Alan Watts's second book, written in 1940, when he was 24 years old. He writes in the Preface to the second edition, "This book first appeared in the spring of 1940, at the very moment when the Second World War broke loose in all its violence. Despite the fact that ... its title gave it the outward appearance of a type of 'inspirational literature' far removed from its inner content... I have received repeated requests for its republication. I have hesitated to comply with this demand because in so many ways my ideas have gone far beyond the philosophy of a book written when I was only twenty-four years old... [But] the essential theme of this book is, for me, as valid and as important as ever... The point on which I have insisted in many different ways is, in brief, that this special and supreme order of happiness is not a result to be attained through action, but a fact to be realized through knowledge. The sphere of action is to express it, not to gain it."
