Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/111

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THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS.
103

in our work, and with the support and encouragement of the medical profession and the press, no hesitation should be felt in pressing forward to such an extending of our usefulness as the importance of the subject seems to demand.

"Our president, Mr. Scribner, has been over the plot of ground under consideration, and can testify as to its suitability for the purpose.

"I would move that a committee of three gentlemen and three ladies be appointed to take the matter into consideration, and to visit this proposed site, if thought best, and to report on the subject to their respective boards."

THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS.

By THOMAS FOSTER.

SELF VERSUS OTHERS.

A MAN'S power of increasing happiness depends both directly and indirectly on his fitness for the occupations of his life. Directly, because if unfit, whether through ill health or inaptitude, he works with pain instead of pleasure, and because he gives less satisfaction or causes actual annoyance to those for whom his occupations, whatsoever they may be, are pursued. Indirectly, because as a result of work pursued under such conditions he suffers in temper and quality as a member of the body social. Hence all such care of self as is shown by attention to bodily health, by the careful culture of personal good qualities, by just apportionment of time to personal requirements, and so forth, may be regarded as of the nature of duty. In such degree as pleasure, recreation, change of scene, quiet, and the like, are necessary for the maintenance or improvement of the health, the care to secure these, so far from being held to be a concession to self, should be esteemed a most important point in "the whole duty of man."

A narrow view of duty to others may direct attention to what lies near at hand. Just as the savage consumes, to satisfy the hunger of a day, seed which should have been devoted to provide for many days in the future which lies beyond his ken, so the man who has no thought but of what lies near at hand, is apt to sacrifice health, strength, and fitness for work, from which great and long-lasting benefits might have been reaped, to obtain painfully and uncomfortably much smaller results. By overwork and self-sacrifice—self-devotion if you will—a man may in a few years effect much material good to those around him—perhaps more than in the time he could have effected by a wiser apportionment of his work and strength. But at