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From: Eisaman <blu...@el...> - 2009-09-03 16:58:11
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Of holiday goods. CLIMATE AND HAPPINESS The idea of the relation of climate to happiness is modern. It is probably born of the telegraph and of the possibility of rapid travel, and it is more disturbing to serenity of mind than any other. Providence had so ordered it that if we sat still in almost any region of the globe except the tropics we would have, in course of the year, almost all the kinds of climate that exist. The ancient societies did not trouble themselves about the matter; they froze or thawed, were hot or cold, as it pleased the gods. They did not think of fleeing from winter any more than from the summer solstice, and consequently they enjoyed a certain contentment of mind that is absent from modern life. We are more intelligent, and therefore more discontented and unhappy. We are always trying to escape winter when we are not trying to escape summer. We are half the time 'in transitu', flying hither and thither, craving that exact adaptation of the weather to our whimsical bodies promised only to the saints |