He was so completely carried away by this idea that everybody should participate in their joy that he went on talking for twenty minutes or more, roaming from one thing to another like a man sitting at the piano and improvising. He hadn’t a doubt in the world that we were all his friends, that we would listen to him in peace until he had had his say. Nothing he said sounded ridiculous, however sentimental his words may have been. He was utterly sincere, utterly genuine, and utterly possessed by the realization that to be happy is the greatest boon on earth. It wasn’t courage which had made him get up and address us, for obviously the thought of getting to his feet and delivering a long extemporaneous speech was as much of a surprise to him as it was to us. He was for the moment, and without knowing it, of course, on the way to becoming an Evangelist, that curious phenomenon of American life which has never been adequately explained. The men who have been touched by a vision, by an unknown voice, by an irresistible inner prompting—and there have been thousands upon thousands of them in our country—what must have been the sense of isolation in which they dwelled, and for how long, to suddenly rise up, as if out of a deep trance, and create for themselves a new identity, a new image of the world, a new God, a new heaven? We are accustomed to think of ourselves as a great democratic body, linked by common ties of blood and language, united indissolubly by all the modes of communication which the ingenuity of man can possibly devise; we wear the same clothes, eat the same diet, read the same newspapers, alike in everything but name, weight and number; we are the most collectivized people in the world, barring certain primitive peoples whom we consider backward in their development. And yet— yet despite all the outward evidences of being close-knit, inter-related, neighborly, good-humored, helpful, sympathetic, almost brotherly, we are a lonely people, a morbid, crazed herd thrashing about in zealous frenzy, trying to forget that we are not what we think we are, not really united, not really devoted to one another, not really listening, not really anything, just digits shuffled about by some unseen hand in a calculation which doesn’t concern us. Suddenly now and then some one comes awake, comes undone, as it were, from the meaningless glue in which we are stuck— the rigmarole which we call the everyday life and which is not life but a trance-like suspension above the great stream of life—and this person who, because he no longer subscribes to the general pattern seems to us quite mad, finds himself invested with strange and almost terrifying powers, finds that he can wean countless thousands from the fold, cut them loose from their moorings, stand them on their heads, fill them with joy, or madness, make them forsake, their own kith and kin, renounce their calling, change their character, their physiognomy, their very soul. And what is the nature of this overpowering seduction, this madness, this «temporary derangement,» as we love to call it? What else if not the hope of finding joy and peace? Every Evangelist uses a different language but they are all talking about the same thing. (To stop seeking, to stop struggling, to stop climbing on top of one another, to stop thrashing about in the pursuit of vain and vacillating goals.) In the twinkle of an eye it comes, the great secret which arrests the outer motion, which tranquilizes the spirit, which equilibrates, which brings serenity and ‘poise, and illumines the visage with a steady, quiet flame that never dies. In their efforts to communicate the secret they become a nuisance to us, true. We shun them because we feel that they look upon us condescendingly; we can’t bear to think that we are not the equal of any one, however superior he may seem to be. But we are not equals; we are mostly inferior, vastly inferior, inferior particularly to those who are quiet and contained, who are simple in their ways, and unshakeable in their beliefs. We resent what is steady and anchored, what is impervious to our blandishments, our logic, our collectivized cud of principles, our antiquated forms of allegiance.
A little more happiness, I thought to myself as I listened to him, and he’d become what is called a dangerous man. Dangerous, because to be permanently happy would be to set the world on fire. To make the world laugh is one thing; to make it happy is quite another. Nobody has ever succeeded in doing it. The great figures, those who have influenced the world for good or evil, have always been tragic figures. Even St. Francis of Assisi was a tormented being. And the Buddha, with his obsession to eliminate suffering, well he was not precisely a happy man. He was beyond that, if you like: he was serene, and when he died, so it is related, his whole body glowed as if the very marrow were afire.
And yet, as an experiment, as a preliminary (if you like) to that more wondrous state to which the holy men attain, it seems to me that it would be worth the attempt to make the whole world happy. I know that the very word (happiness) has come to have an odious ring, in America particularly; it sounds witless and shitless; it has an empty ring; it is the ideal of the weak and the infirm. It is a word borrowed from the Anglo-Saxons, and distorted by us into something altogether senseless. One is ashamed to use it seriously. But there is no good reason why it should be thus. Happiness is as legitimate as sorrow, and everybody, except those emancipated souls who in their wisdom have found something better, or bigger, desires to be happy and would, if he could (if he only knew how!), sacrifice everything to attain it.
I liked the young man’s speech, inane as it might appear on close scrutiny. Everybody liked it. Everybody liked him and his wife. Everybody felt better, more communicative, more relaxed, more liberated. It was as if he had given us all a shot in the arm. People spoke to one another across the tables, or got up and shook hands, or clapped one another on the back. Yes, if you happened to be a very serious person, concerned with the fate of the world, dedicated to some high purpose (such as improving the conditions of the working classes or lowering the rate of illiteracy among the native born), perhaps this little incident would seem to have assumed a thoroughly exaggerated importance. An open, universal display of unfeigned happiness gives some people an uncomfortable feeling; there are some people who prefer to be happy privately, who consider a public demonstration of their joy immodest or slightly obscene. Or perhaps they are simply so locked up in themselves that they can’t understand communion or communication. At any rate, there were no such tender souls among us; it was an average crowd made up of ordinary people, ordinary people who owned cars, that is to say. Some of them were downright rich and some were not so rich, but none of them were starving, none of them were epileptic, none of them were Mohammedan or Negroid or just plain white trash. They were ordinary, in the ordinary sense of the word. They were like millions of other American people, that is to say, without distinction, without airs, without any great purpose. Suddenly, when he had finished, they seemed to realize that they were all just like one another, no better no worse, and throwing off the petty restraints which kept them segregated in little groups, they rose indistinctively and began mingling with one another. Soon the drinks began to flow and they were singing, and then they began
