Article July 3, 1915 Issue

Happiness

DUNCAN SINCLAIR, B. SC.

Happiness is a term which most people find somewhat difficult to define till they have thought much over it. They are quite familiar with it in name if not in actuality; they all recognize it to be a state wherein is blended restfulness, peace, and joy; yet there are many who think of it as a faraway dream of a Utopian day in which it may never be their lot to participate. Not infrequently the word pleasure is mistakenly used as a synonym for happiness; but while there may be many occasions in which pleasure and happiness are hardly distinguishable, there are many others in which in no sense are they the same or even complementary to each other. In surveying the many phases of human experience, we can mention a list of emotional states to which the term pleasure may be applied, but happiness never. Happiness is a thing which stands out by itself, a serene mood, a mental condition unalloyed by extremes of temperament, a state of restfulness and joy akin to blessedness.

Christian Science is like a test-stone, when fundamental propositions are under discussion. Being the revelation of absolute Truth, it enables us to place a perfect standard over against every mental condition, thereby giving us the rationale whereby to weigh its claims and to overthrow them when worthless. If we examine the efforts of the human race to attain happiness, we shall find that they are largely of a sensuous nature. These are the pleasures of the material senses, and are based on the sensations which are supposed to be communicated through eye or ear, touch, taste, or smell. It is matter of common knowledge that the physical senses may be so abused as to reduce the abuser to depths of depravity and despair. Take, for instance, the sense of taste. A whim may induce to a first indulgence of it; and if persevered in, it may lead to intemperate degeneracy. It is the indulgence of sense in its myriad forms that gets at the heart of the race, to stifle its nobler impulses, to steal from its grasp that happiness which is man's birthright, a birthright from which it cannot for long be deprived. The poet Robert Burns wrote of the fleeting pleasures of sense:—

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