The Joyful Heart | Page 9

fathers' chagrin if they are aware to-day of how
things have gone on in their republic. Perhaps they realize that the
possibility of exuberance has now become a special privilege. And if
they are still as wise as they once were, they will be doubly exasperated
by this state of affairs because they will see that it is needless. It has
been proved over and over again that modern machinery has removed
all real necessity for poverty and overwork. There is enough to go
'round. Under a more democratic system we might have enough of the
necessities and reasonable comforts of life to supply each of the
hundred million Americans, if every man did no more than a
wholesome amount of productive labor in a day and had the rest of his
time for constructive leisure and real living.
On the same terms there is likewise enough exuberance to go 'round.

The only obstacle to placing it within the reach of all exists in men's
minds. Men are still too inert and blindly conservative to stand up
together and decree that industry shall be no longer conducted for the
inordinate profit of the few, but for the use of the many. Until that day
comes, the possibility of exuberance will remain a special privilege.
In the mean while it is too bad that the favored classes do not make
more use of this privilege. It is absurd that such large numbers of them
are still as far from exuberance as the unprivileged. They keep reducing
their overplus of vitality to an under-minus of it by too much work and
too foolish play, by plain thinking and high living and the dissipation of
maintaining a pace too swift for their as yet unadjusted organisms.
They keep their house of life always a little chilly by opening the
windows before the furnace has had a chance to take the chill out of the
rooms.
If we would bring joy to the masses why not first vitalize the classes? If
the latter can be led to develop a fondness for that brimming cup which
is theirs for the asking, a long step will be taken toward the possibility
of overflowing life for all. The classes will come to realize that, even
from a selfish point of view, democracy is desirable; that because man
is a social animal, the best-being of the one is inseparable from the
best-being of the many; that no one can be perfectly exuberant until all
are exuberant. Jean Finot is right: "True happiness is so much the
greater and deeper in the proportion that it embraces and unites in a
fraternal chain more men, more countries, more worlds."
But the classes may also be moved by instincts less selfish. For the
brimming cup has this at least in common with the cup that inebriates:
its possessor is usually filled with a generous--if sometimes
maudlin--anxiety to have others enjoy his own form of beverage. The
present writer is a case in point. His reason for making this book lay in
a convivial desire to share with as many as possible the contents of a
newly acquired brimming cup. Before getting hold of this cup, the
writer would have looked with an indifferent and perhaps hostile eye
upon the proposition to make such a blessing generally available. But
now he cannot for the life of him see how any one whose body, mind,

and spirit are alive and reasonably healthy can help wishing the same
jolly good fortune for all mankind.
Horace Traubel records that the aged Walt Whitman was once talking
philosophy with some of his friends when an intensely bored youngster
slid down from his high chair and remarked to nobody in particular:
"There's too much old folk here for me!"
"For me, too," cried the poet with one of his hearty laughs. "We are all
of us a good deal older than we need to be, than we think we are. Let's
all get young again."
Even so! Here's to eternal youth for every one. And here's to the hour
when we may catch the eye of humanity and pledge all brother men in
the brimming cup.

III
ENTHUSIASM
Enthusiasm is exuberance-with-a-motive. It is the power that makes the
world go 'round. The old Greeks who christened it knew that it was the
god-energy in the human machine. Without its driving force nothing
worth doing has ever been done. It is man's dearest possession. Love,
friendship, religion, altruism, devotion to hobby or career--all these,
and most of the other good things in life, are forms of enthusiasm. A
medicine for the most diverse ills, it alleviates both the pains of poverty
and the boredom of riches. Apart from it man's heart is seldom joyful.
Therefore it should be husbanded