TEXT A It used to be said that
English people take their pleasure sadly. No doubt this would still be true if
they had any pleasure to take, but the price of alcohol and tobacco in my
country has provided sufficient external causes for melancholy. I have sometimes
thought that the habit of taking pleasure sadly has crossed the Atlantic, and I
have wondered what it is that makes so many English-speaking people somber in
their outlook in spite of good health and a good income. In the
course of my travels in the American I have been impressed by a kind of
fundamental malaise which seems to me extremely common and which poses difficult
problems for the social reformer. Most social reformers have held the opinion
that, if poverty were abolished and there were no more economic insecurity, the
millennium would have arrived. But when I look at the face of people in opulent
cars, whether in your country or in mine, I do not see that look of radiant
happiness which the aforesaid social reformers had led me to expect. In nine
cases out of ten, I see instead a look of boredom and discontent and an almost
frantic longing for something that might tickle the jaded palate.
But it is not only the very rich who suffer in this way. Professional men
very frequently feel hopeless thwarted. There is something that they long to do
or some public object that they long to work for. But if they were to indulge
their wishes in these respects, they fear that they would lose their livelihood.
Their wives are equally unsatisfied, for their neighbor, Mrs. So-and-So, has
gone ahead more quickly, has a better car, a larger apartment and grander
friends. Life for almost everybody is a long competitive
struggle where very few can win the race, and those who do not win are unhappy.
On social occasions when it is de rigueur to seem cheerful, the necessary
demeanor is stimulated by alcohol. But the gaiety does not ring true and anybody
who has just one drink too many is apt to lapse into lachrymose
melancholy. One finds this sort of thing only among
English-speaking people. A Frenchman while he is abusing the Government is as
gay as a lark. So is an Italian while he is telling you how his neighbor has
swindled him. Mexicans, when they are not actually starving or actually being
murdered, sing and dance and enjoy sun shine and food and drink with a gusto
which is very rare north of the Mexican frontier. When Andrew Jackson conquered
Pensacola from the Spaniards, it was Sunday. She pointed out the scandal to her
husband, who decreed that cheerfulness must cease forthwith. And it
did. When I try to understand what it is that prevents so many
American from being as happy as one might expect, it seems to me that there are
two causes, of which one goes much deeper than the other. The one that goes
least deep is the necessity for subservience in some large organization. If you
are an energetic man with strong views as to the right way of doing the job with
which you are concerned, you find yourself invariable under the orders of some
big man at the top who is elderly, weary and cynical. Whenever you have a bright
idea, the boss puts a stopper on it. The more energetic you are and the more
vision you have, the more you will suffer from the impossibility of doing any of
the things that you feel ought to be done. When you go home and moan to your
wife, she tells you that you are a silly fellow and that if you became the
proper sort of yes-man your income would soon be doubled. If you try divorce and
remarriage it is very unlikely that there will be any change in this respect.
And so you are condemned to gastric ulcers and premature old age.
It was not always so. When Dr. Johnson complied his dictionary, he
compiled it as he thought fit. When he felt like saying that oats is food for
men in Scotland and horses in England, he said so. When he defined a fishing-rod
as a stick with a fish at one end and a fool at the other, there was nobody to
point out to him that a remark of this sort would damage the sale of his great
work among fishermen. But if, in the present day, you are (let us say) a
contributor to an encyclopedia, there is an editorial policy which is solemn,
wise, and prudent, which allows no room for jokes, no place for personal
preferences and no tolerance for idiosyncrasies. Everything has to be flattened
out except where the prejudices of the editor are concerned. To these you must
conform, however, little you may share them. And so you have to be content with
dollars instead of creative satisfaction. And the dollars, alas, leave you
sad. This brings me to major cause of unhappiness, which is that
most people in America act not on impulse but on some principle, and that
principles upon which people act are usually faxed upon a false psychology and a
false ethic. There is a general theory as to what makes for happiness and this
theory is false. Life is concerned as a competitive struggle in which felicity
consists in getting ahead of your neighbor. The joys which are not competitive
are forgotten. Now, I will not for a moment deny that getting
ahead of your neighbor is delightful, but it is not the only delight of which
human beings are capable. There are innumerable things which are not
competitive. It is possible to enjoy food and drink without having to reflect
that you have a better cook and better wine merchant than your former friends
whom you are learning to cold-shoulder. It is possible to be fond of your wife
and your children without reflecting how much better she dressed than Mrs.
So-and-So and how much better they are at athletic than the children of that old
stick-in-the-mud Mr. Such-and-Such. There are those who can enjoy music without
thinking how cultured other ladies in their women’ s club will be thinking them.
There are even people who can enjoy a fine day in spite of the fact that the sun
shines on everybody. All these simple pleasures are destroyed as soon as
competitiveness gets the upper hand. But it is not only
competitiveness that is the trouble. I could imagine a person who has turned
against competitiveness and can only enjoy after conscious rejection of the
competitive element. Such a person, seeing the sunshine in the morning, says to
himself, "Yes, I may enjoy this and indeed I must, for it is a joy open to all."
And however bored he may become with the sunshine he goes on persuading himself
that he is enjoying it because he thinks he ought to. "But," you
will ask, "are you maintaining that our actions ought to be governed by moral
principles" "Are you suggesting that every whim and every impulse should be
given free rein Do you consider that if So-and-So’ s nose annoys you by being
too long, that gives you a right to tweak it "Sir," you will continue with
indignation," your doctrine is one which would uproot all the sources of
morality and loosen all the bonds which hold society together. Only
self-restraint, self-repression, iron self-control make it possible to endure
the abominable beings among whom we have to live, No, sir! Better misery and
gastric ulcers than such chaos as your doctrine would produce. I
will admit at once that there is force in this objection. I have seen many noses
that I should have liked to tweak, but never once have I yielded to the impulse.
But this, like everything else, is a matter of degree. If you always yield to
impulse, you are mad. If you never yield to impulse, you gradually dry up and
very likely become mad to boot. In a life which is to be healthy and happy,
impulse, though mot allowed to run riot, must have sufficient scope to remain
alive and to preserve that variety and diversity of interest which is natural to
a human being. A life lived on a principle, no matter what, is too narrowly
determined, too systematic and uniform, to be happy. However much you care about
success, you should have times when you are merely enjoying life without a
thought of subsequence. However proud you may be, as president of a women’ s
club, of your impeccable culture, you should not be ashamed of reading a
low-brow book if you want to. A life which is all principle is a life on rail.
The rails may help toward rapid locomotion, but preclude the joy of wandering.
Man spent some million years wandering before he invented rails, and his
happiness still demands some reminiscence of the earlier ages of freedom.