On the other hand, there are countless cults whose leaders
make a specialty of "formulas for happiness." They promise perfect
"health, wealth, love, and happiness" to all who will pay the price
for the formula with instructions as to how to apply it; but it does not seem
to work out well or more of their followers would demonstrate the promised
results.
The extreme scarcity of happiness goes to show that there is
something else to be sought for upon which happiness depends, or else that one
is searching in the wrong direction.
There are as many human opinions as to how happiness may be
obtained as there are various conceptions as to what constitutes that blissful
state. That which ranks first among these may be classified under
sense-gratification. By the pleasure seeker it is confused with the sought-for
prize. Yet we know that sense-gratification is not happiness neither is
asceticism practiced to win this sacred gift.
It has been said that "happiness ever flees the ardent
seeker," that it "comes unbidden when it comes at all."
Conditions must be right, for it enters the human heart. It cannot dwell with
discord or inharmony. It is never found where evil impulses, greed and
selfishness dwell.
Neither does marked culture, education, talents or fame
encage it. Palatial environments, wealth and social position seem more often to
frighten it away; and sordid conditions offer no inducement for its abiding
place. Material grandeur, pomp and glory hold nothing that attracts its divine
nature.
