well in their minds, that nerve power is the force of life and that the
will has a wondrously strong and direct influence over the body through
the brain and the nervous system.'[5]

FOOTNOTES:

[2] _Active and Moral Powers_, ii. 312.

[3] Much curious information on this subject will be found in Cabanis'
_Rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme_.

[4] Kay's _Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Classes_, p. 75.

[5] Mortimer Granville's _How to Make the Best of Life_.

CHAPTER III

Before entering into a more particular account of the chief elements of
a happy life it may be useful to devote a few pages to some general
considerations on the subject.

One of the first and most clearly recognised rules to be observed is
that happiness is most likely to be attained when it is not the direct
object of pursuit. In early youth we are accustomed to divide life
broadly into work and play, regarding the first as duty or necessity and
the second as pleasure. One of the great differences between childhood
and manhood is that we come to like our work more than our play. It
becomes to us, if not the chief pleasure, at least the chief interest of
our lives, and even when it is not this, an essential condition of our
happiness. Few lives produce so little happiness as those that are
aimless and unoccupied. Apart from all considerations of right and
wrong, one of the first conditions of a happy life is that it should be
a full and busy one, directed to the attainment of aims outside
ourselves. Anxiety and Ennui are the Scylla and Charybdis on which the
bark of human happiness is most commonly wrecked. If a life of luxurious
idleness and selfish ease in some measure saves men from the first
danger, it seldom fails to bring with it the second. No change of scene,
no multiplicity of selfish pleasures will in the long run enable them
to escape it. As Carlyle says, 'The restless, gnawing ennui which, like
a dark, dim, ocean flood, communicating with the Phlegethons and Stygian
deeps, begirdles every human life so guided--is it not the painful cry
even of that imprisoned heroism?... You ask for happiness. "Oh give me
happiness," and they hand you ever new varieties of covering for the
skin, ever new kinds of supply for the digestive apparatus.... Well,
rejoice in your upholsteries and cookeries if so be they will make you
"happy." Let the varieties of them be continual and innumerable. In all
things let perpe