Understanding yourself : the mental hygiene of personality / by Ernest R. Groves.

  • Ernest R. Groves
Date:
[1935]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Understanding yourself : the mental hygiene of personality / by Ernest R. Groves. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    knowing its content. Usually it seems to stand for no more than that one wants what one has not. It is because of this that it has such an unsavory reputation among thinkers. As a symbol, however, of the dynamics that move human conduct, it is straightforward and significant. This ex¬ plains why we ostracize it from our logic and constantly use it in our intimate and emotional expressions. Those who do not like it tell us that it has no common meaning, that although two people may be said to be striving for happiness, this does not mean that they are seeking the same thing. Surely this is as one would expect, and possibly it brings to the surface the first important fact that one needs to know about the universal, human quest for happiness. Happiness can never be something universal—the same thing for everybody—for it is as highly individual as anything we know. How could it be other¬ wise ? Every moment of one’s history, every constitutional feature of hereditary physical origin, the entire stretch of events, associations and settings that make the life unique, all working together, fix the satisfactions that beckon the way to happiness. Whether one can achieve in the end happiness, or whether one always must fail, is for most of us an academic question that we would leave to those who like to make a game of thinking. We prefer to plant our feet upon what seems more solid ground and to think of happiness as something that we can have more or less according to our insight, our judgment, our energy, and, some would add, [7]