Is there anybody in this world who is truly happy? There was a Peanuts cartoon years ago in which Lucy asked Charlie Brown if he has ever known anybody who was really happy. Before she could finish her sentence, however, Snoopy the precocious beagle came dancing on tip-toe into the frame, his nose high in the air. He danced and bounced his way across two frames of the cartoon strip. Finally, in the last frame, Lucy finished her sentence, “Have you ever known anybody who was really happy and was still in their right mind?”

Some years back the editors of Psychology Today magazine sent questionnaires to fifty-two thousand subscribers in an effort to determine what makes people happy. One subscriber wrote back and asked to see the results of the survey. “I think I am happy,” he wrote. “Would …