l. If happiness and a large
content be a laudable aim of life how far are we--the occidental
world--succeeding in attaining it? Few there be who are content, and,
as I have already suggested few there be who are free from worry. On
the other hand while active happiness may be somewhat scarce in
India, a large content is not uncommon, and worry, as we Westerners
understand it, is almost unknown. Hence we need to find the happy mean
between the material activity of our own civilization, and the mental
passivity of that of the Orientals. Therein will be found the calm
serenity of an active mind, the reasonable acceptance of things as
they are because we know they are good, the restfulness that comes
from the assurance that "all things work together for _Good_ to them
that love God."

That worry is a curse no intelligent observer of life will deny. It
has hindered millions from progressing, and never benefited a soul. It
occupies the mind with that which is injurious and thus keeps out
the things that might benefit and bless. It is an active and real
manifestation of the fable of the man who placed the frozen asp in his
bosom. As he warmed it back to life the reptile turned and fatally bit
his benefactor. Worry is as a dangerous, injurious book, the reading
of which not only takes up the time that might have been spent in
reading a good, instructive, and helpful book, but, at the same time,
poisons the mind of the reader, corrupts his soul with evil images,
and sets his feet on the pathway to destruction.

Why is it that creatures endowed with reason distress themselves and
everyone around them by worrying? It might seem reasonable for the
wild creatures of the wood--animals without reason--to worry as to how
they should secure their food, and live safely with wilder animals
and men seeking their blood and hunting them; but that men and women,
endued with the power of thought, capable of seeing the why and
wherefore of things, should worry, is one of the strange and peculiar
evidences that our so-called civilization is not all that it ought to
be. The wild Indian of the desert, forest, or canyon seldom, if ever,
worries. He is too great a natural philosopher to be engaged in so
foolish and unnecessary a business. He has a better practical system
of life than has his white and civilized (!) brother who worries, for
he says: Change what can be changed; bear the unchangeable without
a murmur. With this philosophy he braves t