THE DEGREE OF HAPPINESS by BETRAND RUSSELL

Bertrand Arthur William Russell was born at Trelleck on 18th

May, 1872 and was educated at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. He was a British philosopher, mathematician,logician,historian and also social critic.

Betrand Russell

       He has shared his opinions and thought about happiness  in article title "The Degree Of Happiness". Actually, this article was an excerpt from his own book named “The Conquest of Happiness”.

The Conquest of Happiness 's book

      In this article, Russell said that happiness can be divided into two sorts. Firstly, happiness is open to any human being. Secondly, happiness is opened to those who can read or write. He also has included his childhood memories in this article as an example. When Russell was still a young boy, he knew a man whose business was digging wells was bursting with happiness. But, in the year of 1885, when that man got a vote for parliament, he learnt for the first time that happiness was not only depends on intellectual sources but also based on the physical vigor.  The meaning of this physical vigor is sufficiency of work and the overcoming of not insuperable obstacles in the shape of a rock.

       Then, Russell also claimed that there was other sort of happiness which are scientist and artist.  He said that the happiest people of the present day are the men of science. Many of them are emotionally simple and they can simply  obtain satisfaction through their work so profound that they can derive pleasure from eating and even marrying. It is really different from the art people who found the hardship in finding a happiness. For instance, if the public cannot understand the picture or a poem that was produced by them, public can just conclude that the picture or a poem as a bad one. Thus, these circumstances prove that artists are less happy than scientists because they are having a difficulty in choosing between being despised and being despicable.

Be happy wherever and whenever you are :)

        As conclusion, this article discussed about why some group of people easy to find happiness in their life, while some group of them not face the same situation. It seems that everyone has different degree of happiness in their life. Happiness is a feeling and  it cannot be determined through someone’s position and wealth.

       In my opinion,this article is quite difficult to understand because the writer himself wrote many kind of advanced words in sharing his opinions about happiness with the readers. However, those kind of advanced words are actually very helpful since I can use it in my future essay. In any case, this article still is an interesting article.