Understanding yourself : the mental hygiene of personality / by Ernest R. Groves.
- Ernest R. Groves
- Date:
- [1935]
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Understanding yourself : the mental hygiene of personality / by Ernest R. Groves. Source: Wellcome Collection.
23/296 (page 11)
![acquainted. This does not mean that we can go to others and have them do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. It cannot be vicarious knowledge even though our wise friends may help us. In the end we must depend upon our own resources, our willingness and ability to explore our inner self with sincerity, frankness, and perspicacity. Interest in the question whether it is possible to attain human happiness may have ceased. Perhaps you have put this aside believing that it is nothing more than a futile, philosophic query that has no relation to the practical concerns of life. Even so, you are none the less willing to recognize that satisfying living requires efficient use of one’s resources and that the most important of these is embedded in the self itself. The problem can never be made merely the wise control of things that one possesses or manipulates. Underneath, and most important of all, is the need of efficiently using the powers and the urges of one’s own personality. To be sure, chance seems to play a large part in the destiny of every individual, but this is outside the province over which one has control. Leaving that part out of consideration, since it cannot be anticipated or commanded, we have left the inner and the outer re¬ sources upon which each individual must depend for his success in life. Of these, the first is both the more important and the less understood. The first step toward the happy, the efficient, the wise, or the good life, call it what you will, must always be the facing squarely of one’s own endowment, disposition, and [n]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29815150_0023.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
