something, Mills," he said. "The man who thinks the
least and acts the most is the happy man, the contented man, because
he's nearly always pleased with himself. If he fails at anything he
can usually excuse himself on the grounds of somebody else's
damnfoolishness. If he succeeds he complacently assumes that he did it
out of his own greatness. Action--that's the thing. The contemplative,
analytical mind is the mind that suffers. Man was a happy animal until
he began to indulge in abstract thinking. And now that the burden of
thought is laid on him, he frequently uses it to his own
disadvantage."

"I'll say he does," Mills agreed. "But what can he do? I've watched
things happen. I've read what some pretty good thinkers say. It don't
seem to me a man's got much choice. He thinks or he don't think,
according to the way he's made. When you figure how a man comes to be
what he is, why he's nothing but the product of forces that have been
working on all the generations of his kind. It don't leave a man much
choice about how he thinks or feels. If he could just grin and say 'It
doesn't matter', he'd be all right. But he can't, unless he's made
that way. And since he isn't responsible for the way he's made, what
the hell can he do?"

"You're on the high road to wisdom when you can look an abstraction
like that in the face," Lawanne laughed. "What you say is true. But
there's one item you overlook. A man is born with, say, certain
predispositions. Once he recognizes and classifies them, he can begin
to exercise his will, his individual determination. If our existence
was ordered in advance by destiny, dictated by some all-conscious,
omnipotent intelligence, we might as well sit down and fold our hands.
But we still have a chance. Free will is an exploded theory, in so far
as it purposes to explain human action in a general sense. Men are
biologically different. In some weakness is inherent, in others
determination. The weak man succumbs when he is beset. The strong man
struggles desperately. The man who consciously grasps and understands
his own weaknesses can combat an evil which will destroy a man of
lesser perception, lesser will; because the intelligent man will avoid
what he can't master. He won't butt his head against a stone wall
either intellectually, emotionally, or physically. If the thing is
beyond him and he knows it is beyond him, he will not waste himself in
vain effort. He will adapt himself to what he can't c