Part 2

From the start you were differently placed. You became accustomed to gratifying your desires: you had little purpose in your actions; and, accordingly, you have now the habit of looking on each wish, whether of long standing or momentary, as something you might as well gratify.

My second conclusion I will jump to now, without filling in the intermediate steps leading up to it; namely, that, to attain happiness, it is necessary to cultivate the custom of restraining your impulse to gratify your every desire.

To illustrate this, I will carry out my threat of proving it up from the other side. You have often in your yachting experiences seen the yachts belonging to the Goulds, Vanderbilts, and other men of great wealth. These men feel it necessary to own ships almost as large and expensive to operate as ocean steamers. They build houses that cost several hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they give balls that would ruin men of moderate wealth, while their weddings are likely to cost in the neighborhood of a million dollars in decorations, gifts, and expenses. The deduction from this is that the ability of man to spend is only limited by the length of his purse, and a man's desire to spend has no such limits.

The conclusion to be drawn from this is that you have got to curb your desires unless you are unusual in one of two respects, either in your money-getting ability or in your lack of imagination for inventing new desires. In any case you can eliminate these possibilities. Now, admitting that at some point you have got to curb your desires, why not do it at a point near Harris's, which will leave you in a more comfortable frame of mind in regard to your money matters, rather than Perry's, who does not have all he wants, and is discontented, or Vanderbilt, who would consider himself ruined if he had to live on ten thousand a year?

I know that you may think that you cannot come to Harris's point of view, as your points of view have always been horizontally opposite, he looking up to a sum upon which you look down. But never mind. I am suggesting that we do reach that point, nevertheless, or, if not that point, that we shall use our intellects, and, with a view to expediency, select a point it would be wise to reach.

I assert that we have now an intellectual problem before us. The question is what scale of expenditure we shall use and what proportion of our desires, etc., shall we curb.

The usual hand-to-mouth method is to go ahead, do what we want until we are "up against it" and have to economize, and then for a while do without some of the more important things which we find we cannot afford, having already spent our money on things of lesser importance. This is the lazy man's way, the one who does not care to do his thinking, and chooses to let circumstances make his course rather than wisdom.

The system seems to have some points of merit, and it is whispered that even Uncle Sam has sometimes let his affairs be managed on this plan, but that need not enter into this case; for you and I are both of us intelligent beings, observers after a fashion, and we intend to plan things out a bit and see what we can do with them, and perhaps see what stuff this luck that people talk about is made of.

Let us see where we now stand. We have found that it is the attitude toward your income, and the scale of living your income permits, that must be regulated; that your desires, if all were granted, will soon grow to a point far out of reach of your purse, no matter how rich you get; and, therefore, that the intellectual problem is before us of picking out a scale of living somewhere well within your present income and endeavoring to attain an attitude of mind toward living on that scale which will make you happy rather than discontented.

I know that you are thinking that I have forgotten the personal equation, that I am arguing as if all people were of the same temperament, forgetting that under given conditions one person would be happy and another would not, and that you, with your varied interests and contented disposition, would always find things to make you happy, even if you had to give up many of the luxuries which you now enjoy. This is true, but you must please note that I have not intimated that you couldn't; and, in fact, the point of what I say rests on the assumption that you could. Moreover, in regard to other people, you will notice that this letter is not addressed to them; and, if any of them should happen to see it, they can put on the garment if it fits, or they can leave it alone,--it is all one to me.

But how can we bring this about? how tell what things you have been used to keep and what to give up? how keen a desire it is well to quell, and which ones? To reach this point, it is necessary to digress again in order to find the element of the magic touchstone which will tell us whether the thing we are looking at is made of gold or some baser metal.

You must first have a look at our objective points, and try to analyze these a little bit. Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness. These are somewhat intermingled, as we consider liberty an essence of happiness. We also want health, and all that conduces thereto, particularly cleanliness and exercise. We want a fair amount of amusement and a good amount of work. We want the sense of being useful and the sense of being respected. This people will accord us if we are striving to accomplish some of the innumerable things which people want to have done. There is, of course, a higher field for man's energy,--that of striving for things which mankind ought to want for and doesn't; the position of the martyr or reformer, who works for the welfare of the people and receives ill-treatment for it, like Christ. But, while we all of us hope we would not be found wanting, were the demand made, we cannot help joining with Kipling in the wish "which I 'ope it won't 'appen to me."

Accordingly, while I am not blind to disagreeable but necessary possibilities, you will see that, if I digress to satisfy each one of them, I shall never reach the point, which no doubt in your mind by this time is the end; and so you must not pick flaws if I make statements which cover the probable, but not all the possible, contingencies.

We have found, then, that we want employment which will somehow add to the welfare of the human race; and is not this well worth doing? If you make something of that nature your object, and keep it fully before your mind, how much better off you will be than if you have continually in mind your own amusement, your own comfort! If you have your amusement as your life object, you will soon become a bored man, whom nothing will amuse. If you have comfort, you will be the discontented man who is never comfortable; for you soon fix in your mind the ideal combination of temperature, garment, palate, belly, and entertainment, and, seldom being able to get them all at once, you will seldom quite reach your ideal.

You might remark that I have made the statement that employment in something useful is the element of happiness; but I have not proved it by reasoning, nor have I led up to it by any line of argument. Let it rest at that. I shall let your intelligence and experience supply the proof that a definite object of employment with something in view of interest and benefit to the human race is, if not an essence of happiness, perhaps the easiest way to obtain the elements of happiness; namely, an object for yourself, a sense of usefulness, and the respect of your associates.

In addition to this, you must not be unpleasant to the senses. You must be morally and physically clean. You must have good manners, which is mostly being courteous and sympathetic and doing sundry social things according to the social code which happens to be then in vogue. You must learn, though it bores you as much as your Latin composition did, the proper way to dress at various functions and to answer people's invitations and generally do the correct thing.

It won't take long to learn these things; and you need not remember them, as, if you once have in mind that there is a correct way of doing things, you can always find out the particular one at issue by asking.

It seems to me that I can best illustrate my point by comparing you to a tool, of which there are two ends,--the handle and the working or cutting end.

It is your business for your first thirty years of existence to make as good a tool of yourself as you can, and your business for the rest of your life to do as much work as possible; that is, let the tool be used after it is made. Thus, then, let us divide your experiences and acquirements into the handle and the edge of your tool. The handle,--your manners, education on general topics, such as history, literature, art, etc., your habits of cleanliness, promptness, etc., and your physical ability, health, etc.

Your edge is your special fitness for work; that is, your education, experiences, aptness, power of concentration, and accomplishment.

Now I am going to ask you to keep this division clearly in mind, as I think you will find in it many of the elements of the touchstone for which we are looking.

I know the thought will have occurred to you that you do not know what you will take up, and are in no position to tell what things will go to make up the right sort of an edge; yet you will observe that you are, of course, in the same position as other pieces of unshaped wood and steel, and for your first ten years nothing is done except to shape you up gradually, teaching you to speak and read, and generally getting house broken. During your teens you are going to college, learning how to meet with and talk to men, to be a gentleman and develop your muscles. Incidentally, you pick up a little knowledge of what the world has been doing.

Most of this you will forget; but, if you are wise, you will have drawn a few conclusions and made some observations, one of which is that it was mighty good of those old chaps who have been workers in the past to have cleared such good roads for us in every direction, so that a fellow could almost begin where they left off, when his handle is polished and he starts cutting.

An important thing at this period is to get the handle evenly balanced,--turned correct on centres, as they say; that is, not to get too far out of the normal in any particular, such as dress, promptness, profanity, or length of hair.

So much for the rounding of the handle; and now about the tool. At first, by watching, handling, and careful work, you must begin to show the quality and amount of metal you possess. Find out, as it were, by tentative trials whether it is capable of good edge or not. In other words, you want to find your bent and your abilities. To this end, if you are naturally good at mathematics and have a scientific and inquiring turn of mind, as you have, it is well to give it vent. Do not fear, for instance, to spend your time and earnings on electrical apparatus or studies and experiments in physical science. If you have a fondness and desire for teaching or philosophy or accounting or trade, try to find out the essential requisites of the particular one which interests you, and follow up and acquire all the attainments which may be found useful. If you wish to enter politics or the lecture field, learn to speak and collect and classify your ideas when you are speaking and before people.

Let me summarize briefly the points that I have just covered.

You are now working for a definite object. You have money enough to do more than you want to do at present; but, if you learn habits expensive enough to spend the whole of it, you are going to be hard up when your expenses increase, as they will if you marry or assume greater responsibilities. Therefore, it is necessary for you to practise self-denial and deny yourself wisely. We have seen that self-denial of some sort is necessary to everybody who have not fixed their habits, and by that I mean fixed their habits to such an extent that no change in their circumstances will induce them to lead a more expensive life. It becomes obvious that those who have fixed their habits on economical and praiseworthy lines will not only be the wealthiest, but will be the people who enjoy the most freedom. It is to them that wealth is a real blessing; and it is they who make their wealth a blessing to others, always keeping in mind the personal equation.

It is therefore up to you to choose habits and fix them, so they will bring about the best result, and thus conduce to your happiness, the merit of your actions, and the use of your money. How, then, among all the opportunities which arise shall you choose, how tell which ones of the luxuries to which you have been accustomed you shall discard?