I came across George Ramsay's 1843 book on the nature of happiness when I was working on a research project in the library stacks at Ohio State University. The pages were discolored and brittle from more than 150 years of exposure to the elements, but I did my best to read as much as I could. The following passage caught my attention:

I have pondered the meaning of these words for years. I now suspect that George Ramsay — an obscure, nineteenth-century professor of philosophy at Oxford University in England — had unlocked the psychological secrets of long-term relationships. His idea of “self-hugging,” I now believe, explains why people with opposite pursuits tend to misunderstand each other and quarrel repeatedly.

Self-hugging is a natural tendency to think that our values are best, not just for us, but potentially for everyone. When people learn that a particular lifestyle makes them happy, they think they have learned something about human nature, when in reality they have only learned something about themselves.