Based on the works of great philosophers, this book deals with how to identify and develop the state of mind that leads on the path of lasting happiness and well-being. We must determine what makes us really happy, then look for how to reach it. Happiness seems difficult to achieve because there is no universal recipe to be happy. What some are looking for to be happy, others have already found it but they are still not happy. This is shown by the following quote: "I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet". This man, who could not afford shoes, had reason to complain and not be happy: he had to walk barefoot, everyday, everywhere, on burning ground, rocky and thorny, or in the cold. Those who have already walked barefoot in the warm sand, know how much the soles of the feet suffer from it, and they could confirm how nice it is to have shoes. Yes, this man was right to think that he would be happier if he had shoes. However, he realized the privilege of having feet to walk when he met that disabled man for whom, having shoes was far from being his first concern. He would have been happy if only he could at least walk barefoot. Since that day he stopped complaining, and decided to appreciate his chance, this happiness of having feet to walk. He realized that others are more misfortuned. Many things that we have, and to which we no longer pay attention, would make someone happy. Yes, the conditions of happiness are not the same for everyone. We always think we could not be happy without certain conditions. Someone would say: I'd be so happy if I had a little more money. And he would remain in the unfortunate expectation of that day he would have enough money to be happy. Another would say: I'd be happy if I could find the love of my life. And life would be morose to him if ever the dreamed love was found. I would be so happy if I found work, would say another one. And during the period of unemployment he could not perceive all the other sources of happiness he has around him; his sadness would be so great. We also hear others say: how to be happy with this gloomy weather? Ah, I would be happy if I could live in a sunnier region! And they are waiting for the good weather to be happy. However, we have already seen richer people who are not really happy. They seem to have everything we need, but they didn't find happiness. Or people who live with the woman or the man of their life, who are not happy. They still miss something. Thus, the right question to ask oneself is this: have I really decided to be happy? It is a wrong conception of happiness that prevents men from being able to reach it. We are often persuaded, consciously or unconsciously, that happiness depends on what we have, who we are, or on satisfactory external factors. Studies have shown in recent years that those who are truly happy draw their joy and happiness from a state of mind that they have been able to cultivate over the years, transcending external factors and living conditions. It is the culmination of a construction that requires the will to achieve it. Yes, happiness comes from other things than what we have or who we are.
The degree of power to remember differs in our various kinds of memory. One man can remember things seen; another can remember things heard; a third is skillful in the performance of certain motions, and may be said to possess a good motor-memory. "Memories of objects seen are located in the posterior part in the occipital region. Memories of sounds heard are located in the lower lateral part in the temporal region. Memories of motions in the limbs, and of touch in those limbs, are located side by side in the central lateral region. Memories of speech are located in the frontal region. It is therefore a mistake to speak of memory as a single faculty of the mind. It is really an assemblage of distinct memories which we possess, each kind of memory being as different from the others both in its nature and in its location as are the different organs of sense through which the original perception came. These various memories are associated with each other, and this association is secured by means of fibers passing between and joining these different areas. It is also a mistake to give memory as a whole a location in one place as the phrenologists do. Our various memories are scattered over the brain in different regions, being distributed at the time of the perception of the sensation remembered in accordance with the anatomical connection of the percipient organ. It is, finally, a mistake to speak of a good memory or a bad memory."
"Nearly all the greatest thinkers from the beginning of philosophy have grappled with the subject, yet we are inclined to believe that, from the first, no subject has been more profoundly misunderstood. Whatever the standpoint, whether philosophical or physiological, upon one point only, perhaps, has there always been substantially universal agreement; namely, that pleasure and pain are in some way direct and complementary expressions of the general welfare of the individual. From Plato and Aristotle down through Descartes, Leibnitz, Hobbes, the idea, at base, has ever been the same: The experience, the judgment, the attainment of a perfect or imperfect life; the perfect or imperfect exercise of a faculty; the furtherance or hindrance of some activity; the rise or fall of some vital function, force, or energy. Everywhere pleasure and pain have been looked upon as complementary terms of a single phenomenon, and as the very essence of expression of the rise and fall of our inmost existence..."
Comme l'ont dit Platon et Aristote, il n'y a probablement chez l'homme ni plaisir ni déplaisir absolument pur : les deux sentiments se trouvent mélangés à doses inégales par l'art subtil de la nature, et l'impression définitive dans notre conscience est une résultante où l'emporte un des éléments. Cette complexité de toute émotion pourrait se déduire des deux conceptions dominantes de la physiologie moderne. La première de ces conceptions, c'est que notre corps est en réalité une société de cellules qui ont chacune leur activité propre et luttent entre elles pour la vie. « La jouissance est un plaisir éprouvé par les sens, et ce qui les flatte est dit agréable. La douleur est le dé¬plaisir éprouvé par les sens, et ce qui la produit est dit désagréable. - Ces deux choses ne sont pas entre elles comme gain et absence de gain (+ et 0), mais comme profit et perte (+ et - ); c'est-à-dire qu'il y a de l'un à l'autre non pas simple opposition, mais aussi contrariété. - Les expressions : ce qui plaît ou déplaît et ce qui est contraire, l'indifférent, sont trop larges ; elles peuvent convenir également à l'intellectuel, où il n'y a cependant ni jouissance, ni douleur. On peut encore expliquer ces sentiments par l'effet qu'occasionne notre état sur l'âme. Ce qui me porte immédiatement (par les sens) à délaisser ma situation (à en sortir), m'est désagréable, me fait souffrir ; ce qui me porte à la garder (à y rester), m'est agréable, - il me fait jouir...»
It is now something more than a century since the general division of psychic phenomena into intellect, feeling and will, first came into repute, but still some psychologists of note do not agree to this fundamental classification, but would unite feeling and will in a single order. As to the subdivisions of feeling and will we are confessedly wholly at sea. In intellect it is only on the lower side, sensation and perception, that anything of great scientific value has been accomplished; and even now it cannot be said that the classes of sensation have been marked off with perfect certainty. In the higher range of intellect psychology can do scarcely more than accept some ready-made divisions from common observation and logic. And if so little has been settled in the comparatively simple work of a descriptive classification of the facts of mind, we may be assured that still less has been accomplished toward a scientific consensus for the laws of mind. Weber's law alone seems to stand on any secure basis of experiment, but its range and meaning are still far from being determined. Even the laws of the association of ideas are still the subjects of endless controversy. Also in method there is manifestly the greatest disagreement. The physiological and introspective schools each magnify their own methods, sometimes so far as to discredit all others. Physiological method has won for itself a certain standing, indeed, but just what are its limitations is still far from being settled...
This book treats of the psychology of relaxation and the methods to escape from Stress of the modern life. "Some of us manage to escape neurasthenia, but few of us are free from fatigue, chronic or acute. We hear with amazement now and again someone say "I was never tired in my life." Surely under normal conditions we ought not to be so tired as we are, nor tired so often. Under these circumstances a new interest has suddenly awakened in relaxation. The psychology of it is yet unwritten; the physiology of it is obscure; yet the need of it has become apparent. This need has lately been greatly emphasized by an outbreak of recreation crazes of which the dancing craze and the moving-picture craze are the most conspicuous. They have become so general and are so compelling that they even remind us of the epidemics of the middle ages. The almost obsessional character of these crazes may not be wholly explicable on psychological grounds, but it suggests the need of psychological inquiry into the nature of relaxation in itself and into the peculiar conditions of our times which issue, on the one hand, in the outburst of recreation crazes, and, on the other, in a rather wide-spread disposition to fatigue or even nervous disorders..."
Although monkeys do not reach the human stage of a rich life of ideas, yet they carry the animal method of learning by the selection of impulses and association of them with different sense impressions, to a point beyond that reached by any other of the lower animals. In this, too, they resemble man; for he differs from the lower animals not only in the possession of a new sort of intelligence but also in the tremendous extension of that sort which he has in common with them...
The intelligence of apes, monkeys, and baboons, unfortunately, has not presented material for nearly so many observations as that of other intelligent mammals. Useless for all purposes of labour or art, mischievous as domestic pets, and in all cases troublesome to keep, these animals have never enjoyed the improving influences of hereditary domestication, while for the same reasons observation of the intelligence of captured individuals has been comparatively scant. Still more unfortunately, these remarks apply most of all to the most man-like of the group, and the nearest existing prototypes of the human race: our knowledge of the psychology of the anthropoid apes is less than our knowledge of the psychology of any other animal. But notwithstanding the scarcity of the material which I have to present, I think there is enough to show that the mental life of the Simiadæ is of a distinctly different type from any that we have hitherto considered, and that in their psychology, as in their anatomy, these animals approach most nearly to Homo sapiens...
