Happiness as Found in Forethought Minus Fearthought. Fletcher Horace
in holding a "true mirror up to nature" and in teaching us to appreciate the subtle beauties that nature shows in all of her aspects, but which become commonplace to the many without the assistance of art.
The Japanese have a proverb which declares that "once seeing is better than an hundred times telling about," and this good proverb has been the guiding star of my roamings, and has suggested practical participation in some of my occupations. My first attempt to see the antipodes was not successful. It did not have the necessary parental sanction, and I was brought back before I had measured very much longitude and latitude; but the determination shown in the attempt indicated so strong a tendency that it led to promise of assistance and permission to travel as a reward for certain accomplishments in study that were considered to be impossible, as judged by former efforts, but which became surprisingly easy to the boy who saw a way to the other side of the world in the task.
I spent my sixteenth birthday on the Island of Java, and saw Japan and China at the most interesting periods of their recent history – Japan, in Feudal Times, before any of the changes that have made her the last and greatest wonder of the world; and China, at the close of the Taiping rebellion, wherein more than thirty millions of persons lost their lives, and about which there hovered a lawlessness the like of which the world has not witnessed elsewhere.
Chance and restless change have thrown me into companionship with the most elemental of human beings; and have also led me to the acquaintance, and into the affections of the wisest and loveliest of men and women – the rarest blossoms of our generation. Opportunity has found me available for the command of a crew of Cantonese pirates, on a Chinese lorcha, at a time when piracy was a common occupation in the China Sea; and for the mismanagement of a French Grand Opera Company, when no one else was foolish enough to undertake it.
The foregoing are but glimpses of the opportunities for observation out of which I draw my deductions relative to profitable living. Four complete trips around the world – two of them before the time of ocean steamship lines and continental railroads; thirty-six trips across the American Continent by various rail, water and stage routes; sixteen voyages across the Pacific Ocean, and many across the Atlantic; intermittent periods of residence in many different countries of Europe, in China, in India, in Japan and in different localities in the Americas; as well as visits to parts remote from the lines of travel, such as South Africa, Yucatan and the mountain regions of Mexico and Central America, that are the type of all of the South American countries; and all of which residences and visits have been chosen at times of greatest interest in each locality; in response to the invitation of the Spirit-of-Adventure by which I have been led – these, together with no less than thirty-eight distinct occupations, embrace the sum of my opportunities.
Fortune has always been kind to me when I have trusted her; when my aims and ambitions were worthy, and when I have been sufficiently appreciative and grateful for the things I already possessed to merit and invite continued favors; but, she has always passed me by whenever I have doubted her goodness or questioned her intentions. And so consistent has been the course of Fortune, as viewed in the retrospect, that I can assert, with all the assurance of firm belief, that "Unto him who hath (appreciation and gratitude) shall be given; but unto him who hath not (appreciation and gratitude) shall be taken away even that which he hath."
Until I began to collect my remembrances into groups, form them into classes for review and deduct from them suggestions for profitable living, I had thought that my chronic restlessness was aimless as measured by the common estimate of usefulness; but the sympathy aroused by the publication of my little volume – first, privately printed, —Menticulture, or the A-B-C of True Living– revealed the possibility of utilizing my varied experiences and observations to good advantage in calling attention to uses-of-energy, points-of-view, habits-of-thought and habits-of-action, that made for happiness in some persons in some parts of the world, while they were entirely unknown to others as well fitted to enjoy them.
I was led to serious study of the causes and effects of happiness and unhappiness by observations of the pitiable neglect of the science of menticulture, (which is the science of fundamental means), and the science of happiness (which is the science of ultimate desirable ends), in materially civilized communities, and by persons who have mastered, and are already possessed of, the physical means to comfort and happiness. This neglect is not surprising when we reflect that all available time and all available thought have been excitedly employed in developing material, physical means, to the exclusion of the thought of cultivating the end; to the harnessing and training of the forces of Nature, to the exclusion of planning for their best uses; but it will be surprising if, however, in the near future, the ends are not scientifically cultivated, now that the fundamental as well as the physical means are understood, and the leisure to apply them is secured.
More than forty years of observation, and upwards of three years of study, analysis and arrangement with a fixed purpose, have enabled me to suggest changes of attitude towards the problems of life that have not failed to bring more or less strength and happiness to all who have adopted them, as attested by thousands of written and verbal communications and by report. This is literally true, and the statement of it is warranted by the merit of the results, removed from any personality in connection with it.
The underlying cause of all weakness and unhappiness in Man, heredity and environment to the contrary notwithstanding, has always been, and is still, weak habit-of-thought. This is proven by the observed instances in which strong habit-of-thought has invariably made its masters superior to heredity, and to environment, and to illness, and to weakness of all kinds, and has redeemed them from non-success and misery, to the enjoyment of success, honor and happiness. It has also been proven that none are so ill-favored as to be exempt from regeneration by the influence of optimistic thinking, and none so plain, nor even so ugly, as judged by the world's standards of beauty, but that the radiance of pure thought will make them more beautiful than their brothers of nobler mien and more symmetrical physique, but whose thoughts are poisoned by fear and by selfishness.
Happiness is not dependent upon wealth, and wealth does not necessarily bring happiness, but both are dependent upon good-habit-of-thought; for good-habit-of-thought develops appreciation, which is the measure of all wealth, and appreciation leads to the habit-of-feeling and the habit-of-action which produce happiness.
Notwithstanding the words of Jesus of Nazareth, by which one-half of the world's inhabitants are supposed to be governed; notwithstanding the admonitions of the other great teachers to whom the other half of humanity turn for counsel; notwithstanding the lessons taught by all of nature's processes of growth, especially the teachings of later evolution; fear – fear of death, fear of disaster, fear of non-attainment, fear of non-preferment, and fear of the things that never happen as feared, and the anger and the worry growing out of these fears – have been looked upon as afflictions necessary to humanity, repressible only during life, and eradicable only at the change called death.
Early theology wrestled with conditions wherein it was thought necessary to use the whip of fear as well as the attraction of love to incline men to religion. Modern theology teaches the religion of love alone, but it has not yet sufficiently denounced the former teaching of fears, perhaps in the interest of consistency or because of filial respect, inasmuch as its parents once put the label of truth upon the religion of fear. Science also has taught, and still continues to teach, the potency of the crowding-out stimulant in growth, without proclaiming a line where attraction became the stronger motive in civilization – an intangible line already far astern in the wake of present progress.
Fear has had its uses in the evolutionary process, and seems to constitute the whole of forethought, as instinct seems to constitute the whole of intelligence in most animals, but that it should remain any part of the mental equipment of human civilized life is an absurdity. There are, undoubtedly, human beings that are still so nearly animal that fear alone will restrain them from wrong-doing, or stimulate them (or, rather, push them) to peaceful and useful living, but none such will read this book, and neither you nor I should be burdened by their limitations or necessities. We have passed the point where we need to be pushed; or, if we have not, we are ashamed to confess it, thereby acknowledging that it is unnecessary; and are within the atmosphere of appreciation and attraction where fear and its expressions