Spencer Heath Archive

Item 727

Pencil notes by Heath on 3X5 cards.

Sometime after 1936?

White envelope has items 727-730.

HAPPINESS

     Contentment comes from successful adjustment of the organism to external forces, to environment — Internal functioning.

     Happiness comes from building out of inner concep­tions new patterns in and adaptations of the environment to the organism. This is creative activity, the only positive happiness.

     It is the great function of society to lift men above mere adjustments of themselves to nature and into creative adaptation of nature to themselves. This creative activity comes to men only by association with each other with exchange of services and all that division and special­ization of labor that exchange makes possible. This is what distinguishes the artist from the drudge. Social organiza­tion will do its perfect work only when it has led all its members to function as divine artists creating beauty in the world.