"
Generalities are dangerous in proportion as they are witty or striking,
or both, and it may be asked whether the great Tolstoi has not fallen a
victim to his own extraordinary power of striking and witty
generalisations. Does the greatest of all his generalisations, the wide
disclaimer of his early opinions expressed in the postscript
subsequently attached by him to his _Kreutzer Sonata_, include also the
words I have quoted, and which were set up, so to say, as the theme of
his _Anna Karjenina_? One may almost hope so. I am no critic, but those
words somehow seem to me to mean that only unhappiness can be
interesting. It is not pleasant to think of the consequences to which
the acceptance of such a statement might lead.
There are no statistics to tell us whether the majority of living men
and women are to be considered as happy or unhappy. But it does seem
true that whereas a single circumstance can cause very great and lasting
unhappiness, felicity is always dependent upon more than one condition
and often upon so many as to make the explanation of it a highly
difficult and complicated matter.
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