In his weekly Takimag column, our favorite doctor reflects on human misery and happiness, the folly of utopian schemes of intellectuals, and his own life experiences.

Intellectual utopian schemers are reluctant to accept the existence of a human propensity to self-destruction. Come the revolution—or rather, come their revolution, for no other will satisfy them—self-destruction will disappear from the range of human possibility because life will be so delightful that it will occur to no one to spoil it.