I recently posted on my blog a quote from William Lyon Phelps:
The happiest people are those who think the most interesting thoughts. Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good company, good conversation, are the happiest people in the world. And they are not only happy in themselves, they are the cause of happiness in others.
Bill Peschel [1] sent along in response a quote from Dorothy Parker:
Promptly one starts recalling such Happiness Boys as Nietzsche, Socrates, de Maupassant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William Blake and Poe. One wonders, with hungry curiosity, what were some of the other definitions that Professor Phelps chucked aside in order to give preference to this one.
I suggested in turn that Phelps may well have thought that, apart from Socrates, the people mentioned did not have the sort of interesting thoughts he had in mind. I also added that Blake seems to have been a genuinely happy man.
Whereupon my friend Susan Balée weighed in that Blake was “a nutter.” This may well have been the case, but if Peter Ackroyd’s excellent biography is to be trusted — and I know of no reason why it shouldn’t be — Blake was also happy. Susan then suggested he was manic without being depressive. Can’t say myself. There’s at least the possibility that he was genuinely visionary.
The term common to this whole roundabout of course is happiness, which is one of those things, like pornography, that is recognizable enough, but not so easy to define. The rich, famous miserable person is common enough for us all to know that, whatever happiness may be, ample cash flow and notoriety don’t necessarily contribute to it.
I actually think Phelps (1865- 1943), a scholar and critic well-known in his day, but now largely forgotten, was on to something. I should also mention in passing that Dorothy Parker would not herself appear to have been much of an authority on the subject.
Anyway, in my understanding of what Phelps said, it seems the focus isn’t on great artists, authors and composers, but on those who read, listen to, and look at the works they created. Goethe said something to the effect that every day one should look at a good painting, read a good poem, and listen to a fine piece of music. I think that’s pretty much what Phelps was getting at, too.
After all, he specifically refers to “those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good company, good conversation.” I suppose some would dismiss this view as hopelessly middle-brow or vulgarly utilitarian. Others might see it as elitist. I see it as humanism pure and simple.
The humanities are so called because they are thought to help us be more fully human by enabling us to make the most of ourselves as thinking, feeling, and sensing individuals. The really vulgar utilitarian approach comes about when we become preoccupied over whether a thought is right or wrong in some narrow sense.
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty” — that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Was Keats right or wrong? I would say he was neither, but that what he says at the end of his ode is worth thinking about in an open-ended way, to see where the train of thought it inspires leads. It is called contemplation and is thought by some to contribute to happiness.
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Latest posts by Frank Wilson (Posts [6])
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