Self-control and how to secure it = (L'éducation de soi-même) / by Paul Dubois ; Authorized translation by Harry Hutcheson Boyd.

  • Paul Charles Dubois
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Self-control and how to secure it = (L'éducation de soi-même) / by Paul Dubois ; Authorized translation by Harry Hutcheson Boyd. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    35/360 (page 23)
    Doubtless all the privileges we owe either to the chance of birth, to luck in life, or to personal efforts bring us great satisfaction, fleeting happiness, and there is no man un- able to say some time: I am content, happy; my business is good, my position suits me, I have health, family joys, etc. But these blessings are partial, dependent, and pass- ing; we have not yet reached happiness. It is lawful to seek after all these advan- tages, and this ambition is the primal condi- tion of progress; it is this wish to arrive which loosens our energies. Success gives power for good as well as for evil, and this idea suggested to a French Dominican a ser- mon on the strange subject Become Rich. But if there is one obvious fact, it is the frailty of these partial blessings: one's for- tune is lost; scientific, literary, and artistic notoriety fades with time, even when it re- sists the disparagement of envious competi- tors; in politics the Tarpeian rock is always by the side of the capitol; health declines, and happiness, friendly, conjugal, or pater- nal, becomes frail like the rest; we either lose those we love, or, more sorrowful still, [23]