented pleasure," i which means that it must have no admixture of evil. If this be true, it follows as the night the day that there can be no true happiness unconnected with the great Source of all happiness; and that we must carry that happiness in our own breasts. We all know these sunshiny people! What a comfort they are! Welcome everywhere. They come into our houses like a balmy breath from our sweet mountain forests. They carry with them an atmosphere of joy. They are sweet, they are wholesome, Wndly, friendly, sympathetic. We call them happy people. Why ? Is it because they are in some manner exempt from the trials of life? Are they free from aches, the pains, blows, buffets and knocks of fortune? Not a bit of it. But they take them as Horitio was said by Hamlet to have done—

For thou has been As one, in suffering all, that suffers

nothing; A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards Has ta'en equal thanks.

Politicians have their duties in so directing- the course of .things that the wheels of progress may meet with the fewest obstructions. They may increase materially the sum ot material well-being, the amount of stored up wealth and knowledge. These are no doubt good things in themselves; but the writer truthfully affirms that they are not the basic constituents of happiness. The Cingalese have a terse saying that "he is truly happy who makes others happy;" and Confucius, old pag«i that he was, got very much closer to the secret of happiness than the votaries of divine discontent when he said—"Good and evil do not wrongly befall men, because heaven sends down misery or happiness according to their conduct. A man who lives a virtuous life, and in the pursuit of knowledge, may have great happiness with only coarse rice to eat, water to drink, and his bended ai'm for a pillow." If we needed any proof of how entirely happiness may exist independent of exterior circumstances, the writer points us to a case, recently put on record, of a man dying of cancer which had eaten up most of his face. He was the life and soul of his hospital ward, never without his happy word to all sufferers. When his cheerfulness was remarked upon to himself, he replied—" Of course, I'm happy. Why wouldn't 1 be ? I won't be here long, and I won't have cancer in heaven." That was a Christian solace, and, in reality, the only effective solace. The final conclusion at which the writer arrives is that whatever may be the best of many roads to happiness, certainly the worst is that taste for bludgeon work which proclaims the policy of making might right, like the German militarists and the Australian advocates of "direct action."