DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 41, 11 May 1927, Page 16

DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

HAPPINESS

( Copyright , 1927.)

ONE trouble with telling people how to be happy is that everybody does not understand just what happiness means. Happiness to one man may not be happiness to another. It is happiness to a swine to find a trough full of swill, and there are human beings whose idea of happiness is plenty to cat. But most human beings have a different kind of nature, and the mere sating of hunger does not make them happy. In fact happiness seems to be the fulfillment of a desire, and of course what happiness is depends on what chances to be your desire. %-A person shipwrecked on a raft in mid-ocean, or a traveller lost in the Desert of Sahara wants most of all a cup of water. In fact, he gets to the point by and by when he would give all he has for something to drink, and that is his supreme desire. I _ Mans’ desires, however, are always springing up anew. In a sense he can never be satisfied because he is always wanting something. Carlyle says somewhere that if you pour into the soul of a bootblack suns, stars and galaxies, he would still cry for more. The human soul is the original bottomless pit. Therefore our kinds of happiness run from the lower to the higher. One kind of happiness may mean simply a cessation of pain, as to a man with a stomachache a dose of paregoric brings happiness. Then there is the satisfaction of having a thrill, which comes from adventure, and so on.' Besides this, there is the happiness that comes from things which appeal to our risibilities. Then there is the supreme state of happiness boasted of by the religionists, and called bliss. Something along this gamut we are all striving to obtain. Hedonism is that philosophy of life which claims happiness in one form or another to be the supreme end of man. Needless to say, there is also a philosophy which places as the chief end of man the rejection and renunciation of all forms of happiness.