(I take back my blush, being
ashamed of it.) Man, know thyself. I say it out loud. The phrase
is one of those phrases with which everyone is familiar, of which
everyone acknowledges the value, and which only the most sagacious
put into practice. I don't know why. I am entirely convinced that
what is more than anything else lacking in the life of the average
well-intentioned man of to-day is the reflective mood.
We do not reflect. I mean that we do not reflect upon genuinely
important things; upon the problem of our happiness, upon the main
direction in which we are going, upon what life is giving to us,
upon the share which reason has (or has not) in determining our
actions, and upon the relation between our principles and our
conduct.
And yet you are in search of happiness, are you not? Have you
discovered it?
The chances are that you have not. The chances are that you have
already come to believe that happiness is unattainable. But men
have attained it. And they have attained it by realising that
happiness does not spring from the procuring of physical or mental
pleasure, but from the development of reason and the adjustment of
conduct to principles.
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