The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-04-07
Way To Happiness
By H. ADDINGTON BRUCE

More and more emphatically men of light and learning are protesting against the pres ent tendency to seek happiness through the augmenting of pleasures and maternal pos sessions. It is a tendency, they rightly in sist, fraught with grave, dangers not only to the individual, but to society.
 For society it means clash and conflict rather than harmony. It brings to the indi- vidual discontent instead of content, a con suming restlessness; an undermining, not g strengthening, of morale. And unfortunately, as Prof. A. B. Remedy of Harvard uni versity recently pointed out in noteworthy address to the Twentieth Century club of Boston, it is distinctive characteristic of present-day western civilization.
 In this respect the west has much to learn from the east, albeit the east may per haps justly be accused of going too far in an undervaluation of external goods. Pro- lessor Kennedy stated the case disereetly and informingly when he reminded his audience :
 "The primordial conception of the Occi- dental is that to enjoy life, to have happiness and contentment, you must acquire things from the outside The conception of the Asiatic, on the other hand, is that to enjoy life and have peace, quiet and serenity, you must stand outside things and cultivate in- ternal relations-must get your happiness from within. Y
 
 foundly remote from each other. hold no brief for either. We may go too far in either direction. But it seems significant that the great religious leaders of the past have been Orientals."
 Undeniably, man was put into the world not simply to exist in it passivelys but to exert himself productively and, if oyer activity means illustration of happiness, sso does a passive, inert existence. There is a | E.. c.. tellectual and spiritual as we'll as material progress. The error of the west is in for getting this. &
 Again would quote from recent address, this time an address by President Hibben of Princeton university, speaking to a large group of Princeton alumni:
 "We are, in America, many of us, if not most of us, parasites in our present civiliza- tion. We are enjoying untold comforts and luxuries in this present age, and yet, as Carlyle said to his generation, we may say of ours that we have mistaken comfort for civilization.
 "Now, gentlemen, you know that there is no nation in the world that has ever sur vived merely because of material prosperity. Every nation, if it is to live, must have a living intellectual life in the broadest sense of the word.' 3Es
 And this from an address to a Boston audi ence by MT. Vivian T. Pomeroy, touching on 1 the advantages and disadvantages of mechan- ical inventivehess:
 "There is spiritual side of life which alone can balance, safeguard and explain | the material side We are intended to have intensive energy equal to our extensive ener- gies. Otherwise, our speed only rushes us to profound disillusion.
 Our geographical and chemical conquests have made the world small. Man is not thereby essentially greater. The health and bloom of activity disappear if we are doing things with frantic haste to escape from our. selves. For each one of us there is the ad venture of the spiritual quest"
 Timely words of warning, these, and words of wholesome stimulation. But will those who most need to heed them give heed? That is the question.