criticised, failure to recognise this cardinal truth is the prime
source of mistake.

* * * * *

To begin with the FEELINGS.

I. We shall first consider an advice or prescription repeatedly put
forth, not merely by the unthinking mass, but by men of high repute: it
is, that with a view to happiness, to virtue, and to the accomplishment
of great designs, we should all be cheerful, light-hearted, gay.

I quote a passage from the writings of one of the Apostolic Fathers, the
Pastor of Hermas, as given in Dr. Donaldson's abstract:--

"Command tenth affirms that sadness is the sister of doubt, mistrust,
and wrath; that it is worse than all other spirits, and grieves the Holy
Spirit. It is therefore to be completely driven away, and, instead of
it, we are to put on cheerfulness, which is pleasing to God. 'Every
cheerful man works well, and always thinks those things which are good,
and despises sadness. The sad man, on the other hand, is always
bad.'"[2]

[FALLACY OF PRESCRIBING CHEERFULNESS.]

Dugald Stewart inculcates Good-humour as a means of happiness and
virtue; his language implying that the quality is one within our power
to appropriate.

In Mr. Smiles's work entitled "Self-Help," we find an analogous strain
of remarks:--

"To wait patiently, however, man must work cheerfully. Cheerfulness is
an excellent working quality, imparting great elasticity to the
character. As a Bishop has said, 'Temper is nine-tenths of
Christianity,' so are cheerfulness and diligence [a considerable
make-weight] nine-tenths of practical wisdom."

Sir Arthur Helps, in those essays of his, combining profound observation
with strong genial sympathies and the highest charms of style,
repeatedly adverts to the dulness, the want of sunny light-hearted
enjoyment of the English temperament, and, on one occasion, piquantly
quotes the remark of Froissart on our Saxon progenitors: "They took
their pleasures sadly, as was their fashion; _ils se divertirent moult
tristement a la mode de leur pays_"

There is no dispute as to the value or the desirableness of this
accomplishment. Hume, in his "Life," says of himself, "he was ever
disposed to see the favourable more than the unfavourable side of
things; a turn of mind which it is more happy to possess than to be born
to an estate of ten thousand a year". This sanguine, happy temper, is
merely another form of the cheerfulness recommended to general adoption.