The-Conquest-of-Happiness-by-Bertrand-Russell

allude to the author by this name) If he could have
heard on the wireless the speech of the Queen of
Sheba to her subjects on her return from his
dominions, would it not have consoled him among
his futile trees and pools? If he could have had a
press-cutting agency to let him know what the
newspapers said about the beauty of his
architecture, the comforts of his harem, and the
discomfitures of rival sages in argument with him,
could he have gone on saying that there is no new
thing under the sun? It may be that these things
would not have wholly cured his pessimism, but he
would have had to give it a new expression.
Indeed, one of Mr Krutch’s complaints of our time
is that there are so many new things under the sun.
If either the absence or the presence of novelty is
equally annoying, it would hardly seem that either
could be the true cause of despair. Again, take the
fact that ‘all the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea
is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers
come, thither they return again’. Regarded as a
ground for pessimism, this assumes that travel is
unpleasant. People go to health resorts in the