17

NO HAPPINESS WITHOUT SADNESS: On the subject of happiness, I believe John Cowper Powys, the exponent of what has been called 'elementalism', makes a serious mistake in regarding thoughts as highly as he seems to, both with regard to the struggle against sadness and the cause of its outbreak in the first place, as defined, for example, in The Art of Happiness, one of his most accessible books. For is it not regularly the case that a person feels sad without having particularly gone out of his way to think himself into it, or to involve himself in hostile circumstances. That he feels sad simply because our metaphysical condition as men requires a degree of sadness, in order that we may remain integrated as human beings?

Now if this is so, how much more so is it the case when a person feels sad because he has a damn good reason to, since he can point to the fact that the weather is depressing, or his financial circumstances are unfavourable, or his health is poor, or his hopes on a particular subject have been dashed? Yet in a world where dualities, disparities, conflicts, and tensions are the very stuff of life, it would seem plausible to contend that sadness plays as legitimate a part in the birth of happiness as happiness in the death of sadness, and that we can no more aim for the one at the total exclusion of the other ... than hope to stay awake without getting any sleep!

Instead, therefore, of waging an all-out war on sadness, as some people would seem only too foolishly inclined to do, would it not be wiser to accept the condition for what it really is - namely the obverse side of a dualistic coin and, hence, the price we pay for our happiness. 'Yes, I am sad,' you say, 'but this sadness will subsequently give way to a degree of happiness which, through an unwritten law of my being, is largely a consequence of it.'