The Happy Man 2

THE HAPPY MAN
By Somerset Maugham
William Somerset Maugham (1874-1966), a well-known English novelist, short-story writer, playwright and essayist, was the son of a British diplomat. He was educated at King's School in Canterbury, studied painting in Paris, went to Heidelberg University in Germany and studied to be a doctor at St. Thomas Hospital in England, Although Somerset Maugham did not denounce the contemporary social order, he was critical of the morals, the narrow-mindedness and hypocrisy of bourgeois society. It was his autobiographical novel "Of Human Bondage" (1915) and the novel "The Moon and Sixpence" (1919) based on the life of the French artist Paul Gauguin, that won him fame. Somerset Maugham was' also a master of the short story.
Somerset Maugham's style of writing is clear and precise. He does not impose his views on the reader. He puts a question and leaves it to the reader to answer it. When criticizing something he sounds rather amused than otherwise.
It is a dangerous thing to order the lives of others and I have often wondered at the self-confidence of the politicians, reformers and suchlike who are prepared to force upon their fellows measures that must alter their manners, habits, and points of view. I have always hesitated to give advice, for how can one advise another how to act unless one knows that other as well as one knows himself? Heaven knows, I know little enough of myself: I know nothing of others. We can only guess at the thoughts and emotions of our neighbours. Each one of us is a prisoner in a solitary tower and he communicates with the other prisoners, Who form mankind, by conventional signs that have not quite the same meaning for them as for himself. And life, unfortunately, is something that you can lead but once; mistakes are often irreparable, and who am I that I should tell this one and that how he should lead it? Life is a dif-
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ficult business and I have found it hard enough to make my own a complete and...