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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mental Efficiency, by Arnold Bennett
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mental Efficiency
+       And Other Hints to Men and Women
+
+Author: Arnold Bennett
+
+Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23347]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MENTAL EFFICIENCY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Jeannie Howse and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                       |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For     |
+    | a complete list, please see the end of this document.     |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+MENTAL EFFICIENCY
+
+
+
+
+         +--------------------------------------------+
+         |             BY ARNOLD BENNETT              |
+         |                                            |
+         |                  _Novels_                  |
+         |                                            |
+         |            THE OLD WIVES' TALE             |
+         |          HELEN WITH THE HIGH HAND          |
+         |            THE BOOK OF CARLOTTA            |
+         |                BURIED ALIVE                |
+         |                A GREAT MAN                 |
+         |                  LEONORA                   |
+         |            WHOM GOD HATH JOINED            |
+         |            A MAN FROM THE NORTH            |
+         |           ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS           |
+         |                THE GLIMPSE                 |
+         |                                            |
+         |           _Pocket Philosophies_            |
+         |                                            |
+         |       HOW TO LIVE ON 24 HOURS A DAY        |
+         |             THE HUMAN MACHINE              |
+         |               LITERARY TASTE               |
+         |             MENTAL EFFICIENCY              |
+         |                                            |
+         |              _Miscellaneous_               |
+         |                                            |
+         |       CUPID AND COMMONSENSE: A Play        |
+         |       WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS: A Play        |
+         |         THE TRUTH ABOUT AN AUTHOR          |
+         |          THE FEAST OF ST. FRIEND           |
+         |                                            |
+         |          GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY           |
+         |                  NEW YORK                  |
+         +--------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+MENTAL EFFICIENCY
+
+AND OTHER HINTS
+TO
+MEN AND WOMEN
+
+BY
+
+ARNOLD BENNETT
+
+Author of "How to Live on 24 Hours a Day"
+"The Old Wives' Tale," etc.
+
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+PUBLISHERS           NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1911
+By George H. Doran Company
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                             Page
+
+I. Mental Efficiency                                            7
+    The Appeal                                                  7
+    The Replies                                                13
+    The Cure                                                   19
+    Mental Calisthenics                                        24
+
+II. Expressing One's Individuality                             32
+
+III. Breaking with the Past                                    39
+
+IV. Settling Down in Life                                      45
+
+V. Marriage                                                    53
+    The Duty of It                                             53
+    The Adventure of It                                        59
+    The Two Ways of It                                         65
+
+VI. Books                                                      72
+    The Physical Side                                          72
+    The Philosophy of Book Buying                              78
+
+VII. Success                                                   84
+    Candid Remarks                                             84
+    The Successful and the Unsuccessful                        91
+    The Inwardness of Success                                  97
+
+VIII. The Petty Artificialities                               104
+
+IX. The Secret of Content                                     112
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+MENTAL EFFICIENCY
+
+
+THE APPEAL
+
+If there is any virtue in advertisements--and a journalist should be
+the last person to say that there is not--the American nation is
+rapidly reaching a state of physical efficiency of which the world has
+probably not seen the like since Sparta. In all the American
+newspapers and all the American monthlies are innumerable illustrated
+announcements of "physical-culture specialists," who guarantee to make
+all the organs of the body perform their duties with the mighty
+precision of a 60 h.p. motor-car that never breaks down. I saw a book
+the other day written by one of these specialists, to show how perfect
+health could be attained by devoting a quarter of an hour a day to
+certain exercises. The advertisements multiply and increase in size.
+They cost a great deal of money. Therefore they must bring in a great
+deal of business. Therefore vast numbers of people must be worried
+about the non-efficiency of their bodies, and on the way to achieve
+efficiency. In our more modest British fashion, we have the same
+phenomenon in England. And it is growing. Our muscles are growing
+also. Surprise a man in his bedroom of a morning, and you will find
+him lying on his back on the floor, or standing on his head, or
+whirling clubs, in pursuit of physical efficiency. I remember that
+once I "went in" for physical efficiency myself. I, too, lay on the
+floor, my delicate epidermis separated from the carpet by only the
+thinnest of garments, and I contorted myself according to the fifteen
+diagrams of a large chart (believed to be the _magna charta_ of
+physical efficiency) daily after shaving. In three weeks my collars
+would not meet round my prize-fighter's neck; my hosier reaped immense
+profits, and I came to the conclusion that I had carried physical
+efficiency quite far enough.
+
+A strange thing--was it not?--that I never had the idea of devoting a
+quarter of an hour a day after shaving to the pursuit of mental
+efficiency. The average body is a pretty complicated affair, sadly
+out of order, but happily susceptible to culture. The average mind is
+vastly more complicated, not less sadly out of order, but perhaps even
+more susceptible to culture. We compare our arms to the arms of the
+gentleman illustrated in the physical efficiency advertisement, and we
+murmur to ourselves the classic phrase: "This will never do." And we
+set about developing the muscles of our arms until we can show them
+off (through a frock coat) to women at afternoon tea. But it does not,
+perhaps, occur to us that the mind has its muscles, and a lot of
+apparatus besides, and that these invisible, yet paramount, mental
+organs are far less efficient than they ought to be; that some of them
+are atrophied, others starved, others out of shape, etc. A man of
+sedentary occupation goes for a very long walk on Easter Monday, and
+in the evening is so exhausted that he can scarcely eat. He wakes up
+to the inefficiency of his body, caused by his neglect of it, and he
+is so shocked that he determines on remedial measures. Either he will
+walk to the office, or he will play golf, or he will execute the
+post-shaving exercises. But let the same man after a prolonged
+sedentary course of newspapers, magazines, and novels, take his mind
+out for a stiff climb among the rocks of a scientific, philosophic, or
+artistic subject. What will he do? Will he stay out all day, and
+return in the evening too tired even to read his paper? Not he. It is
+ten to one that, finding himself puffing for breath after a quarter of
+an hour, he won't even persist till he gets his second wind, but will
+come back at once. Will he remark with genuine concern that his mind
+is sadly out of condition and that he really must do something to get
+it into order? Not he. It is a hundred to one that he will tranquilly
+accept the _status quo_, without shame and without very poignant
+regret. Do I make my meaning clear?
+
+I say, without a _very poignant_ regret, because a certain vague
+regret is indubitably caused by realizing that one is handicapped by a
+mental inefficiency which might, without too much difficulty, be
+cured. That vague regret exudes like a vapour from the more cultivated
+section of the public. It is to be detected everywhere, and especially
+among people who are near the half-way house of life. They perceive
+the existence of immense quantities of knowledge, not the smallest
+particle of which will they ever make their own. They stroll forth
+from their orderly dwellings on a starlit night, and feel dimly the
+wonder of the heavens. But the still small voice is telling them that,
+though they have read in a newspaper that there are fifty thousand
+stars in the Pleiades, they cannot even point to the Pleiades in the
+sky. How they would like to grasp the significance of the nebular
+theory, the most overwhelming of all theories! And the years are
+passing; and there are twenty-four hours in every day, out of which
+they work only six or seven; and it needs only an impulse, an effort,
+a system, in order gradually to cure the mind of its slackness, to
+give "tone" to its muscles, and to enable it to grapple with the
+splendours of knowledge and sensation that await it! But the regret is
+not poignant enough. They do nothing. They go on doing nothing. It is
+as though they passed for ever along the length of an endless table
+filled with delicacies, and could not stretch out a hand to seize. Do
+I exaggerate? Is there not deep in the consciousness of most of us a
+mournful feeling that our minds are like the liver of the
+advertisement--sluggish, and that for the sluggishness of our minds
+there is the excuse neither of incompetence, nor of lack of time, nor
+of lack of opportunity, nor of lack of means?
+
+Why does not some mental efficiency specialist come forward and show
+us how to make our minds do the work which our minds are certainly
+capable of doing? I do not mean a quack. All the physical efficiency
+specialists who advertise largely are not quacks. Some of them achieve
+very genuine results. If a course of treatment can be devised for the
+body, a course of treatment can be devised for the mind. Thus we might
+realize some of the ambitions which all of us cherish in regard to the
+utilization in our spare time of that magnificent machine which we
+allow to rust within our craniums. We have the desire to perfect
+ourselves, to round off our careers with the graces of knowledge and
+taste. How many people would not gladly undertake some branch of
+serious study, so that they might not die under the reproach of having
+lived and died without ever really having known anything about
+anything! It is not the absence of desire that prevents them. It is,
+first, the absence of will-power--not the will to begin, but the will
+to continue; and, second, a mental apparatus which is out of
+condition, "puffy," "weedy," through sheer neglect. The remedy, then,
+divides itself into two parts, the cultivation of will-power, and the
+getting into condition of the mental apparatus. And these two branches
+of the cure must be worked concurrently.
+
+I am sure that the considerations which I have presented to you must
+have already presented themselves to tens of thousands of my readers,
+and that thousands must have attempted the cure. I doubt not that many
+have succeeded. I shall deem it a favour if those readers who have
+interested themselves in the question will communicate to me at once
+the result of their experience, whatever its outcome. I will make such
+use as I can of the letters I receive, and afterwards I will give my
+own experience.
+
+
+THE REPLIES
+
+The correspondence which I have received in answer to my appeal shows
+that at any rate I did not overstate the case. There is, among a vast
+mass of reflecting people in this country, a clear consciousness of
+being mentally less than efficient, and a strong (though ineffective)
+desire that such mental inefficiency should cease to be. The desire is
+stronger than I had imagined, but it does not seem to have led to
+much hitherto. And that "course of treatment for the mind," by means
+of which we are to "realize some of the ambitions which all of us
+cherish in regard to the utilization in our spare time of the
+magnificent machine which we allow to rust within our craniums"--that
+desiderated course of treatment has not apparently been devised by
+anybody. The Sandow of the brain has not yet loomed up above the
+horizon. On the other hand, there appears to be a general expectancy
+that I personally am going to play the rôle of the Sandow of the
+brain. Vain thought!
+
+I have been very much interested in the letters, some of which, as a
+statement of the matter in question, are admirable. It is perhaps not
+surprising that the best of them come from women--for (genius apart)
+woman is usually more touchingly lyrical than man in the yearning for
+the ideal. The most enthusiastic of all the letters I have received,
+however, is from a gentleman whose notion is that we should be
+hypnotised into mental efficiency. After advocating the establishment
+of "an institution of practical psychology from whence there can be
+graduated fit and proper people whose efforts would be in the
+direction of the subconscious mental mechanism of the child or even
+the adult," this hypnotist proceeds: "Between the academician, whose
+specialty is an inconsequential cobweb, the medical man who has got it
+into his head that he is the logical foster-father for psychonomical
+matters, and the blatant 'professor' who deals with monkey tricks on a
+few somnambules on the music-hall stage, you are allowing to go
+unrecognized one of the most potent factors of mental development." Am
+I? I have not the least idea what this gentleman means, but I can
+assure him that he is wrong. I can make more sense out of the remarks
+of another correspondent who, utterly despising the things of the
+mind, compares a certain class of young men to "a halfpenny bloater
+with the roe out," and asserts that he himself "got out of the groove"
+by dint of having to unload ten tons of coal in three hours and a half
+every day during several years. This is interesting and it is
+constructive, but it is just a little beside the point.
+
+A lady, whose optimism is indicated by her pseudonym, "Espérance,"
+puts her finger on the spot, or, rather, on one of the spots, in a
+very sensible letter. "It appears to me," she says, "that the great
+cause of mental inefficiency is lack of concentration, perhaps
+especially in the case of women. I can trace my chief failures to this
+cause. Concentration, is a talent. It may be in a measure cultivated,
+but it needs to be inborn.... The greater number of us are in a state
+of semi-slumber, with minds which are only exerted to one-half of
+their capability." I thoroughly agree that inability to concentrate is
+one of the chief symptoms of the mental machine being out of
+condition. "Espérance's" suggested cure is rather drastic. She says:
+"Perhaps one of the best cures for mental sedentariness is arithmetic,
+for there is nothing else which requires greater power of
+concentration." Perhaps arithmetic might be an effective cure, but it
+is not a practical cure, because no one, or scarcely any one, would
+practise it. I cannot imagine the plain man who, having a couple of
+hours to spare of a night, and having also the sincere desire but not
+the will-power to improve his taste and knowledge, would deliberately
+sit down and work sums by way of preliminary mental calisthenics. As
+Ibsen's puppet said: "People don't do these things." Why do they not?
+The answer is: Simply because they won't; simply because human nature
+will not run to it. "Espérance's" suggestion of learning poetry is
+slightly better.
+
+Certainly the best letter I have had is from Miss H. D. She says:
+"This idea [to avoid the reproach of 'living and dying without ever
+really knowing anything about anything'] came to me of itself from
+somewhere when I was a small girl. And looking back I fancy that the
+thought itself spurred me to do something in this world, to get into
+line with people who did things--people who painted pictures, wrote
+books, built bridges, or did something beyond the ordinary. This only
+has seemed to me, all my life since, worth while." Here I must
+interject that such a statement is somewhat sweeping. In fact, it
+sweeps a whole lot of fine and legitimate ambitions straight into the
+rubbish heap of the Not-worth-while. I think the writer would wish to
+modify it. She continues: "And when the day comes in which I have not
+done some serious reading, however small the measure, or some writing
+... or I have been too sad or dull to notice the brightness of colour
+of the sun, of grass and flowers, of the sea, or the moonlight on the
+water, I think the day ill-spent. So I must think the _incentive_ to
+do a little each day beyond the ordinary towards the real culture of
+the mind, is the beginning of the cure of mental inefficiency." This
+is very ingenious and good. Further: "The day comes when the mental
+habit has become a part of our life, and we value mental work for the
+work's sake." But I am not sure about that. For myself, I have never
+valued work for its own sake, and I never shall. And I only value such
+mental work for the more full and more intense consciousness of being
+alive which it gives me.
+
+Miss H. D.'s remedies are vague. As to lack of will-power, "the first
+step is to realize your weakness; the next step is to have ordinary
+shame that you are defective." I doubt, I gravely doubt, if these
+steps would lead to anything definite. Nor is this very helpful: "I
+would advise reading, observing, writing. I would advise the use of
+every sense and every faculty by which we at last learn the sacredness
+of life." This is begging the question. If people, by merely wishing
+to do so, could regularly and seriously read, observe, write, and use
+every faculty and sense, there would be very little mental
+inefficiency. I see that I shall be driven to construct a programme
+out of my own bitter and ridiculous experiences.
+
+
+THE CURE
+
+    "But tasks in hours of insight willed
+    Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled."
+
+The above lines from Matthew Arnold are quoted by one of my very
+numerous correspondents to support a certain optimism in this matter
+of a systematic attempt to improve the mind. They form part of a
+beautiful and inspiring poem, but I gravely fear that they run counter
+to the vast mass of earthly experience. More often than not I have
+found that a task willed in some hour of insight can _not_ be
+fulfilled through hours of gloom. No, no, and no! To will is easy: it
+needs but the momentary bright contagion of a stronger spirit than
+one's own. To fulfil, morning after morning, or evening after evening,
+through months and years--this is the very dickens, and there is not
+one of my readers that will not agree with me. Yet such is the elastic
+quality of human nature that most of my correspondents are quite ready
+to ignore the sad fact and to demand at once: "what shall we will?
+Tell us what we must will." Some seem to think that they have solved
+the difficulty when they have advocated certain systems of memory and
+mind-training. Such systems may be in themselves useful or
+useless--the evidence furnished to me is contradictory--but were they
+perfect systems, a man cannot be intellectually born again merely by
+joining a memory-class. The best system depends utterly on the man's
+power of resolution. And what really counts is not the system, but the
+spirit in which the man handles it. Now, the proper spirit can only be
+induced by a careful consideration and realization of the man's
+conditions--the limitations of his temperament, the strength of
+adverse influences, and the lessons of his past.
+
+Let me take an average case. Let me take your case, O man or woman of
+thirty, living in comfort, with some cares, and some responsibilities,
+and some pretty hard daily work, but not too much of any! The question
+of mental efficiency is in the air. It interests you. It touches you
+nearly. Your conscience tells you that your mind is less active and
+less informed than it might be. You suddenly spring up from the
+garden-seat, and you say to yourself that you will take your mind in
+hand and do something with it. Wait a moment. Be so good as to sink
+back into that garden-seat and clutch that tennis racket a little
+longer. You have had these "hours of insight" before, you know. You
+have not arrived at the age of thirty without having tried to carry
+out noble resolutions--and failed. What precautions are you going to
+take against failure this time? For your will is probably no stronger
+now than it was aforetime. You have admitted and accepted failure in
+the past. And no wound is more cruel to the spirit of resolve than
+that dealt by failure. You fancy the wound closed, but just at the
+critical moment it may reopen and mortally bleed you. What are your
+precautions? Have you thought of them? No. You have not.
+
+I have not the pleasure of your acquaintance. But I know you because I
+know myself. Your failure in the past was due to one or more of three
+causes. And the first was that you undertook too much at the
+beginning. You started off with a magnificent programme. You are
+something of an expert in physical exercises--you would be ashamed
+not to be, in these physical days--and so you would never attempt a
+hurdle race or an uninterrupted hour's club-whirling without some
+preparation. The analogy between the body and the mind ought to have
+struck you. _This_ time, please do not form an elaborate programme. Do
+not form any programme. Simply content yourself with a preliminary
+canter, a ridiculously easy preliminary canter. For example (and I
+give this merely as an example), you might say to yourself: "Within
+one month from this date I will read twice Herbert Spencer's little
+book on 'Education'--sixpence--and will make notes in pencil inside
+the back cover of the things that particularly strike me." You remark
+that that is nothing, that you can do it "on your head," and so on.
+Well, do it. When it is done you will at any rate possess the
+satisfaction of having resolved to do something and having done it.
+Your mind will have gained tone and healthy pride. You will be even
+justified in setting yourself some kind of a simple programme to
+extend over three months. And you will have acquired some general
+principles by the light of which to construct the programme. But best
+of all, you will have avoided failure, that dangerous wound.
+
+The second possible cause of previous failure was the disintegrating
+effect on the will-power of the ironic, superior smile of friends.
+Whenever a man "turns over a new leaf" he has this inane giggle to
+face. The drunkard may be less ashamed of getting drunk than of
+breaking to a crony the news that he has signed the pledge. Strange,
+but true! And human nature must be counted with. Of course, on a few
+stern spirits the effect of that smile is merely to harden the
+resolution. But on the majority its influence is deleterious.
+Therefore don't go and nail your flag to the mast. Don't raise any
+flag. Say nothing. Work as unobtrusively as you can. When you have won
+a battle or two you can begin to wave the banner, and then you will
+find that that miserable, pitiful, ironic, superior smile will die
+away ere it is born.
+
+The third possible cause was that you did not rearrange your day.
+Idler and time-waster though you have been, still you had done
+_something_ during the twenty-four hours. You went to work with a kind
+of dim idea that there were twenty-six hours in every day. _Something
+large and definite has to be dropped._ Some space in the rank jungle
+of the day has to be cleared and swept up for the new operations.
+Robbing yourself of sleep won't help you, nor trying to "squeeze in" a
+time for study between two other times. Use the knife, and use it
+freely. If you mean to read or think half an hour a day, arrange for
+an hour. A hundred per cent. margin is not too much for a beginner. Do
+you ask me where the knife is to be used? I should say that in nine
+cases out of ten the rites of the cult of the body might be
+abbreviated. I recently spent a week-end in a London suburb, and I was
+staggered by the wholesale attention given to physical recreation in
+all its forms. It was a gigantic debauch of the muscles on every side.
+It shocked me. "Poor withering mind!" I thought. "Cricket, and
+football, and boating, and golf, and tennis have their 'seasons,' but
+not thou!" These considerations are general and prefatory. Now I must
+come to detail.
+
+
+MENTAL CALISTHENICS
+
+I have dealt with the state of mind in which one should begin a
+serious effort towards mental efficiency, and also with the probable
+causes of failure in previous efforts. We come now to what I may call
+the calisthenics of the business, exercises which may be roughly
+compared to the technical exercises necessary in learning to play a
+musical instrument. It is curious that a person studying a musical
+instrument will have no false shame whatever in doing mere exercises
+for the fingers and wrists while a person who is trying to get his
+mind into order will almost certainly experience a false shame in
+going through performances which are undoubtedly good for him. Herein
+lies one of the great obstacles to mental efficiency. Tell a man that
+he should join a memory class, and he will hum and haw, and say, as I
+have already remarked, that memory isn't everything; and, in short, he
+won't join the memory class, partly from indolence, I grant, but more
+from false shame. (Is not this true?) He will even hesitate about
+learning things by heart. Yet there are few mental exercises better
+than learning great poetry or prose by heart. Twenty lines a week for
+six months: what a "cure" for debility! The chief, but not the only,
+merit of learning by heart as an exercise is that it compels the mind
+to concentrate. And the most important preliminary to self-development
+is the faculty of concentrating at will. Another excellent exercise is
+to read a page of no-matter-what, and then immediately to write
+down--in one's own words or in the author's--one's full recollection
+of it. A quarter of an hour a day! No more! And it works like magic.
+
+This brings me to the department of writing. I am a writer by
+profession; but I do not think I have any prejudices in favour of the
+exercise of writing. Indeed, I say to myself every morning that if
+there is one exercise in the world which I hate, it is the exercise of
+writing. But I must assert that in my opinion the exercise of writing
+is an indispensable part of any genuine effort towards mental
+efficiency. I don't care much what you write, so long as you compose
+sentences and achieve continuity. There are forty ways of writing in
+an unprofessional manner, and they are all good. You may keep "a full
+diary," as Mr. Arthur Christopher Benson says he does. This is one of
+the least good ways. Diaries, save in experienced hands like those of
+Mr. Benson, are apt to get themselves done with the very minimum of
+mental effort. They also tend to an exaggeration of egotism, and if
+they are left lying about they tend to strife. Further, one never
+knows when one may not be compelled to produce them in a court of
+law. A journal is better. Do not ask me to define the difference
+between a journal and a diary. I will not and I cannot. It is a
+difference that one feels instinctively. A diary treats exclusively of
+one's self and one's doings; a journal roams wider, and notes whatever
+one has observed of interest. A diary relates that one had lobster
+mayonnaise for dinner and rose the next morning with a headache,
+doubtless attributable to mental strain. A journal relates that
+Mrs. ----, whom one took into dinner, had brown eyes, and an agreeable
+trick of throwing back her head after asking a question, and gives her
+account of her husband's strange adventures in Colorado, etc. A diary
+is
+
+    All I, I, I, I, itself I
+
+(to quote a line of the transcendental poetry of Mary Baker G. Eddy).
+A journal is the large spectacle of life. A journal may be special or
+general. I know a man who keeps a journal of all cases of current
+superstition which he actually encounters. He began it without the
+slightest suspicion that he was beginning a document of astounding
+interest and real scientific value; but such was the fact. In default
+of a diary or a journal, one may write essays (provided one has the
+moral courage); or one may simply make notes on the book one reads. Or
+one may construct anthologies of passages which have made an
+individual and particular appeal to one's tastes. Anthology
+construction is one of the pleasantest hobbies that a person who is
+not mad about golf and bridge--that is to say, a thinking person--can
+possibly have; and I recommend it to those who, discreetly mistrusting
+their power to keep up a fast pace from start to finish, are anxious
+to begin their intellectual course gently and mildly. In any event,
+writing--the act of writing--is vital to almost any scheme. I would
+say it was vital to every scheme, without exception, were I not sure
+that some kind correspondent would instantly point out a scheme to
+which writing was obviously not vital.
+
+After writing comes thinking. (The sequence may be considered odd, but
+I adhere to it.) In this connexion I cannot do better than quote an
+admirable letter which I have received from a correspondent who wishes
+to be known only as "An Oxford Lecturer." The italics (except the
+last) are mine, not his. He says: "Till a man has got his physical
+brain completely under his control--_suppressing its too-great
+receptivity, its tendencies to reproduce idly the thoughts of others,
+and to be swayed by every passing gust of emotion_--I hold that he
+cannot do a tenth part of the work that he would then be able to
+perform with little or no effort. Moreover, work apart, he has not
+entered upon his kingdom, and unlimited possibilities of future
+development are barred to him. Mental efficiency can be gained by
+constant practice in meditation--i.e., by concentrating the mind, say,
+for but ten minutes daily, but with absolute regularity, on some of
+the highest thoughts of which it is capable. Failures will be
+frequent, but they must be regarded with simple indifference and
+dogged perseverance in the path chosen. If that path be followed
+_without intermission_ even for a few weeks the results will speak for
+themselves." I thoroughly agree with what this correspondent says, and
+am obliged to him for having so ably stated the case. But I regard
+such a practice of meditation as he indicates as being rather an
+"advanced" exercise for a beginner. After the beginner has got under
+way, and gained a little confidence in his strength of purpose, and
+acquired the skill to define his thoughts sufficiently to write them
+down--then it would be time enough, in my view, to undertake what "An
+Oxford Lecturer" suggests. By the way, he highly recommends Mrs. Annie
+Besant's book, _Thought Power: Its Control and Culture_. He says that
+it treats the subject with scientific clearness, and gives a practical
+method of training the mind, I endorse the latter part of the
+statement.
+
+So much for the more or less technical processes of stirring the mind
+from its sloth and making it exactly obedient to the aspirations of
+the soul. And here I close. Numerous correspondents have asked me to
+outline a course of reading for them. In other words, they have asked
+me to particularize for them the aspirations of their souls. My
+subject, however, was not self-development My subject was mental
+efficiency as a means to self-development. Of course, one can only
+acquire mental efficiency in the actual effort of self-development.
+But I was concerned, not with the choice of route; rather with the
+manner of following the route. You say to me that I am busying myself
+with the best method of walking, and refusing to discuss where to go.
+Precisely. One man cannot tell another man where the other man wants
+to go.
+
+If he can't himself decide on a goal he may as well curl up and
+expire, for the root of the matter is not in him. I will content
+myself with pointing out that the entire universe is open for
+inspection. Too many people fancy that self-development means
+literature. They associate the higher life with an intimate knowledge
+of the life of Charlotte Brontë, or the order of the plays of
+Shakespeare. The higher life may just as well be butterflies, or
+funeral customs, or county boundaries, or street names, or mosses, or
+stars, or slugs, as Charlotte Brontë or Shakespeare. Choose what
+interests you. Lots of finely-organized, mentally-efficient persons
+can't read Shakespeare at any price, and if you asked them who was the
+author of _The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_ they might proudly answer
+Emily Brontë, if they didn't say they never heard of it. An accurate
+knowledge of _any_ subject, coupled with a carefully nurtured sense of
+the relativity of that subject to other subjects, implies an enormous
+self-development. With this hint I conclude.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+EXPRESSING ONE'S INDIVIDUALITY
+
+
+A most curious and useful thing to realize is that one never knows the
+impression one is creating on other people. One may often guess pretty
+accurately whether it is good, bad, or indifferent--some people render
+it unnecessary for one to guess, they practically inform one--but that
+is not what I mean. I mean much more than that. I mean that one has
+one's self no mental picture corresponding to the mental picture which
+one's personality leaves in the minds of one's friends. Has it ever
+struck you that there is a mysterious individual going around, walking
+the streets, calling at houses for tea, chatting, laughing, grumbling,
+arguing, and that all your friends know him and have long since added
+him up and come to a definite conclusion about him--without saying
+more than a chance, cautious word to you; and that that person is
+_you_? Supposing that _you_ came into a drawing-room where you were
+having tea, do you think you would recognize yourself as an
+individuality? I think not. You would be apt to say to yourself, as
+guests do when disturbed in drawing-rooms by other guests: "Who's this
+chap? Seems rather queer, I hope he won't be a bore." And your first
+telling would be slightly hostile. Why, even when you meet yourself in
+an unsuspected mirror in the very clothes that you have put on that
+very day and that you know by heart, you are almost always shocked by
+the realization that you are you. And now and then, when you have gone
+to the glass to arrange your hair in the full sobriety of early
+morning, have you not looked on an absolute stranger, and has not that
+stranger piqued your curiosity? And if it is thus with precise
+external details of form, colour, and movement, what may it not be
+with the vague complex effect of the mental and moral individuality?
+
+A man honestly tries to make a good impression. What is the result?
+The result merely is that his friends, in the privacy of their minds,
+set him down as a man who tries to make a good impression. If much
+depends on the result of a single interview, or a couple of
+interviews, a man may conceivably force another to accept an
+impression of himself which he would like to convey. But if the
+receiver of the impression is to have time at his disposal, then the
+giver of the impression may just as well sit down and put his hands in
+his pockets, for nothing that he can do will modify or influence in
+any way the impression that he will ultimately give. The real impress
+is, in the end, given unconsciously, not consciously; and further, it
+is received unconsciously, not consciously. It depends partly on both
+persons. And it is immutably fixed beforehand. There can be no final
+deception. Take the extreme case, that of the mother and her son. One
+hears that the son hoodwinks his mother. Not he! If he is cruel,
+neglectful, overbearing, she is perfectly aware of it. He does not
+deceive her, and she does not deceive herself. I have often thought:
+If a son could look into a mother's heart, what an eye-opener he would
+have! "What!" he would cry. "This cold, impartial judgment, this keen
+vision for my faults, this implacable memory of little slights, and
+injustices, and callousnesses committed long ago, in the breast of my
+mother!" Yes, my friend, in the breast of your mother. The only
+difference between your mother and another person is that she takes
+you as you are, and loves you for what you are. She isn't blind: do
+not imagine it.
+
+The marvel is, not that people are such bad judges of character, but
+that they are such good judges, especially of what I may call
+fundamental character. The wiliest person cannot for ever conceal his
+fundamental character from the simplest. And people are very stern
+judges, too. Think of your best friends--are you oblivious of their
+defects? On the contrary, you are perhaps too conscious of them. When
+you summon them before your mind's eye, it is no ideal creation that
+you see. When you meet them and talk to them you are constantly making
+reservations in their disfavour--unless, of course, you happen to be a
+schoolgirl gushing over like a fountain with enthusiasm. It is well,
+when one is judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with
+the same godlike and superior impartiality. It is well to grasp the
+fact that you are going through life under the scrutiny of a band of
+acquaintances who are subject to very few illusions about you, whose
+views of you are, indeed, apt to be harsh and even cruel. Above all
+it is advisable to comprehend thoroughly that the things in your
+individuality which annoy your friends most are the things of which
+you are completely unconscious. It is not until years have passed that
+one begins to be able to form a dim idea of what one has looked like
+to one's friends. At forty one goes back ten years, and one says
+sadly, but with a certain amusement: "I must have been pretty blatant
+then. I can see how I must have exasperated 'em. And yet I hadn't the
+faintest notion of it at the time. My intentions were of the best.
+Only I didn't know enough." And one recollects some particularly crude
+action, and kicks one's self.... Yes, that is all very well; and the
+enlightenment which has come with increasing age is exceedingly
+satisfactory. But you are forty now. What shall you be saying of
+yourself at fifty? Such reflections foster humility, and they foster
+also a reluctance, which it is impossible to praise too highly, to
+tread on other people's toes.
+
+A moment ago I used the phrase "fundamental character." It is a
+reminiscence of Stevenson's phrase "fundamental decency." And it is
+the final test by which one judges one's friends. "After all, he's a
+decent fellow." We must be able to use that formula concerning our
+friends. Kindliness of heart is not the greatest of human
+qualities--and its general effect on the progress of the world is not
+entirely beneficent--but it is the greatest of human qualities in
+friendship. It is the least dispensable quality. We come back to it
+with relief from more brilliant qualities. And it has the great
+advantage of always going with a broad mind. Narrow-minded people are
+never kind-hearted. You may be inclined to dispute this statement:
+please think it over; I am inclined to uphold it.
+
+We can forgive the absence of any quality except kindliness of heart.
+And when a man lacks that, we blame him, we will not forgive him. This
+is, of course, scandalous. A man is born as he is born. And he can as
+easily add a cubit to his stature as add kindliness to his heart. The
+feat never has been done, and never will be done. And yet we blame
+those who have not kindliness. We have the incredible, insufferable,
+and odious audacity to blame them. We think of them as though they had
+nothing to do but go into a shop and buy kindliness. I hear you say
+that kindliness of heart can be "cultivated." Well, I hate to have
+even the appearance of contradicting you, but it can only be
+cultivated in the botanical sense. You can't cultivate violets on a
+nettle. A philosopher has enjoined us to suffer fools gladly. He had
+more usefully enjoined us to suffer ill-natured persons gladly.... I
+see that in a fit of absentmindedness I have strayed into the pulpit.
+I descend.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+BREAKING WITH THE PAST
+
+
+On that dark morning we woke up, and it instantly occurred to us--or
+at any rate to those of us who have preserved some of our illusions
+and our _naïveté_--that we had something to be cheerful about, some
+cause for a gay and strenuous vivacity; and then we remembered that it
+was New Year's Day, and there were those Resolutions to put into
+force! Of course, we all smile in a superior manner at the very
+mention of New Year's Resolutions; we pretend they are toys for
+children, and that we have long since ceased to regard them seriously
+as a possible aid to conduct. But we are such deceivers, such
+miserable, moral cowards, in such terror of appearing naïve, that I
+for one am not to be taken in by that smile and that pretence. The
+individual who scoffs at New Year's Resolutions resembles the woman
+who says she doesn't look under the bed at nights; the truth is not in
+him, and in the very moment of his lying, could his cranium suddenly
+become transparent, we should see Resolutions burning brightly in his
+brain like lamps in Trafalgar Square. Of this I am convinced, that
+nineteen-twentieths of us got out of bed that morning animated by that
+special feeling of gay and strenuous vivacity which Resolutions alone
+can produce. And nineteen-twentieths of us were also conscious of a
+high virtue, forgetting that it is not the making of Resolutions, but
+the keeping of them, which renders pardonable the consciousness of
+virtue.
+
+And at this hour, while the activity of the Resolution is yet in full
+blast, I would wish to insist on the truism, obvious perhaps, but apt
+to be overlooked, that a man cannot go forward and stand still at the
+same time. Just as moralists have often animadverted upon the tendency
+to live in the future, so I would animadvert upon the tendency to live
+in the past. Because all around me I see men carefully tying
+themselves with an unbreakable rope to an immovable post at the bottom
+of a hill and then struggling to climb the hill. If there is one
+Resolution more important than another it is the Resolution to break
+with the past. If life is not a continual denial of the past, then it
+is nothing. This may seem a hard and callous doctrine, but you know
+there are aspects of common sense which decidedly are hard and
+callous. And one finds constantly in plain common-sense persons (O
+rare and select band!) a surprising quality of ruthlessness mingled
+with softer traits. Have you not noticed it? The past is absolutely
+intractable. One can't do anything with it. And an exaggerated
+attention to it is like an exaggerated attention to sepulchres--a sign
+of barbarism. Moreover, the past is usually the enemy of cheerfulness,
+and cheerfulness is a most precious attainment.
+
+Personally, I could even go so far as to exhibit hostility towards
+grief, and a marked hostility towards remorse--two states of mind
+which feed on the past instead of on the present. Remorse, which is
+not the same thing as repentance, serves no purpose that I have ever
+been able to discover. What one has done, one has done, and there's an
+end of it. As a great prelate unforgettably said, "Things are what
+they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be. Why,
+then, attempt to deceive ourselves"--that remorse for wickedness is a
+useful and praiseworthy exercise? Much better to forget. As a matter
+of fact, people "indulge" in remorse; it is a somewhat vicious form of
+spiritual pleasure. Grief, of course, is different, and it must be
+handled with delicate consideration. Nevertheless, when I see, as one
+does see, a man or a woman dedicating existence to sorrow for the loss
+of a beloved creature, and the world tacitly applauding, my feeling is
+certainly inimical. To my idea, that man or woman is not honouring,
+but dishonouring, the memory of the departed; society suffers, the
+individual suffers, and no earthly or heavenly good is achieved. Grief
+is of the past; it mars the present; it is a form of indulgence, and
+it ought to be bridled much more than it often is. The human heart is
+so large that mere remembrance should not be allowed to tyrannize over
+every part of it.
+
+But cases of remorse and absorbing grief are comparatively rare. What
+is not rare is that misguided loyalty to the past which dominates the
+lives of so many of us. I do not speak of leading principles, which
+are not likely to incommode us by changing; I speak of secondary yet
+still important things. We will not do so-and-so because we have never
+done it--as if that was a reason! Or we have always done so-and-so,
+therefore we must always do it--as if _that_ was logic! This
+disposition to an irrational Toryism is curiously discoverable in
+advanced Radicals, and it will show itself in the veriest trifles. I
+remember such a man whose wife objected to his form of hat (not that I
+would call so crowning an affair as a hat a trifle!). "My dear," he
+protested, "I have always worn this sort of hat. It may not suit me,
+but it is absolutely impossible for me to alter it now." However, she
+took him by means of an omnibus to a hat shop and bought him another
+hat and put it on his head, and made a present of the old one to the
+shop assistant, and marched him out of the shop. "There!" she said,
+"you see how impossible it is." This is a parable. And I will not
+insult your intelligence by applying it.
+
+The faculty that we chiefly need when we are in the resolution-making
+mood is the faculty of imagination, the faculty of looking at our
+lives as though we had never looked at them before--freshly, with a
+new eye. Supposing that you had been born mature and full of
+experience, and that yesterday had been the first day of your life,
+you would regard it to-day as an experiment, you would challenge each
+act in it, and you would probably arrange to-morrow in a manner that
+showed a healthy disrespect for yesterday. You certainly would not
+say: "I have done so-and-so once, therefore I must keep on doing it."
+The past is never more than an experiment. A genuine appreciation of
+this fact will make our new Resolutions more valuable and drastic than
+they usually are. I have a dim notion that the most useful Resolution
+for most of us would be to break quite fifty per cent. of all the vows
+we have ever made. "Do not accustom yourself to enchain your
+_volatility_ with vows.... Take this warning; it is of great
+importance." (The wisdom is Johnson's, but I flatter myself on the
+italics.)
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+SETTLING DOWN IN LIFE
+
+
+The other day a well-known English novelist asked me how old I thought
+she was, _really_. "Well," I said to myself, "since she has asked for
+it, she shall have it; I will be as true to life as her novels." So I
+replied audaciously: "Thirty-eight." I fancied I was erring if at all,
+on the side of "really," and I trembled. She laughed triumphantly. "I
+am forty-three," she said. The incident might have passed off entirely
+to my satisfaction had she not proceeded: "And now tell me how old
+_you_ are." That was like a woman. Women imagine that men have no
+reticences, no pretty little vanities. What an error! Of course I
+could not be beaten in candour by a woman. I had to offer myself a
+burnt sacrifice to her curiosity, and I did it, bravely but not
+unflinchingly. And then afterwards the fact of my age remained with
+me, worried me, obsessed me. I saw more clearly than ever before that
+age was telling on me. I could not be blind to the deliberation of my
+movements in climbing stairs and in dressing. Once upon a time the
+majority of persons I met in the street seemed much older than myself.
+It is different now. The change has come unperceived. There is a
+generation younger than mine that smokes cigars and falls in love.
+Astounding! Once I could play left-wing forward for an hour and a half
+without dropping down dead. Once I could swim a hundred and fifty feet
+submerged at the bottom of a swimming-bath. Incredible! Simply
+incredible!... Can it be that I have already lived?
+
+And lo! I, at the age of nearly forty, am putting to myself the old
+questions concerning the intrinsic value of life, the fundamentally
+important questions: What have I got out of it? What am I likely to
+get out of it? In a word, what's it worth? If a man can ask himself a
+question more momentous, radical, and critical than these questions, I
+would like to know what it is. Innumerable philosophers have tried to
+answer these questions in a general way for the average individual,
+and possibly they have succeeded pretty well. Possibly I might derive
+benefit from a perusal of their answers. But do you suppose I am going
+to read them? Not I! Do you suppose that I can recall the wisdom that
+I happen already to have read? Not I! My mind is a perfect blank at
+this moment in regard to the wisdom of others on the essential
+question. Strange, is it not? But quite a common experience, I
+believe. Besides, I don't actually care twopence what any other
+philosopher has replied to my question. In this, each man must be his
+own philosopher. There is an instinct in the profound egoism of human
+nature which prevents us from accepting such ready-made answers. What
+is it to us what Plato thought? Nothing. And thus the question remains
+ever new, and ever unanswered, and ever of dramatic interest. The
+singular, the highly singular thing is--and here I arrive at my
+point--that so few people put the question to themselves in time, that
+so many put it too late, or even die without putting it.
+
+I am firmly convinced that an immense proportion of my instructed
+fellow-creatures do not merely omit to strike the balance-sheet of
+their lives, they omit even the preliminary operation of taking
+stock. They go on, and on, and on, buying and selling they know not
+what, at unascertained prices, dropping money into the till and taking
+it out. They don't know what goods are in the shop, nor what amount is
+in the till, but they have a clear impression that the living-room
+behind the shop is by no means as luxurious and as well-ventilated as
+they would like it to be. And the years pass, and that beautiful
+furniture and that system of ventilation are not achieved. And then
+one day they die, and friends come to the funeral and remark: "Dear
+me! How stuffy this room is, and the shop's practically full of
+trash!" Or, some little time before they are dead, they stay later
+than usual in the shop one evening, and make up their minds to take
+stock and count the till, and the disillusion lays them low, and they
+struggle into the living-room and murmur: "I shall never have that
+beautiful furniture, and I shall never have that system of
+ventilation. If I had known earlier, I would have at least got a few
+inexpensive cushions to go on with, and I would have put my fist
+through a pane in the window. But it's too late now. I'm used to
+Windsor chairs, and I should feel the draught horribly."
+
+If I were a preacher, and if I hadn't got more than enough to do in
+minding my own affairs, and if I could look any one in the face and
+deny that I too had pursued for nearly forty years the great British
+policy of muddling through and hoping for the best--in short, if
+things were not what they are, I would hire the Alhambra Theatre or
+Exeter Hall of a Sunday night--preferably the Alhambra, because more
+people would come to my entertainment--and I would invite all men and
+women over twenty-six. I would supply the seething crowd with what
+they desired in the way of bodily refreshment (except spirits--I would
+draw the line at poisons), and having got them and myself into a nice
+amiable expansive frame of mind, I would thus address them--of course
+in ringing eloquence that John Bright might have envied:
+
+  Men and women (I would say), companions in the universal pastime
+  of hiding one's head in the sand,--I am about to impart to you the
+  very essence of human wisdom. It is not abstract. It is a
+  principle of daily application, affecting the daily round in its
+  entirety, from the straphanging on the District Railway in the
+  morning to the straphanging on the District Railway the next
+  morning. Beware of hope, and beware of ambition! Each is
+  excellently tonic, like German competition, in moderation. But all
+  of you are suffering from self-indulgence in the first, and very
+  many of you are ruining your constitutions with the second. Be it
+  known unto you, my dear men and women, that existence rightly
+  considered is a fair compromise between two instincts--the
+  instinct of hoping one day to live, and the instinct to live here
+  and now. In most of you the first instinct has simply got the
+  other by the throat and is throttling it. Prepare to live by all
+  means, but for heaven's sake do not forget to live. You will never
+  have a better chance than you have at present. You may think you
+  will have, but you are mistaken. Pardon this bluntness. Surely you
+  are not so naïve as to imagine that the road on the other side of
+  that hill there is more beautiful than the piece you are now
+  traversing! Hopes are never realized; for in the act of
+  realization they become something else. Ambitions may be attained,
+  but ambitions attained are rather like burnt coal, ninety per
+  cent. of the heat generated has gone up the chimney instead of
+  into the room. Nevertheless, indulge in hopes and ambitions,
+  which, though deceiving, are agreeable deceptions; let them cheat
+  you a little, a lot. But do not let them cheat you too much. This
+  that you are living now is life itself--it is much more life
+  itself than that which you will be living twenty years hence.
+  Grasp that truth. Dwell on it. Absorb it. Let it influence your
+  conduct, to the end that neither the present nor the future be
+  neglected. You search for happiness? Happiness is chiefly a matter
+  of temperament. It is exceedingly improbable that you will by
+  struggling gain more happiness than you already possess. In fine,
+  settle down at once into _life_. (Loud cheers.)
+
+The cheers would of course be for the refreshments.
+
+There is no doubt that the mass of the audience would consider that I
+had missed my vocation, and ought to have been a caterer instead of a
+preacher. But, once started, I would not be discouraged. I would keep
+on, Sunday night after Sunday night. Our leading advertisers have
+richly proved that the public will believe anything if they are told
+of it often enough. I would practise iteration, always with
+refreshments. In the result, it would dawn upon the corporate mind
+that there was some glimmering of sense in my doctrine, and people
+would at last begin to perceive the folly of neglecting to savour the
+present, the folly of assuming that the future can be essentially
+different from the present, the fatuity of dying before they have
+begun to live.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+MARRIAGE
+
+
+THE DUTY OF IT
+
+Every now and then it becomes necessary to deal faithfully with that
+immortal type of person, the praiser of the past at the expense of the
+present. I will not quote Horace, as by all the traditions of letters
+I ought to do, because Horace, like the incurable trimmer that he was,
+"hedged" on this question; and I do not admire him much either. The
+praiser of the past has been very rife lately. He has told us that
+pauperism and lunacy are mightily increasing, and though the exact
+opposite has been proved to be the case and he has apologized, he will
+have forgotten the correction in a few months, and will break out
+again into renewed lamentation. He has told us that we are physically
+deteriorating, and in such awful tones that we have shuddered, and
+many of us have believed. And considering that the death-rate is
+decreasing, that slums are decreasing, that disease is decreasing,
+that the agricultural labourer eats more than ever he did, our
+credence does not do much credit to our reasoning powers, does it? Of
+course, there is that terrible "influx" into the towns, but I for one
+should be much interested to know wherein the existence of the rustic
+in times past was healthier than the existence of the town-dwellers of
+to-day. The personal appearance of agricultural veterans does not help
+me; they resemble starved 'bus-drivers twisted out of shape by
+lightning.
+
+But the _pièce de résistance_ of the praiser of the past is now
+marriage, with discreet hints about the birth-rate. The praiser of the
+past is going to have a magnificent time with the subject of marriage.
+The first moanings of the tempest have already been heard. Bishops
+have looked askance at the birth-rate, and have mentioned their
+displeasure. The matter is serious. As the phrase goes, "it strikes at
+the root." We are marrying later, my friends. Some of us, in the hurry
+and pre-occupation of business, are quite forgetting to marry. It is
+the duty of the citizen to marry and have children, and we are
+neglecting our duty, we are growing selfish! No longer are produced
+the glorious "quiverfuls" of old times! Our fathers married at twenty;
+we marry at thirty-five. Why? Because a gross and enervating luxury
+has overtaken us. What will become of England if this continues? There
+will be no England! Hence we must look to it! And so on, in the same
+strain.
+
+I should like to ask all those who have raised and will raise such
+outcries. Have you read "X"? Now, the book that I refer to as "X" is a
+mysterious work, written rather more than a hundred years ago by an
+English curate. It is a classic of English science; indeed, it is one
+of the great scientific books of the world. It has immensely
+influenced all the scientific thought of the nineteenth century,
+especially Darwin's. Mr. H.G. Wells, as cited in "Chambers's
+Cyclopædia of English Literature," describes it as "the most
+'shattering' book that ever has or will be written." If I may make a
+personal reference, I would say that it affected me more deeply than
+any other scientific book that I have read. Although it is perfectly
+easy to understand, and free from the slightest technicality, it is
+the most misunderstood book in English literature, simply because it
+is _not_ read. The current notion about it is utterly false. It might
+be a powerful instrument of education, general and sociological, but
+publishers will not reprint it--at least, they do not. And yet it is
+forty times more interesting and four hundred times more educational
+than Gilbert White's remarks on the birds of Selborne. I will leave
+you to guess what "X" is, but I do not offer a prize for the solution
+of a problem which a vast number of my readers will certainly solve at
+once.
+
+If those who are worrying themselves about the change in our system of
+marriage would read "X," they would probably cease from worrying. For
+they would perceive that they had been putting the cart before the
+horse; that they had elevated to the dignity of fundamental principles
+certain average rules of conduct which had sprung solely from certain
+average instincts in certain average conditions, and that they were
+now frightened because, the conditions having changed, the rules of
+conduct had changed with them. One of the truths that "X" makes clear
+is that conduct conforms to conditions, and not conditions to conduct.
+
+The payment of taxes is a duty which the citizen owes to the state.
+Marriage, with the begetting of children, is not a duty which the
+citizen owes to the state. Marriage, with its consequences, is a
+matter of personal inclination and convenience. It never has been
+anything else, and it never will be anything else. How could it be
+otherwise? If a man goes against inclination and convenience in a
+matter where inclination is "of the essence of the contract," he
+merely presents the state with a discontented citizen (if not two) in
+exchange for a contented one! The happiness of the state is the sum of
+the happiness of all its citizens; to decrease one's own happiness,
+then, is a singular way of doing one's duty to the state! Do you
+imagine that when people married early and much they did so from a
+sense of duty to the state--a sense of duty which our "modern luxury"
+has weakened? I imagine they married simply because it suited 'em.
+They married from sheer selfishness, as all decent people do marry.
+And do those who clatter about the duty of marriage kiss the girls of
+their hearts with an eye to the general welfare? I can fancy them
+saying, "My angel, I love you--from a sense of duty to the state. Let
+us rear innumerable progeny--from a sense of duty to the state." How
+charmed the girls would be!
+
+If the marrying age changes, if the birth-rate shows a sympathetic
+tendency to follow the death-rate (as it must--see "X"), no one need
+be alarmed. Elementary principles of right and wrong are not trembling
+on their bases. The human conscience is not silenced. The nation is
+not going to the dogs. Conduct is adjusting itself to new conditions,
+and that is all. We may not be able to see exactly _how_ conditions
+are changing; that is a detail; our descendants will see exactly;
+meanwhile the change in our conduct affords us some clew. And although
+certain nervous persons do get alarmed, and do preach, and do "take
+measures," the rest of us may remain placid in the sure faith that
+"measures" will avail nothing whatever. If there are two things set
+high above legislation, "movements," crusades, and preaching, one is
+the marrying age and the other is the birth-rate. For there the
+supreme instinct comes along and stamps ruthlessly on all insincere
+reasonings and sham altruisms; stamps on everything, in fact, and
+blandly remarks: "I shall suit my own convenience, and no one but
+Nature herself (with a big, big N) shall talk to _me_. Don't pester me
+with Right and Wrong. I _am_ Right and Wrong...." Having thus
+attempted to clear the ground a little of fudge, I propose next to
+offer a few simple remarks on marriage.
+
+
+THE ADVENTURE OF IT
+
+Having endeavoured to show that men do not, and should not, marry from
+a sense of duty to the state or to mankind, but simply and solely from
+an egoistic inclination to marry, I now proceed to the individual case
+of the man who is "in a position to marry" and whose affections are
+not employed. Of course, if he has fallen in love, unless he happens
+to be a person of extremely powerful will, he will not weigh the pros
+and cons of marriage; he will merely marry, and forty thousand cons
+will not prevent him. And he will be absolutely right and justified,
+just as the straw as it rushes down the current is absolutely right
+and justified. But the privilege of falling in love is not given to
+everybody, and the inestimable privilege of falling deeply in love is
+given to few. However, the man whom circumstances permit to marry but
+who is not in love, or is only slightly amorous, will still think of
+marriage. How will he think of it?
+
+I will tell you. In the first place, if he has reached the age of
+thirty unscathed by Aphrodite, he will reflect that that peculiar
+feeling of romantic expectation with which he gets up every morning
+would cease to exist after marriage--and it is a highly agreeable
+feeling! In its stead, in moments of depression, he would have the
+feeling of having done something irremediable, of having definitely
+closed an avenue for the outlet of his individuality. (Kindly remember
+that I am not describing what this human man ought to think. I am
+describing what he does think.) In the second place, he will reflect
+that, after marriage, he could no longer expect the charming welcomes
+which bachelors so often receive from women; he would be "done with"
+as a possibility, and he does not relish the prospect of being done
+with as a possibility. Such considerations, all connected more or
+less with the loss of "freedom" (oh, mysterious and thrilling word!),
+will affect his theoretical attitude. And be it known that even the
+freedom to be lonely and melancholy is still freedom.
+
+Other ideas will suggest themselves. One morning while brushing his
+hair he will see a gray hair, and, however young he may be, the
+anticipation of old age will come to him. A solitary old age! A
+senility dependent for its social and domestic requirements on
+condescending nephews and nieces, or even more distant relations!
+Awful! Unthinkable! And his first movement, especially if he has read
+that terrible novel, "_Fort comme la Mort_," of De Maupassant, is to
+rush out into the street and propose to the first girl he encounters,
+in order to avoid this dreadful nightmare of a solitary old age. But
+before he has got as far as the doorstep he reflects further. Suppose
+he marries, and after twenty years his wife dies and leaves him a
+widower! He will still have a solitary old age, and a vastly more
+tragical one than if he had remained single. Marriage is not,
+therefore, a sure remedy for a solitary old age; it may intensify the
+evil. Children? But suppose he doesn't have any children! Suppose,
+there being children, they die--what anguish! Suppose merely that they
+are seriously ill and recover--what an ageing experience! Suppose they
+prove a disappointment--what endless regret! Suppose they "turn out
+badly" (children do)--what shame! Suppose he finally becomes dependent
+upon the grudging kindness of an ungrateful child--what a supreme
+humiliation! All these things are occurring constantly everywhere.
+Suppose his wife, having loved him, ceased to love him, or suppose he
+ceased to love his wife! _Ces choses ne se commandent pas_--these
+things do not command themselves. Personally, I should estimate that
+in not one per cent. even of romantic marriages are the husband and
+wife capable of _passion_ for each other after three years. So brief
+is the violence of love! In perhaps thirty-three per cent. passion
+settles down into a tranquil affection--which is ideal. In fifty per
+cent. it sinks into sheer indifference, and one becomes used to one's
+wife or one's husband as to one's other habits. And in the remaining
+sixteen per cent. it develops into dislike or detestation. Do you
+think my percentages are wrong, you who have been married a long time
+and know what the world is? Well, you may modify them a little--you
+won't want to modify them much.
+
+The risk of finding one's self ultimately among the sixteen per cent.
+can be avoided by the simple expedient of not marrying. And by the
+same expedient the other risks can be avoided, together with yet
+others that I have not mentioned. It is entirely obvious, then (in
+fact, I beg pardon for mentioning it), that the attitude towards
+marriage of the heart-free bachelor must be at best a highly cautious
+attitude. He knows he is already in the frying-pan (none knows
+better), but, considering the propinquity of the fire, he doubts
+whether he had not better stay where he is. His life will be calmer,
+more like that of a hibernating snake; his sensibilities will be
+dulled; but the chances of poignant suffering will be very materially
+reduced.
+
+So that the bachelor in a position to marry but not in love will
+assuredly decide in theory against marriage--that is to say, if he is
+timid, if he prefers frying-pans, if he is lacking in initiative, if
+he has the soul of a rat, if he wants to live as little as possible,
+if he hates his kind, if his egoism is of the miserable sort that
+dares not mingle with another's. But if he has been more happily
+gifted he will decide that the magnificent adventure is worth plunging
+into; the ineradicable and fine gambling instinct in him will urge him
+to take, at the first chance, a ticket in the only lottery permitted
+by the British Government. Because, after all, the mutual sense of
+ownership felt by the normal husband and the normal wife is something
+unique, something the like of which cannot be obtained without
+marriage. I saw a man and a woman at a sale the other day; I was too
+far off to hear them, but I could perceive they were having a most
+lively argument--perhaps it was only about initials on pillowcases;
+they were _absorbed_ in themselves; the world did not exist for them.
+And I thought: "What miraculous exquisite Force is it that brings
+together that strange, sombre, laconic organism in a silk hat and a
+loose, black overcoat, and that strange, bright, vivacious, querulous,
+irrational organism in brilliant fur and feathers?" And when they
+moved away the most interesting phenomenon in the universe moved away.
+And I thought: "Just as no beer is bad, but some beer is better than
+other beer, so no marriage is bad." The chief reward of marriage is
+something which marriage is bound to give--companionship whose
+mysterious _interestingness_ nothing can stale. A man may hate his
+wife so that she can't thread a needle without annoying him, but when
+he dies, or she dies, he will say: "Well, _I was interested_." And one
+always is. Said a bachelor of forty-six to me the other night:
+"Anything is better than the void."
+
+
+THE TWO WAYS OF IT
+
+Sabine and other summary methods of marrying being now abandoned by
+all nice people, there remain two broad general ways. The first is the
+English way. We let nature take her course. We give heed to the
+heart's cry. When, amid the hazards and accidents of the world, two
+souls "find each other," we rejoice. Our instinctive wish is that they
+shall marry, if the matter can anyhow be arranged. We frankly
+recognise the claim of romance in life, and we are prepared to make
+sacrifices to it. We see a young couple at the altar; they are in
+love. Good! They are poor. So much the worse! But nevertheless we feel
+that love will pull them through. The revolting French system of
+bargain and barter is the one thing that we can neither comprehend nor
+pardon in the customs of our great neighbours. We endeavour to be
+polite about that system; we simply cannot. It shocks our finest,
+tenderest feelings. It is so obviously contrary to nature.
+
+The second is the French way, just alluded to as bargain and barter.
+Now, if there is one thing a Frenchman can neither comprehend nor
+pardon in the customs of a race so marvellously practical and sagacious
+as ourselves, it is the English marriage system. He endeavours to be
+polite about it, and he succeeds. But it shocks his finest, tenderest
+feelings. He admits that it is in accordance with nature; but he is apt
+to argue that the whole progress of civilisation has been the result of
+an effort to get away from nature. "What! Leave the most important
+relation into which a man can enter to the mercy of chance, when a mere
+gesture may arouse passion, or the colour of a corsage induce desire!
+No, you English, you who are so self-controlled, you are not going
+seriously to defend that! You talk of love as though it lasted for
+ever. You talk of sacrificing to love; but what you really sacrifice,
+or risk sacrificing, is the whole of the latter part of married
+existence for the sake of the first two or three years. Marriage is not
+one long honeymoon. We wish it were. When _you_ agree to a marriage you
+fix your eyes on the honeymoon. When _we_ agree to a marriage we try to
+see it as it will be five or ten years hence. We assert that, in the
+average instance, five years after the wedding it doesn't matter
+whether or not the parties were in love on the wedding-day. Hence we
+will not yield to the gusts of the moment. Your system is, moreover, if
+we may be permitted the observation, a premium on improvidence; it is,
+to some extent, the result of improvidence. You can marry your
+daughters without dowries, and the ability to do so tempts you to
+neglect your plain duty to your daughters, and you do not always resist
+the temptation. Do your marriages of 'romance' turn out better than our
+marriages of prudence, of careful thought, of long foresight? We do not
+think they do."
+
+So much for the two ways. Patriotism being the last refuge of a
+scoundrel, according to Doctor Johnson, I have no intention of
+judging between them, as my heart prompts me to do, lest I should be
+accused of it. Nevertheless, I may hint that, while perfectly
+convinced by the admirable logic of the French, I am still, with the
+charming illogicalness of the English, in favour of romantic marriages
+(it being, of course, understood that dowries _ought_ to be far more
+plentiful than they are in England). If a Frenchman accuses me of
+being ready to risk sacrificing the whole of the latter part of
+married life for the sake of the first two or three years, I would
+unhesitatingly reply: "Yes, I _am_ ready to risk that sacrifice. I
+reckon the first two or three years are worth it." But, then, I am
+English, and therefore romantic by nature. Look at London, that city
+whose outstanding quality is its romantic quality; and look at the
+Englishwomen going their ways in the wonderful streets thereof! Their
+very eyes are full of romance. They may, they do, lack _chic_, but
+they are heroines of drama. Then look at Paris; there is little
+romance in the fine right lines of Paris. Look at the Parisiennes.
+They are the most astounding and adorable women yet invented by
+nature. But they aren't romantic, you know. They don't know what
+romance is. They are so matter-of-fact that when you think of their
+matter-of-factness it gives you a shiver in the small of your back.
+
+To return. One may view the two ways in another light. Perhaps the
+difference between them is, fundamentally, less a difference between
+the ideas of two races than a difference between the ideas of two
+"times of life"; and in France the elderly attitude predominates. As
+people get on in years, even English people, they are more and more in
+favour of the marriage of reason as against the marriage of romance.
+Young people, even French people, object strongly to the theory and
+practice of the marriage of reason. But with them the unique and
+precious ecstasy of youth is not past, whereas their elders have
+forgotten its savour. Which is right? No one will ever be able to
+decide. But neither the one system nor the other will apply itself
+well to all or nearly all cases. There have been thousands of romantic
+marriages in England of which it may be said that it would have been
+better had the French system been in force to prevent their existence.
+And, equally, thousands of possible romantic marriages have been
+prevented in France which, had the English system prevailed there,
+would have turned out excellently. The prevalence of dowries in
+England would not render the English system perfect (for it must be
+remembered that money is only one of several ingredients in the French
+marriage), but it would considerably improve it. However, we are not a
+provident race, and we are not likely to become one. So our young men
+must reconcile themselves to the continued absence of dowries.
+
+The reader may be excused for imagining that I am at the end of my
+remarks. I am not. All that precedes is a mere preliminary to what
+follows. I want to regard the case of the man who has given the
+English system a fair trial and found it futile. Thus, we wait on
+chance in England. We wait for love to arrive. Suppose it doesn't
+arrive? Where is the English system then? Assume that a man in a
+position to marry reaches thirty-five or forty without having fallen
+in love. Why should he not try the French system for a change? Any
+marriage is better than none at all. Naturally, in England, he
+couldn't go up to the Chosen Fair and announce: "I am not precisely in
+love with you, but will you marry me?" He would put it differently.
+And she would understand. And do you think she would refuse?
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+BOOKS
+
+
+THE PHYSICAL SIDE
+
+The chief interest of many of my readers is avowedly books; they may,
+they probably do, profess other interests, but they are primarily
+"bookmen," and when one is a bookman one is a bookman during about
+twenty-three and three-quarter hours in every day. Now, bookmen are
+capable of understanding things about books which cannot be put into
+words; they are not like mere subscribers to circulating libraries;
+for them a book is not just a book--it is a _book_. If these lines
+should happen to catch the eye of any persons not bookmen, such
+persons may imagine that I am writing nonsense; but I trust that the
+bookmen will comprehend me. And I venture, then, to offer a few
+reflections upon an aspect of modern bookishness that is becoming
+more and more "actual" as the enterprise of publishers and the
+beneficent effects of education grow and increase together. I refer to
+"popular editions" of classics.
+
+Now, I am very grateful to the devisers of cheap and handy editions.
+The first book I ever bought was the first volume of the first modern
+series of presentable and really cheap reprints, namely, Macaulay's
+"Warren Hastings," in "Cassell's National Library" (sixpence, in
+cloth). That foundation stone of my library has unfortunately
+disappeared beneath the successive deposits, but another volume of the
+same series, F.T. Palgrave's "Visions of England" (an otherwise scarce
+book), still remains to me through the vicissitudes of seventeen years
+of sale, purchase, and exchange, and I would not care to part with it.
+I have over two hundred volumes of that inestimable and incomparable
+series, "The Temple Classics," besides several hundred assorted
+volumes of various other series. And when I heard of the new
+"Everyman's Library," projected by that benefactor of bookmen, Mr.
+J.M. Dent, my first impassioned act was to sit down and write a
+postcard to my bookseller ordering George Finlay's "The Byzantine
+Empire," a work which has waited sixty years for popular recognition.
+So that I cannot be said to be really antagonistic to cheap reprints.
+
+Strong in this consciousness, I beg to state that cheap and handy
+reprints are "all very well in their way"--which is a manner of saying
+that they are not the Alpha and Omega of bookishness. By expending £20
+yearly during the next five years a man might collect, in cheap and
+handy reprints, all that was worth having in classic English
+literature. But I for one would not be willing to regard such a
+library as a real library. I would regard it as only a cheap edition
+of a library. There would be something about it that would arouse in
+me a certain benevolent disdain, even though every volume was well
+printed on good paper and inoffensively bound. Why? Well, although it
+is my profession in life to say what I feel in plain words, I do not
+know that in this connection I _can_ say what I feel in plain words. I
+have to rely on a sympathetic comprehension of my attitude in the
+bookish breasts of my readers.
+
+In the first place, I have an instinctive antipathy to a "series." I
+do not want "The Golden Legend" and "The Essays of Elia" uniformed
+alike in a regiment of books. It makes me think of conscription and
+barracks. Even the noblest series of reprints ever planned (not at all
+cheap, either, nor heterogeneous in matter), the Tudor Translations,
+faintly annoys me in the mass. Its appearances in a series seems to me
+to rob a book of something very delicate and subtle in the aroma of
+its individuality--something which, it being inexplicable, I will not
+try to explain.
+
+In the second place, most cheap and handy reprints are small in size.
+They may be typographically excellent, with large type and opaque
+paper; they may be convenient to handle; they may be surpassingly
+suitable for the pocket and the very thing for travel; they may save
+precious space where shelf-room is limited; but they are small in
+size. And there is, as regards most literature, a distinct moral value
+in size. Do I carry my audience with me? I hope so. Let "Paradise
+Lost" be so produced that you can put it in your waistcoat pocket, and
+it is no more "Paradise Lost." Milton needs a solid octavo form, with
+stoutish paper and long primer type. I have "Walpole's Letters" in
+Newnes's "Thin Paper Classics," a marvellous volume of near nine
+hundred pages, with a portrait and a good index and a beautiful
+binding, for three and six, and I am exceedingly indebted to Messrs.
+Newnes for creating that volume. It was sheer genius on their part to
+do so. I get charming sensations from it, but sensations not so
+charming as I should get from Mrs. Paget Toynbee's many-volumed and
+grandiose edition, even aside from Mrs. Toynbee's erudite notes and
+the extra letters which she has been able to print. The same letter in
+Mrs. Toynbee's edition would have a higher æsthetic and moral value
+for me than in the "editionlet" of Messrs. Newnes. The one cheap
+series which satisfies my desire for size is Macmillan's "Library of
+English Classics," in which I have the "Travels" of that mythical
+personage, Sir John Mandeville. But it is only in paying for it that
+you know this edition to be cheap, for it measures nine inches by six
+inches by two inches.
+
+And in the third place, when one buys series, one only partially
+chooses one's books; they are mainly chosen for one by the publisher.
+And even if they are not chosen for one by the publisher, they are
+suggested _to_ one by the publisher. Not so does the genuine bookman
+form his library. The genuine bookman begins by having specific
+desires. His study of authorities gives him a demand, and the demand
+forces him to find the supply. He does not let the supply create the
+demand. Such a state of affairs would be almost humiliating, almost
+like the _parvenu_ who calls in the wholesale furnisher and decorator
+to provide him with a home. A library must be, primarily, the
+expression of the owner's personality.
+
+Let me assert again that I am strongly in favour of cheap series of
+reprints. Their influence though not the very finest, is undisputably
+good. They are as great a boon as cheap bread. They are indispensable
+where money or space is limited, and in travelling. They decidedly
+help to educate a taste for books that are neither cheap nor handy;
+and the most luxurious collectors may not afford to ignore them
+entirely. But they have their limitations, their disadvantages. They
+cannot form the backbone of a "proper" library. They make, however,
+admirable embroidery to a library. My own would look rather plain if
+it was stripped of them.
+
+
+THE PHILOSOPHY OF BOOK-BUYING
+
+For some considerable time I have been living, as regards books, with
+the minimum of comfort and decency--with, in fact, the bare
+necessaries of life, such necessaries being, in my case, sundry
+dictionaries, Boswell, an atlas, Wordsworth, an encyclopædia,
+Shakespere, Whitaker, some De Maupassant, a poetical anthology,
+Verlaine, Baudelaire, a natural history of my native county, an old
+directory of my native town, Sir Thomas Browne, Poe, Walpole's
+Letters, and a book of memoirs that I will not name. A curious list,
+you will say. Well, never mind! We do not all care to eat beefsteak
+and chip potatoes off an oak table, with a foaming quart to the right
+hand. We have our idiosyncrasies. The point is that I existed on the
+bare necessaries of life (very healthy--doctors say) for a long time.
+And then, just lately, I summoned energy and caused fifteen hundred
+volumes to be transported to me; and I arranged them on shelves; and
+I re-arranged them on shelves; and I left them to arrange themselves
+on shelves.
+
+Well, you know, the way that I walk up and down in front of these
+volumes, whose faces I had half-forgotten, is perfectly infantile. It
+is like the way of a child at a menagerie. There, in its cage, is that
+1839 edition of Shelley, edited by Mrs. Shelley, that I once nearly
+sold to the British Museum because the Keeper of Printed Books thought
+he hadn't got a copy--only he had! And there, in a cage by himself,
+because of his terrible hugeness, is the 1652 Paris edition of
+Montaigne's Essays. And so I might continue, and so I would continue,
+were it not essential that I come to my argument.
+
+Do you suppose that the presence of these books, after our long
+separation, is making me read more than I did? Do you suppose I am
+engaged in looking up my favourite passages? Not a bit. The other
+evening I had a long tram journey, and, before starting, I tried to
+select a book to take with me. I couldn't find one to suit just the
+tram-mood. As I had to _catch_ the tram I was obliged to settle on
+something, and in the end I went off with nothing more original than
+"Hamlet," which I am really too familiar with.... Then I bought an
+evening paper, and read it all through, including advertisements. So I
+said to myself: "This is a nice result of all my trouble to resume
+company with some of my books!" However, as I have long since ceased
+to be surprised at the eccentric manner in which human nature refuses
+to act as one would have expected it to act, I was able to keep calm
+and unashamed during this extraordinary experience. And I am still
+walking up and down in front of my books and enjoying them without
+reading them.
+
+I wish to argue that a great deal of cant is talked (and written)
+about reading. Papers such as the "Anthenæum," which nevertheless I
+peruse with joy from end to end every week, can scarcely notice a new
+edition of a classic without expressing, in a grieved and pessimistic
+tone, the fear that more people buy these agreeable editions than read
+them. And if it is so? What then? Are we only to buy the books that we
+read? The question has merely to be thus bluntly put, and it answers
+itself. All impassioned bookmen, except a few who devote their whole
+lives to reading, have rows of books on their shelves which they have
+never read, and which they never will read. I know that I have
+hundreds such. My eye rests on the works of Berkeley in three volumes,
+with a preface by the Right Honourable Arthur James Balfour. I cannot
+conceive the circumstances under which I shall ever read Berkeley; but
+I do not regret having bought him in a good edition, and I would buy
+him again if I had him not; for when I look at him some of his virtue
+passes into me; I am the better for him. A certain aroma of philosophy
+informs my soul, and I am less crude than I should otherwise be. This
+is not fancy, but fact.
+
+Taking Berkeley simply as an instance, I will utilise him a little
+further. I ought to have read Berkeley, you say; just as I ought to
+have read Spenser, Ben Jonson, George Eliot, Victor Hugo. Not at all.
+There is no "ought" about it. If the mass of obtainable first-class
+literature were, as it was perhaps a century ago, not too large to be
+assimilated by a man of ordinary limited leisure _in_ his leisure and
+during the first half of his life, then possibly there might be an
+"ought" about it. But the mass has grown unmanageable, even by those
+robust professional readers who can "grapple with whole libraries."
+And I am not a professional reader. I am a writer, just as I might be
+a hotel-keeper, a solicitor, a doctor, a grocer, or an earthenware
+manufacturer. I read in my scanty spare time, and I don't read in all
+my spare time, either. I have other distractions. I read what I feel
+inclined to read, and I am conscious of no duty to finish a book that
+I don't care to finish. I read in my leisure, not from a sense of
+duty, not to improve myself, but solely because it gives me pleasure
+to read. Sometimes it takes me a month to get through one book. I
+expect my case is quite an average case. But am I going to fetter my
+buying to my reading? Not exactly! I want to have lots of books on my
+shelves because I know they are good, because I know they would amuse
+me, because I like to look at them, and because one day I might have a
+caprice to read them. (Berkeley, even thy turn may come!) In short, I
+want them because I want them. And shall I be deterred from possessing
+them by the fear of some sequestered and singular person, some person
+who has read vastly but who doesn't know the difference between a J.S.
+Muria cigar and an R.P. Muria, strolling in and bullying me with the
+dreadful query: "_Sir, do you read your books?_"
+
+Therefore I say: In buying a book, be influenced by two considerations
+only. Are you reasonably sure that it is a good book? Have you a
+desire to possess it? Do not be influenced by the probability or the
+improbability of your reading it. After all, one does read a certain
+proportion of what one buys. And further, instinct counts. The man who
+spends half a crown on Stubbs's "Early Plantagenets" instead of going
+into the Gaiety pit to see "The Spring Chicken," will probably be the
+sort of man who can suck goodness out of Stubbs's "Early Plantagenets"
+years before he bestirs himself to read it.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+SUCCESS
+
+
+CANDID REMARKS
+
+There are times when the whole free and enlightened Press of the
+United Kingdom seems to become strangely interested in the subject of
+"success," of getting on in life. We are passing through such a period
+now. It would be difficult to name the prominent journalists who have
+not lately written, in some form or another, about success. Most
+singular phenomenon of all, Dr. Emil Reich has left Plato, duchesses,
+and Claridge's Hotel, in order to instruct the million readers of a
+morning paper in the principles of success! What the million readers
+thought of the Doctor's stirring and strenuous sentences I will not
+imagine; but I know what I thought, as a plain man. After taking due
+cognizance of his airy play with the "constants" and "variables" of
+success, after watching him treat "energetics" (his wonderful new
+name for the "science" of success) as though because he had made it
+end in "ics" it resembled mathematics, I thought that the sublime and
+venerable art of mystification could no further go. If my
+fellow-pilgrim through this vale of woe, the average young man who
+arrives at Waterloo at 9.40 every morning with a cigarette in his
+mouth and a second-class season over his heart and vague aspirations
+in his soul, was half as mystified as I was, he has probably ere this
+decided that the science of success has all the disadvantages of
+algebra without any of the advantages of cricket, and that he may as
+well leave it alone lest evil should befall him. On the off-chance
+that he has come as yet to no decision about the science of success, I
+am determined to deal with the subject in a disturbingly candid
+manner. I feel that it is as dangerous to tell the truth about success
+as it is to tell the truth about the United States; but being
+thoroughly accustomed to the whistle of bullets round my head, I will
+nevertheless try.
+
+Most writers on success are, through sheer goodness of heart, wickedly
+disingenuous. For the basis of their argument is that nearly any one
+who gives his mind to it can achieve success. This is, to put it
+briefly, untrue. The very central idea of success is separation from
+the multitude of plain men; it is perhaps the only idea common to all
+the various sorts of success--differentiation from the crowd. To
+address the population at large, and tell it how to separate itself
+from itself, is merely silly. I am now, of course, using the word
+success in its ordinary sense. If human nature were more perfect than
+it is, success in life would mean an intimate knowledge of one's self
+and the achievement of a philosophic inward calm, and such a goal
+might well be reached by the majority of mortals. But to us success
+signifies something else. It may be divided into four branches: (1)
+Distinction in pure or applied science. This is the least gross of all
+forms of success as we regard it, for it frequently implies poverty,
+and it does not by any means always imply fame. (2) Distinction in the
+arts. Fame and adulation are usually implied in this, though they do
+not commonly bring riches with them. (3) Direct influence and power
+over the material lives of other men; that is to say, distinction in
+politics, national or local. (4) Success in amassing money. This last
+is the commonest and easiest. Most forms of success will fall under
+one of these heads. Are they possible to that renowned and
+much-flattered person, the man in the street? They are not, and well
+you know it, all you professors of the science of success! Only a
+small minority of us can even become rich.
+
+Happily, while it is true that success in its common acceptation is,
+by its very essence, impossible to the majority, there is an
+accompanying truth which adjusts the balance; to wit, that the
+majority do not desire success. This may seem a bold saying, but it is
+in accordance with the facts. Conceive the man in the street suddenly,
+by some miracle, invested with political power, and, of course, under
+the obligation to use it. He would be so upset, worried, wearied, and
+exasperated at the end of a week that he would be ready to give the
+eyes out of his head in order to get rid of it. As for success in
+science or in art, the average person's interest in such matters is so
+slight, compared with that of the man of science or the artist, that
+he cannot be said to have an interest in them. And supposing that
+distinction in them were thrust upon him he would rapidly lose that
+distinction by simple indifference and neglect. The average person
+certainly wants some money, and the average person does not usually
+rest until he has got as much as is needed for the satisfaction of his
+instinctive needs. He will move the heaven and earth of his
+environment to earn sufficient money for marriage in the "station" to
+which he has been accustomed; and precisely at that point his genuine
+desire for money will cease to be active. The average man has this in
+common with the most exceptional genius, that his career in its main
+contours is governed by his instincts. The average man flourishes and
+finds his ease in an atmosphere of peaceful routine. Men destined for
+success flourish and find their ease in an atmosphere of collision and
+disturbance. The two temperaments are diverse. Naturally the average
+man dreams vaguely, upon occasion; he dreams how nice it would be to
+be famous and rich. We all dream vaguely upon such things. But to
+dream vaguely is not to desire. I often tell myself that I would give
+anything to be the equal of Cinquevalli, the juggler, or to be the
+captain of the largest Atlantic liner. But the reflective part of me
+tells me that my yearning to emulate these astonishing personages is
+not a genuine desire, and that its realization would not increase my
+happiness.
+
+To obtain a passably true notion of what happens to the mass of
+mankind in its progress from the cradle to the grave, one must not
+attempt to survey a whole nation, nor even a great metropolis, nor
+even a very big city like Manchester or Liverpool. These panoramas are
+so immense and confusing that they defeat the observing eye. It is
+better to take a small town of, say, twenty or thirty thousand
+inhabitants--such a town as most of us know, more or less intimately.
+The extremely few individuals whose instincts mark them out to take
+part in the struggle for success can be identified at once. For the
+first thing they do is to leave the town. The air of the town is not
+bracing enough for them. Their nostrils dilate for something keener.
+Those who are left form a microcosm which is representative enough of
+the world at large. Between the ages of thirty and forty they begin to
+sort themselves out. In their own sphere they take their places. A
+dozen or so politicians form the town council and rule the town. Half
+a dozen business men stand for the town's commercial activity and its
+wealth. A few others teach science and art, or are locally known as
+botanists, geologists, amateurs of music, or amateurs of some other
+art. These are the distinguished, and it will be perceived that they
+cannot be more numerous than they are. What of the rest? Have they
+struggled for success and been beaten? Not they. Do they, as they grow
+old, resemble disappointed men? Not they. They have fulfilled
+themselves modestly. They have got what they genuinely tried to get.
+They have never even gone near the outskirts of the battle for
+success. But they have not failed. The number of failures is
+surprisingly small. You see a shabby, disappointed, ageing man flit
+down the main street, and someone replies to your inquiry: "That's
+So-and-so, one of life's failures, poor fellow!" And the very tone in
+which the words are uttered proves the excessive rarity of the real
+failure. It goes without saying that the case of the handful who have
+left the town in search of the Success with the capital S has a
+tremendous interest of curiosity for the mass who remain. I will
+consider it.
+
+
+THE SUCCESSFUL AND THE UNSUCCESSFUL
+
+Having boldly stated that success is not, and cannot be, within grasp
+of the majority, I now proceed to state, as regards the minority, that
+they do not achieve it in the manner in which they are commonly
+supposed to achieve it. And I may add an expression of my thankfulness
+that they do not. The popular delusion is that success is attained by
+what I may call the "Benjamin Franklin" method. Franklin was a very
+great man; he united in his character a set of splendid qualities as
+various, in their different ways, as those possessed by Leonardo da
+Vinci. I have an immense admiration for him. But his Autobiography
+does make me angry. His Autobiography is understood to be a classic,
+and if you say a word against it in the United States you are apt to
+get killed. I do not, however, contemplate an immediate visit to the
+United States, and I shall venture to assert that Benjamin Franklin's
+Autobiography is a detestable book and a misleading book. I can recall
+only two other volumes which I would more willingly revile. One is
+_Samuel Budgett: The Successful Merchant_, and the other is _From Log
+Cabin to White House_, being the history of President Garfield. Such
+books may impose on boys, and it is conceivable that they do not harm
+boys (Franklin, by the way, began his Autobiography in the form of a
+letter to his son), but the grown man who can support them without
+nausea ought to go and see a doctor, for there is something wrong with
+him.
+
+"I began now," blandly remarks Franklin, "to have some acquaintance
+among the young people of the town that were lovers of reading, with
+whom I spent my evenings very pleasantly; _and gained money by my
+industry and frugality_." Or again: "It was about this time I
+conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral
+perfection.... I made a little book, in which I allotted a page for
+each of the virtues. I ruled each page with red ink, so as to have
+seven columns, one for each day of the week.... I crossed these
+columns with thirteen red lines, marking the beginning of each line
+with the first letter of one of the virtues; on which line, and in its
+proper column, I might mark, by a little black spot, every fault I
+found upon examination to have been committed respecting that virtue,
+upon that day." Shade of Franklin, where'er thou art, this is really a
+little bit stiff! A man may be excused even such infamies of
+priggishness, but truly he ought not to go and write them down,
+especially to his son. And why the detail about red ink? If Franklin's
+son was not driven to evil courses by the perusal of that monstrous
+Autobiography, he must have been a man almost as astounding as his
+father. Now Franklin could only have written his "immortal classic"
+from one of three motives: (1) Sheer conceit. He was a prig, but he
+was not conceited. (2) A desire that others should profit by his
+mistakes. He never made any mistakes. Now and again he emphasizes some
+trifling error, but that is "only his fun." (3) A desire that others
+should profit by the recital of his virtuous sagacity to reach a
+similar success. The last was undoubtedly his principal motive. Honest
+fellow, who happened to be a genius! But the point is that his success
+was in no way the result of his virtuous sagacity. I would go further,
+and say that his dreadful virtuous sagacity often hindered his
+success.
+
+No one is a worse guide to success than your typical successful man. He
+seldom understands the reasons of his own success; and when he is asked
+by a popular magazine to give his experiences for the benefit of the
+youth of a whole nation, it is impossible for him to be natural and
+sincere. He knows the kind of thing that is expected from him, and if
+he didn't come to London with half a crown in his pocket he probably
+did something equally silly, and he puts _that_ down, and the note of
+the article or interview is struck, and good-bye to genuine truth!
+There recently appeared in a daily paper an autobiographic-didactic
+article by one of the world's richest men which was the most
+"inadequate" article of the sort that I have ever come across.
+Successful men forget so much of their lives! Moreover, nothing is
+easier than to explain an accomplished fact in a nice, agreeable,
+conventional way. The entire business of success is a gigantic tacit
+conspiracy on the part of the minority to deceive the majority.
+
+Are successful men more industrious, frugal, and intelligent than men
+who are not successful? I maintain that they are not, and I have
+studied successful men at close quarters. One of the commonest
+characteristics of the successful man is his idleness, his immense
+capacity for wasting time. I stoutly assert that as a rule successful
+men are by habit comparatively idle. As for frugality, it is
+practically unknown among the successful classes: this statement
+applies with particular force to financiers. As for intelligence, I
+have over and over again been startled by the lack of intelligence in
+successful men. They are, indeed, capable of stupidities that would be
+the ruin of a plain clerk. And much of the talk in those circles which
+surround the successful man is devoted to the enumeration of instances
+of his lack of intelligence. Another point: successful men seldom
+succeed as the result of an ordered arrangement of their lives; they
+are the least methodical of creatures. Naturally when they have
+"arrived" they amuse themselves and impress the majority by being
+convinced that right from the start, with a steady eye on the goal,
+they had carefully planned every foot of the route.
+
+No! Great success never depends on the practice of the humbler
+virtues, though it may occasionally depend on the practice of the
+prouder vices. Use industry, frugality, and common sense by all
+means, but do not expect that they will help you to success. Because
+they will not. I shall no doubt be told that what I have just written
+has an immoral tendency, and is a direct encouragement to sloth,
+thriftlessness, etc. One of our chief national faults is our
+hypocritical desire to suppress the truth on the pretext that to admit
+it would encourage sin, whereas the real explanation is that we are
+afraid of the truth. I will not be guilty of that fault. I do like to
+look a fact in the face without blinking. I am fully persuaded that,
+per head, there is more of the virtues in the unsuccessful majority
+than in the successful minority. In London alone are there not
+hundreds of miles of streets crammed with industry, frugality, and
+prudence? Some of the most brilliant men I have known have been
+failures, and not through lack of character either. And some of the
+least gifted have been marvellously successful. It is impossible to
+point to a single branch of human activity in which success can be
+explained by the conventional principles that find general acceptance.
+I hear you, O reader, murmuring to yourself: "This is all very well,
+but he is simply being paradoxical for his own diversion." I would
+that I could persuade you of my intense seriousness! I have
+endeavoured to show what does not make success. I will next endeavour
+to show what does make it. But my hope is forlorn.
+
+
+THE INWARDNESS OF SUCCESS
+
+Of course, one can no more explain success than one can explain
+Beethoven's C minor symphony. One may state what key it is written in,
+and make expert reflections upon its form, and catalogue its themes,
+and relate it to symphonies that preceded it and symphonies that
+followed it, but in the end one is reduced to saying that the C minor
+symphony is beautiful--because it is. In the same manner one is
+reduced to saying that the sole real difference between success and
+failure is that success succeeds. This being frankly admitted at the
+outset, I will allow myself to assert that there are three sorts of
+success. Success A is the accidental sort. It is due to the thing we
+call chance, and to nothing else. We are all of us still very
+superstitious, and the caprices of chance have a singular effect upon
+us. Suppose that I go to Monte Carlo and announce to a friend my firm
+conviction that red will turn up next time, and I back red for the
+maximum and red does turn up; my friend, in spite of his intellect,
+will vaguely attribute to me a mysterious power. Yet chance alone
+would be responsible. If I did that six times running all the players
+at the table would be interested in me. If I did it a dozen times all
+the players in the Casino would regard me with awe. Yet chance alone
+would be responsible. If I did it eighteen times my name would be in
+every newspaper in Europe. Yet chance alone would be responsible. I
+should be, in that department of human activity, an extremely
+successful man, and the vast majority of people would instinctively
+credit me with gifts that I do not possess.
+
+If such phenomena of superstition can occur in an affair where the
+agency of chance is open and avowed, how much more probable is it that
+people should refuse to be satisfied with the explanation of "sheer
+accident" in affairs where it is to the interest of the principal
+actors to conceal the rôle played by chance! Nevertheless, there can
+be no doubt in the minds of persons who have viewed success at close
+quarters that a proportion of it is due solely and utterly to chance.
+Successful men flourish to-day, and have flourished in the past, who
+have no quality whatever to differentiate them from the multitude. Red
+has turned up for them a sufficient number of times, and the universal
+superstitious instinct not to believe in chance has accordingly
+surrounded them with a halo. It is merely ridiculous to say, as some
+do say, that success is never due to chance alone. Because nearly
+everybody is personally acquainted with reasonable proof, on a great
+or a small scale, to the contrary.
+
+The second sort of success, B, is that made by men who, while not
+gifted with first-class talents, have, beyond doubt, the talent to
+succeed. I should describe these men by saying that, though they
+deserve something, they do not deserve the dazzling reward known as
+success. They strike us as overpaid. We meet them in all professions
+and trades, and we do not really respect them. They excite our
+curiosity, and perhaps our envy. They may rise very high indeed, but
+they must always be unpleasantly conscious of a serious reservation in
+our attitude towards them. And if they could read their obituary
+notices they would assuredly discern therein a certain chilliness,
+however kindly we acted up to our great national motto of _De mortuis
+nil nist bunkum_. It is this class of success which puzzles the social
+student. How comes it that men without any other talent possess a
+mysterious and indefinable talent to succeed? Well, it seems to me
+that such men always display certain characteristics. And the chief of
+these characteristics is the continual, insatiable _wish_ to succeed.
+They are preoccupied with the idea of succeeding. We others are not so
+preoccupied. We dream of success at intervals, but we have not the
+passion for success. We don't lie awake at nights pondering upon it.
+
+The second characteristic of these men springs naturally from the
+first. They are always on the look-out. This does not mean that they
+are industrious. I stated in a previous article my belief that as a
+rule successful men are not particularly industrious. A man on a raft
+with his shirt for a signal cannot be termed industrious, but he will
+keep his eyes open for a sail on the horizon. If he simply lies down
+and goes to sleep he may miss the chance of his life, in a very
+special sense. The man with the talent to succeed is the man on the
+raft who never goes to sleep. His indefatigable orb sweeps the main
+from sunset to sunset. Having sighted a sail, he gets up on his hind
+legs and waves that shirt in so determined a manner that the ship is
+bound to see him and take him off. Occasionally he plunges into the
+sea, risking sharks and other perils. If he doesn't "get there," we
+hear nothing of him. If he does, some person will ultimately multiply
+by ten the number of sharks that he braved: that person is called a
+biographer.
+
+Let me drop the metaphor. Another characteristic of these men is that
+they seem to have the exact contrary of what is known as common sense.
+They will become enamoured of some enterprise which infallibly
+impresses the average common-sense person as a mad and hopeless
+enterprise. The average common-sense person will demolish the hopes of
+that enterprise by incontrovertible argument. He will point out that
+it is foolish on the face of it, that it has never been attempted
+before, and that it responds to no need of humanity. He will say to
+himself: "This fellow with his precious enterprise has a twist in his
+brain. He can't reply to my arguments, and yet he obstinately persists
+in going on." And the man destined to success does go on. Perhaps the
+enterprise fails; it often fails; and then the average common-sense
+person expends much breath in "I told you so's." But the man continues
+to be on the look-out. His thirst is unassuaged; his taste for
+enterprises foredoomed to failure is incurable. And one day some
+enterprise foredoomed to failure develops into a success. We all hear
+of it. We all open our mouths and gape. Of the failures we have heard
+nothing. Once the man has achieved success, the thing becomes a habit
+with him. The difference between a success and a failure is often so
+slight that a reputation for succeeding will ensure success, and a
+reputation for failing will ensure failure. Chance plays an important
+part in such careers, but not a paramount part. One can only say that
+it is more useful to have luck at the beginning than later on. These
+"men of success" generally have pliable temperaments. They are not
+frequently un-moral, but they regard a conscience as a good servant
+and a bad master. They live in an atmosphere of compromise.
+
+There remains class C of success--the class of sheer high merit. I am
+not a pessimist, nor am I an optimist. I try to arrive at the truth,
+and I should say that in putting success C at ten per cent. of the sum
+total of all successes, I am being generous to class C. Not that I
+believe that vast quantities of merit go unappreciated. My reason for
+giving to Class C only a modest share is the fact that there is so
+little sheer high merit. And does it not stand to reason that high
+merit must be very exceptional? This sort of success needs no
+explanation, no accounting for. It is the justification of our
+singular belief in the principle of the triumph of justice, and it is
+among natural phenomena perhaps the only justification that can be
+advanced for that belief. And certainly when we behold the spectacle
+of genuine distinguished merit gaining, without undue delay and
+without the sacrifice of dignity or of conscience, the applause of the
+kind-hearted but obtuse and insensible majority of the human race, we
+have fair reason to hug ourselves.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE PETTY ARTIFICIALITIES
+
+
+The phrase "petty artificialities," employed by one of the
+correspondents in the great Simple Life argument, has stuck in my
+mind, although I gave it a plain intimation that it was no longer
+wanted there. Perhaps it sheds more light than I had at first imagined
+on the mental state of the persons who use it when they wish to
+arraign the conditions of "modern life." A vituperative epithet is
+capable of making a big show. "Artificialities" is a sufficiently
+scornful word, but when you add "petty" you somehow give the quietus
+to the pretensions of modern life. Modern life had better hide its
+diminished head, after that. Modern life is settled and done for--in
+the opinion of those who have thrown the dart. Only it isn't done for,
+really, you know. "Petty," after all, means nothing in that connexion.
+Are there, then, artificialities which are not "petty," which are
+noble, large, and grand? "Petty" means merely that the users of the
+word are just a little cross and out of temper. What they think they
+object to is artificialities of any kind, and so to get rid of their
+spleen they refer to "petty" artificialities. The device is a common
+one, and as brilliant as it is futile. Rude adjectives are like blank
+cartridge. They impress a vain people, including the birds of the air,
+but they do no execution.
+
+At the same time, let me admit that I deeply sympathize with the
+irritated users of the impolite phrase "petty artificialities." For it
+does at any rate show a "divine discontent"; it does prove a high
+dissatisfaction with conditions which at best are not the final
+expression of the eternal purpose. It does make for a sort of crude
+and churlish righteousness. I well know that feeling which induces one
+to spit out savagely the phrase "petty artificialities of modern
+life." One has it usually either on getting up or on going to bed.
+What a petty artificial business it is, getting up, even for a male!
+Shaving! Why shave? And then going to a drawer and choosing a necktie.
+Fancy an immortal soul, fancy a fragment of the eternal and
+indestructible energy, which exists from everlasting to everlasting,
+deliberately expending its activity on the choice of a necktie! Why a
+necktie? Then one goes downstairs and exchanges banal phrases with
+other immortals. And one can't start breakfast immediately, because
+some sleepy mortal is late.
+
+Why babble? Why wait? Why not say straight out: "Go to the deuce, all
+of you! Here it's nearly ten o'clock, and me anxious to begin living
+the higher life at once instead of fiddling around in petty
+artificialities. Shut up, every one of you. Give me my bacon
+instantly, and let me gobble it down quick and be off. I'm sick of
+your ceremonies!" This would at any rate not be artificial. It would
+save time. And if a similar policy were strictly applied through the
+day, one could retire to a well-earned repose in the full assurance
+that the day had been simplified. The time for living the higher life,
+the time for pushing forward those vast schemes of self-improvement
+which we all cherish, would decidedly have been increased. One would
+not have that maddening feeling, which one so frequently does have
+when the shades of night are falling fast, that the day had been
+"frittered away." And yet--and yet--I gravely doubt whether this
+wholesale massacre of those poor petty artificialities would bring us
+appreciably nearer the millennium.
+
+For there is one thing, and a thing of fundamental importance, which
+the revolutionists against petty artificialities always fail to
+appreciate, and that is the necessity and the value of convention. I
+cannot in a paragraph deal effectively with this most difficult and
+complex question. I can only point the reader to analogous phenomena
+in the arts. All the arts are a conventionalization, an ordering of
+nature. Even in a garden you put the plants in rows, and you
+subordinate the well-being of one to the general well-being. The sole
+difference between a garden and the wild woods is a petty
+artificiality. In writing a sonnet you actually cramp the profoundest
+emotional conceptions into a length and a number of lines and a
+jingling of like sounds arbitrarily fixed beforehand! Wordsworth's
+"The world is too much with us" is a solid, horrid mass of petty
+artificiality. Why couldn't the fellow say what he meant and have
+done with it, instead of making "powers" rhyme with "ours," and
+worrying himself to use exactly a hundred and forty syllables? As for
+music, the amount of time that must have been devoted to petty
+artificiality in the construction of an affair like Bach's Chaconne is
+simply staggering. Then look at pictures, absurdly confined in frames,
+with their ingenious contrasts of light and shade and mass against
+mass. Nothing but petty artificiality! In other words, nothing but
+"form"--"form" which is the basis of all beauty, whether material or
+otherwise.
+
+Now, what form is in art, conventions (petty artificialities) are in
+life. Just as you can have too much form in art, so you can have too
+much convention in life. But no art that is not planned in form is
+worth consideration, and no life that is not planned in convention can
+ever be satisfactory. Convention is not the essence of life, but it is
+the protecting garment and preservative of life, and it is also one
+very valuable means by which life can express itself. It is largely
+symbolic; and symbols, while being expressive, are also great
+time-savers. The despisers of petty artificialities should think of
+this. Take the striking instance of that pettiest artificiality,
+leaving cards. Well, searchers after the real, what would you
+substitute for it? If you dropped it and substituted nothing, the
+result would tend towards a loosening of the bonds of society, and it
+would tend towards the diminution of the number of your friends. And
+if you dropped it and tried to substitute something less artificial
+and more real, you would accomplish no more than you accomplish with
+cards, you would inconvenience everybody, and waste a good deal of
+your own time. I cannot too strongly insist that the basis of
+convention is a symbolism, primarily meant to display a regard for the
+feelings of other people. If you do not display a regard for the
+feelings of other people, you may as well go and live on herbs in the
+desert. And if you are to display such a regard you cannot do it more
+expeditiously, at a smaller outlay of time and brains, than by
+adopting the code of convention now generally practised. It comes to
+this--that you cannot have all the advantages of living in the desert
+while you are living in a society. It would be delightful for you if
+you could, but you can't.
+
+There are two further reasons for the continuance of conventionality.
+And one is the mysterious but indisputable fact that the full beauty
+of an activity is never brought out until it is subjected to
+discipline and strict ordering and nice balancing. A life without
+petty artificiality would be the life of a tiger in the forest. A
+beautiful life, perhaps, a life of "burning bright," but not reaching
+the highest ideal of beauty! Laws and rules, forms and ceremonies are
+good in themselves, from a merely æsthetic point of view, apart from
+their social value and necessity.
+
+And the other reason is that one cannot always be at the full strain
+of "self-improvement," and "evolutionary progress," and generally
+beating the big drum. Human nature will not stand it. There is, if we
+will only be patient, ample time for the "artificial" as well as for
+the "real." Those persons who think that there isn't, ought to return
+to school and learn arithmetic. Supposing that all "petty
+artificialities" were suddenly swept away, and we were able to show
+our regard and consideration for our fellow creatures by the swift
+processes of thought alone, we should find ourselves with a terrible
+lot of time hanging heavy on our hands. We can no more spend all our
+waking hours in consciously striving towards higher things than we can
+dine exclusively off jam. What frightful prigs we should become if we
+had nothing to do but cultivate our noblest faculties! I beg the
+despisers of artificiality to reflect upon these observations, however
+incomplete these observations may be, and to consider whether they
+would be quite content if they got what they are crying out for.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE SECRET OF CONTENT
+
+
+I have said lightly à propos of the conclusion arrived at by several
+correspondents and by myself that the cry for the simple life was
+merely a new form of the old cry for happiness, that I would explain
+what it was that made life worth living for me. The word has gone
+forth, and I must endeavour to redeem my promise. But I do so with
+qualms and with diffidence. First, there is the natural instinct
+against speaking of that which is in the core of one's mind. Second,
+there is the fear, nearly amounting to certainty, of being
+misunderstood or not comprehended at all. And third, there is the
+absurd insufficiency of space. However!... For me, spiritual content
+(I will not use the word "happiness," which implies too much) springs
+essentially from no mental or physical facts. It springs from the
+spiritual fact that there is something higher in man than the mind,
+and that that something can control the mind. Call that something the
+soul, or what you will. My sense of security amid the collisions of
+existence lies in the firm consciousness that just as my body is the
+servant of my mind, so is my mind the servant of _me_. An unruly
+servant, but a servant--and possibly getting less unruly every day!
+Often have I said to that restive brain: "Now, O mind, sole means of
+communication between the divine _me_ and all external phenomena, you
+are not a free agent; you are a subordinate; you are nothing but a
+piece of machinery; and obey me you _shall_."
+
+The mind can only be conquered by regular meditation, by deciding
+beforehand what direction its activity ought to take, and insisting
+that its activity takes that direction; also by never leaving it idle,
+undirected, masterless, to play at random like a child in the streets
+after dark. This is extremely difficult, but it can be done, and it is
+marvellously well worth doing. The fault of the epoch is the absence
+of meditativeness. A sagacious man will strive to correct in himself
+the faults of his epoch. In some deep ways the twelfth century had
+advantages over the twentieth. It practised meditation. The twentieth
+does Sandow exercises. Meditation (I speak only for myself) is the
+least dispensable of the day's doings. What do I force my mind to
+meditate upon? Upon various things, but chiefly upon one.
+
+Namely, that Force, Energy, Life--the Incomprehensible has many
+names--is indestructible, and that, in the last analysis, there is
+only one single, unique Force, Energy, Life. Science is gradually
+reducing all elements to one element. Science is making it
+increasingly difficult to conceive matter apart from spirit.
+Everything lives. Even my razor gets "tired." And the fatigue of my
+razor is no more nor less explicable than my fatigue after a passage
+of arms with my mind. The Force in it, and in me, has been
+transformed, not lost. All Force is the same force. Science just now
+has a tendency to call it electricity; but I am indifferent to such
+baptisms. The same Force pervades my razor, my cow in my field, and
+the central _me_ which dominates my mind: the same force in different
+stages of evolution. And that Force persists forever. In such paths
+do I compel my mind to walk daily. Daily it has to recognize that the
+mysterious Ego controlling it is a part of that divine Force which
+exists from everlasting to everlasting, and which, in its ultimate
+atoms, nothing can harm. By such a course of training, even the mind,
+the coarse, practical mind, at last perceives that worldly accidents
+don't count.
+
+"But," you will exclaim, "this is nothing but the immortality of the
+soul over again!" Well, in a slightly more abstract form, it is. (I
+never said I had discovered anything new.) I do not permit myself to
+be dogmatic about the persistence of personality, or even of
+individuality after death. But, in basing my physical and mental life
+on the assumption that there is something in me which is
+indestructible and essentially changeless, I go no further than
+science points. Yes, if it gives you pleasure, let us call it the
+immortality of the soul. If I miss my train, or my tailor disgraces
+himself, or I lose that earthly manifestation of Force that happens to
+be dearest to me, I say to my mind: "Mind, concentrate your powers
+upon the full realization of the fact that I, your master, am immortal
+and beyond the reach of accidents." And my mind, knowing by this time
+that I am a hard master, obediently does so. Am I, a portion of the
+Infinite Force that existed billions of years ago, and which will
+exist billions of years hence, going to allow myself to be worried by
+any terrestrial physical or mental event? I am not. As for the
+vicissitudes of my body, that servant of my servant, it had better
+keep its place, and not make too much fuss. Not that any fuss
+occurring in either of these outward envelopes of the eternal _me_
+could really disturb me. The eternal is calm; it has the best reason
+for being so.
+
+So you say to yourselves: "Here is a man in a penny weekly paper
+advocating daily meditation upon the immortality of the soul as a cure
+for discontent and unhappiness! A strange phenomenon!" That it should
+be strange is an indictment of the epoch. My only reply to you is
+this: Try it. Of course, I freely grant that such meditation, while it
+"casts out fear," slowly kills desire and makes for a certain high
+indifference; and that the extinguishing of desire, with an
+accompanying indifference, be it high or low, is bad for youth. But I
+am not a youth, and to-day I am writing for those who have tasted
+disillusion: which youth has not. Yet I would not have you believe
+that I scorn the brief joys of this world. My attitude towards them
+would fain be that of Socrates, as stated by the incomparable Marcus
+Aurelius: "He knew how to lack, and how to enjoy, those things in the
+lack whereof most men show themselves weak; and in the fruition,
+intemperate."
+
+Besides commanding my mind to dwell upon the indestructibly and final
+omnipotence of the Force which is me, I command it to dwell upon the
+logical consequence of that _unity_ of force which science is now
+beginning to teach. The same essential force that is _me_ is also
+_you_. Says the Indian proverb: "I met a hundred men on the road to
+Delhi, and they were all my brothers." Yes, and they were all my twin
+brothers, if I may so express it, and a thousand times closer to me
+even than the common conception of twin brothers. We are all of us the
+same in essence; what separates us is merely differences in our
+respective stages of evolution. Constant reflection upon this fact
+must produce that universal sympathy which alone can produce a
+positive content. It must do away with such ridiculous feelings as
+blame, irritation, anger, resentment. It must establish in the mind an
+all-embracing tolerance. Until a man can look upon the drunkard in his
+drunkenness, and upon the wife-beater in his brutality, with pure and
+calm compassion; until his heart goes out instinctively to every other
+manifestation of the unique Force; until he is surcharged with an
+eager and unconquerable benevolence towards everything that lives;
+until he has utterly abandoned the presumptuous practice of judging
+and condemning--he will never attain real content. "Ah!" you exclaim
+again, "he has nothing newer to tell us than that 'the greatest of
+these is charity'!" I have not. It may strike you as excessively
+funny, but I have discovered nothing newer than that. I merely remind
+you of it. Thus it is, twins on the road to Delhi, by continual
+meditation upon the indestructibility of Force, that I try to
+cultivate calm, and by continual meditation upon the oneness of Force
+that I try to cultivate charity, being fully convinced that in
+calmness and in charity lies the secret of a placid if not ecstatic
+happiness. It is often said that no thinking person can be happy in
+this world. My view is that the more a man thinks the more happy he is
+likely to be. I have spoken. I am overwhelmingly aware that I have
+spoken crudely, abruptly, inadequately, confusedly.
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+THE NOVELS OF ARNOLD BENNETT
+
+
+WHOM GOD HATH JOINED:
+
+                                             Price $1.20 Net
+
+WHOM GOD HATH JOINED is a dramatic presentation of the working of the
+English divorce laws. Their injustice to woman has long been
+acknowledged; Arnold Bennett proves them almost as unjust to man.
+
+The novel is a stern morality, with laughter interspersed. It
+possesses the sincerity and vitality which come of a careful study of
+the problem.
+
+It contains passages of the most brilliant motive analysis which have
+been written in recent years. It presents a vivid world of actual
+personages.
+
+
+THE GLIMPSE:
+
+_The Adventures of a Soul._                  Price $1.20 Net
+
+The story is told of a man who passed over to the Other Side and
+remained there long enough to gain a glimpse--only to return again.
+
+Written with the careful realism which distinguishes all Arnold
+Bennett's work, it is curious to note the fine use that he makes of
+his realistic genius in the handling of a visionary situation.
+
+
+A MAN FROM THE NORTH:
+
+                                             Price $1.20 Net
+
+The story of a young man from the Five Towns, who comes up London to
+seek his fortune. He is grossly ignorant of life and naively curious
+about love. This is the history of his adventures towards love and of
+his enlightenment.
+
+All the loneliness, passion and quenchless curiosity of youth are in
+these pages--and the magic power of youth to wrap about the
+commonplace the cloak of romance.
+
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY, Publishers
+
+
+
+
+ARNOLD BENNETT: PLAYS
+
+
+CUPID AND COMMON-SENSE:
+
+_A Play in Four Acts, with a Preface on the Crisis in the Theatre._
+
+                                             Price $1.00 Net
+
+"Cupid and Common-Sense" reads well, and reads as if it would prove
+still more effective and enjoyable when acted.--_The Scotsman._
+
+
+WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS: A Play.
+
+                                             Price $1.00 Net
+
+This clever comedy, based on modern neswpaperdom, reveals Arnold
+Bennett in another phase.
+
+
+POLITE FARCES: Three Plays.
+
+                                             Price $1.00 Net
+
+The three farces which comprise this book deal with possible domestic
+and refined crises of everyday life.
+
+
+THE HONEYMOON:
+
+_A Comedy in Three Acts._                    Price $1.00 Net
+
+Originality without grotesquerie and satire without malice combine to
+make a play that is full of sparkle and genuine charm.
+
+
+THE GREAT ADVENTURE:
+
+_A Play of Fancy in Four Acts._              Price $1.00 Net
+
+The play based on Mr. Bennett's successful novel, "Buried Alive." As
+the novel stands out among humorous fiction so THE GREAT ADVENTURE
+stands out among modern comedies.
+
+
+ARNOLD BENNETT AND EDWARD KNOBLAUCH
+
+MILESTONES:
+
+_A Play in Three Acts._                      Price $1.00 Net
+
+This is the play which has created a sensation because of its boldness
+and novelty. It passes, in rapid survey, three generations--the
+milestones of the last half century. A big New York success.
+
+
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY, Publishers
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Typographical errors corrected in text:                   |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Page 110: artificialties replaced with artificialities    |
+    | Page 114: prevades replaced with pervades                 |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mental Efficiency, by Arnold Bennett
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mental Efficiency, by Arnold Bennett
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mental Efficiency
+       And Other Hints to Men and Women
+
+Author: Arnold Bennett
+
+Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23347]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MENTAL EFFICIENCY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Jeannie Howse and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+<div class="tr">
+<p class="cen" style="font-weight: bold;">Transcriber's Note:</p>
+<br />
+<p class="noin">Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+For a complete list, please see the <a href="#TN">end of this document</a>.</p>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+
+<h2>MENTAL EFFICIENCY</h2>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+
+<div class="tr2">
+
+<h3>BY ARNOLD BENNETT</h3>
+
+<p class="noin" style="font-weight: bold;"><i>Novels</i></p>
+
+<p class="allin">THE OLD WIVES' TALE<br />
+HELEN WITH THE HIGH HAND<br />
+THE BOOK OF CARLOTTA<br />
+BURIED ALIVE<br />
+A GREAT MAN<br />
+LEONORA<br />
+WHOM GOD HATH JOINED<br />
+A MAN FROM THE NORTH<br />
+ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS<br />
+THE GLIMPSE</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<p class="noin" style="font-weight: bold;"><i>Pocket Philosophies</i></p>
+
+<p class="allin">HOW TO LIVE ON 24 HOURS A DAY<br />
+THE HUMAN MACHINE<br />
+LITERARY TASTE<br />
+MENTAL EFFICIENCY</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<p class="noin" style="font-weight: bold;"><i>Miscellaneous</i></p>
+
+<p class="allin">CUPID AND COMMONSENSE: A Play<br />
+WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS: A Play<br />
+THE TRUTH ABOUT AN AUTHOR<br />
+THE FEAST OF ST. FRIEND</p>
+
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 15%;" />
+<br />
+
+<h3 style="margin-bottom: -1px;">GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY</h3>
+<p class="cen" style="margin-top: -1px;">NEW YORK</p>
+
+</div>
+
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h1>MENTAL EFFICIENCY</h1>
+
+<h3>AND OTHER HINTS<br />
+TO<br />
+MEN AND WOMEN</h3>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4 style="margin-bottom: -1px;">BY</h4>
+
+<h3 style="margin-top: -1px;">ARNOLD BENNETT</h3>
+
+<p class="cen">Author of "How to Live on 24 Hours a Day"<br />
+"The Old Wives' Tale," etc.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h5>GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY<br />
+PUBLISHERS&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;NEW YORK</h5>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h5>Copyright, 1911<br />
+By George H. Doran Company</h5>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="toc" id="toc"></a><hr />
+<br />
+
+<h3>CONTENTS</h3>
+<br />
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" width="70%" summary="Table of Contents">
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr" width="10%">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdl" width="70%">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr" width="20%"><span style="font-size: 80%;">Page</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">I.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#I">Mental Efficiency</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">7</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdlp">The Appeal</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_7">7</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdlp">The Replies</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdlp">The Cure</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdlp">Mental Calisthenics</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_24">24</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">II.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#II">Expressing One's Individuality</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_32">32</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">III.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#III">Breaking with the Past</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_39">39</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">IV.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#IV">Settling Down in Life</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">V.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#V">Marriage</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">53</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdlp">The Duty of It</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_53">53</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdlp">The Adventure of It</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_59">59</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdlp">The Two Ways of It</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">VI.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#VI">Books</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">72</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdlp">The Physical Side</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_72">72</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdlp">The Philosophy of Book Buying</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">VII.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#VII">Success</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">84</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdlp">Candid Remarks</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_84">84</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdlp">The Successful and the Unsuccessful</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_91">91</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdlp">The Inwardness of Success</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_97">97</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">VIII.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#VIII">The Petty Artificialities</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_104">104</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">IX.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#IX">The Secret of Content</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_112">112</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="I" id="I"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<h3>MENTAL EFFICIENCY<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+<br />
+
+<h4>THE APPEAL</h4>
+
+<p>If there is any virtue in advertisements&mdash;and a journalist should be
+the last person to say that there is not&mdash;the American nation is
+rapidly reaching a state of physical efficiency of which the world has
+probably not seen the like since Sparta. In all the American
+newspapers and all the American monthlies are innumerable illustrated
+announcements of "physical-culture specialists," who guarantee to make
+all the organs of the body perform their duties with the mighty
+precision of a 60 h.p. motor-car that never breaks down. I saw a book
+the other day written by one of these specialists, to show how perfect
+health could be attained by devoting a quarter of an hour a day to
+certain exercises. The advertisements multiply and increase in size.
+They cost a great deal of money. Therefore they must bring in a great
+deal of business. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>Therefore vast numbers of people must be worried
+about the non-efficiency of their bodies, and on the way to achieve
+efficiency. In our more modest British fashion, we have the same
+phenomenon in England. And it is growing. Our muscles are growing
+also. Surprise a man in his bedroom of a morning, and you will find
+him lying on his back on the floor, or standing on his head, or
+whirling clubs, in pursuit of physical efficiency. I remember that
+once I "went in" for physical efficiency myself. I, too, lay on the
+floor, my delicate epidermis separated from the carpet by only the
+thinnest of garments, and I contorted myself according to the fifteen
+diagrams of a large chart (believed to be the <i>magna charta</i> of
+physical efficiency) daily after shaving. In three weeks my collars
+would not meet round my prize-fighter's neck; my hosier reaped immense
+profits, and I came to the conclusion that I had carried physical
+efficiency quite far enough.</p>
+
+<p>A strange thing&mdash;was it not?&mdash;that I never had the idea of devoting a
+quarter of an hour a day after shaving to the pursuit of mental
+efficiency. The average body is a pretty <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>complicated affair, sadly
+out of order, but happily susceptible to culture. The average mind is
+vastly more complicated, not less sadly out of order, but perhaps even
+more susceptible to culture. We compare our arms to the arms of the
+gentleman illustrated in the physical efficiency advertisement, and we
+murmur to ourselves the classic phrase: "This will never do." And we
+set about developing the muscles of our arms until we can show them
+off (through a frock coat) to women at afternoon tea. But it does not,
+perhaps, occur to us that the mind has its muscles, and a lot of
+apparatus besides, and that these invisible, yet paramount, mental
+organs are far less efficient than they ought to be; that some of them
+are atrophied, others starved, others out of shape, etc. A man of
+sedentary occupation goes for a very long walk on Easter Monday, and
+in the evening is so exhausted that he can scarcely eat. He wakes up
+to the inefficiency of his body, caused by his neglect of it, and he
+is so shocked that he determines on remedial measures. Either he will
+walk to the office, or he will play golf, or he will execute the
+post-shaving exercises. But let the same man after a prolonged
+sedentary course of newspapers, magazines, and novels, take <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>his mind
+out for a stiff climb among the rocks of a scientific, philosophic, or
+artistic subject. What will he do? Will he stay out all day, and
+return in the evening too tired even to read his paper? Not he. It is
+ten to one that, finding himself puffing for breath after a quarter of
+an hour, he won't even persist till he gets his second wind, but will
+come back at once. Will he remark with genuine concern that his mind
+is sadly out of condition and that he really must do something to get
+it into order? Not he. It is a hundred to one that he will tranquilly
+accept the <i>status quo</i>, without shame and without very poignant
+regret. Do I make my meaning clear?</p>
+
+<p>I say, without a <i>very poignant</i> regret, because a certain vague
+regret is indubitably caused by realizing that one is handicapped by a
+mental inefficiency which might, without too much difficulty, be
+cured. That vague regret exudes like a vapour from the more cultivated
+section of the public. It is to be detected everywhere, and especially
+among people who are near the half-way house of life. They perceive
+the existence of immense quantities of knowledge, not the smallest
+particle of which will they ever make their own. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>They stroll forth
+from their orderly dwellings on a starlit night, and feel dimly the
+wonder of the heavens. But the still small voice is telling them that,
+though they have read in a newspaper that there are fifty thousand
+stars in the Pleiades, they cannot even point to the Pleiades in the
+sky. How they would like to grasp the significance of the nebular
+theory, the most overwhelming of all theories! And the years are
+passing; and there are twenty-four hours in every day, out of which
+they work only six or seven; and it needs only an impulse, an effort,
+a system, in order gradually to cure the mind of its slackness, to
+give "tone" to its muscles, and to enable it to grapple with the
+splendours of knowledge and sensation that await it! But the regret is
+not poignant enough. They do nothing. They go on doing nothing. It is
+as though they passed for ever along the length of an endless table
+filled with delicacies, and could not stretch out a hand to seize. Do
+I exaggerate? Is there not deep in the consciousness of most of us a
+mournful feeling that our minds are like the liver of the
+advertisement&mdash;sluggish, and that for the sluggishness of our minds
+there is the excuse neither of incompetence, nor of lack of time, nor
+of lack of opportunity, nor of lack of means?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>Why does not some mental efficiency specialist come forward and show
+us how to make our minds do the work which our minds are certainly
+capable of doing? I do not mean a quack. All the physical efficiency
+specialists who advertise largely are not quacks. Some of them achieve
+very genuine results. If a course of treatment can be devised for the
+body, a course of treatment can be devised for the mind. Thus we might
+realize some of the ambitions which all of us cherish in regard to the
+utilization in our spare time of that magnificent machine which we
+allow to rust within our craniums. We have the desire to perfect
+ourselves, to round off our careers with the graces of knowledge and
+taste. How many people would not gladly undertake some branch of
+serious study, so that they might not die under the reproach of having
+lived and died without ever really having known anything about
+anything! It is not the absence of desire that prevents them. It is,
+first, the absence of will-power&mdash;not the will to begin, but the will
+to continue; and, second, a mental apparatus which is out of
+condition, "puffy," "weedy," through sheer neglect. The remedy, then,
+divides itself into two parts, the cultivation of will-power, and the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>getting into condition of the mental apparatus. And these two branches
+of the cure must be worked concurrently.</p>
+
+<p>I am sure that the considerations which I have presented to you must
+have already presented themselves to tens of thousands of my readers,
+and that thousands must have attempted the cure. I doubt not that many
+have succeeded. I shall deem it a favour if those readers who have
+interested themselves in the question will communicate to me at once
+the result of their experience, whatever its outcome. I will make such
+use as I can of the letters I receive, and afterwards I will give my
+own experience.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<h4>THE REPLIES</h4>
+
+<p>The correspondence which I have received in answer to my appeal shows
+that at any rate I did not overstate the case. There is, among a vast
+mass of reflecting people in this country, a clear consciousness of
+being mentally less than efficient, and a strong (though ineffective)
+desire that such mental inefficiency should cease to be. The desire is
+stronger than I had imagined, but it does not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>seem to have led to
+much hitherto. And that "course of treatment for the mind," by means
+of which we are to "realize some of the ambitions which all of us
+cherish in regard to the utilization in our spare time of the
+magnificent machine which we allow to rust within our craniums"&mdash;that
+desiderated course of treatment has not apparently been devised by
+anybody. The Sandow of the brain has not yet loomed up above the
+horizon. On the other hand, there appears to be a general expectancy
+that I personally am going to play the r&ocirc;le of the Sandow of the
+brain. Vain thought!</p>
+
+<p>I have been very much interested in the letters, some of which, as a
+statement of the matter in question, are admirable. It is perhaps not
+surprising that the best of them come from women&mdash;for (genius apart)
+woman is usually more touchingly lyrical than man in the yearning for
+the ideal. The most enthusiastic of all the letters I have received,
+however, is from a gentleman whose notion is that we should be
+hypnotised into mental efficiency. After advocating the establishment
+of "an institution of practical psychology from whence there can be
+graduated fit <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>and proper people whose efforts would be in the
+direction of the subconscious mental mechanism of the child or even
+the adult," this hypnotist proceeds: "Between the academician, whose
+specialty is an inconsequential cobweb, the medical man who has got it
+into his head that he is the logical foster-father for psychonomical
+matters, and the blatant 'professor' who deals with monkey tricks on a
+few somnambules on the music-hall stage, you are allowing to go
+unrecognized one of the most potent factors of mental development." Am
+I? I have not the least idea what this gentleman means, but I can
+assure him that he is wrong. I can make more sense out of the remarks
+of another correspondent who, utterly despising the things of the
+mind, compares a certain class of young men to "a halfpenny bloater
+with the roe out," and asserts that he himself "got out of the groove"
+by dint of having to unload ten tons of coal in three hours and a half
+every day during several years. This is interesting and it is
+constructive, but it is just a little beside the point.</p>
+
+<p>A lady, whose optimism is indicated by her pseudonym, "Esp&eacute;rance,"
+puts her finger on the spot, or, rather, on one of the spots, in a
+very <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>sensible letter. "It appears to me," she says, "that the great
+cause of mental inefficiency is lack of concentration, perhaps
+especially in the case of women. I can trace my chief failures to this
+cause. Concentration, is a talent. It may be in a measure cultivated,
+but it needs to be inborn.... The greater number of us are in a state
+of semi-slumber, with minds which are only exerted to one-half of
+their capability." I thoroughly agree that inability to concentrate is
+one of the chief symptoms of the mental machine being out of
+condition. "Esp&eacute;rance's" suggested cure is rather drastic. She says:
+"Perhaps one of the best cures for mental sedentariness is arithmetic,
+for there is nothing else which requires greater power of
+concentration." Perhaps arithmetic might be an effective cure, but it
+is not a practical cure, because no one, or scarcely any one, would
+practise it. I cannot imagine the plain man who, having a couple of
+hours to spare of a night, and having also the sincere desire but not
+the will-power to improve his taste and knowledge, would deliberately
+sit down and work sums by way of preliminary mental calisthenics. As
+Ibsen's puppet said: "People don't do these things." Why do they not?
+The answer is: Simply because <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>they won't; simply because human nature
+will not run to it. "Esp&eacute;rance's" suggestion of learning poetry is
+slightly better.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly the best letter I have had is from Miss H. D. She says:
+"This idea [to avoid the reproach of 'living and dying without ever
+really knowing anything about anything'] came to me of itself from
+somewhere when I was a small girl. And looking back I fancy that the
+thought itself spurred me to do something in this world, to get into
+line with people who did things&mdash;people who painted pictures, wrote
+books, built bridges, or did something beyond the ordinary. This only
+has seemed to me, all my life since, worth while." Here I must
+interject that such a statement is somewhat sweeping. In fact, it
+sweeps a whole lot of fine and legitimate ambitions straight into the
+rubbish heap of the Not-worth-while. I think the writer would wish to
+modify it. She continues: "And when the day comes in which I have not
+done some serious reading, however small the measure, or some writing
+... or I have been too sad or dull to notice the brightness of colour
+of the sun, of grass and flowers, of the sea, or the moonlight on the
+water, I think the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>day ill-spent. So I must think the <i>incentive</i> to
+do a little each day beyond the ordinary towards the real culture of
+the mind, is the beginning of the cure of mental inefficiency." This
+is very ingenious and good. Further: "The day comes when the mental
+habit has become a part of our life, and we value mental work for the
+work's sake." But I am not sure about that. For myself, I have never
+valued work for its own sake, and I never shall. And I only value such
+mental work for the more full and more intense consciousness of being
+alive which it gives me.</p>
+
+<p>Miss H. D.'s remedies are vague. As to lack of will-power, "the first
+step is to realize your weakness; the next step is to have ordinary
+shame that you are defective." I doubt, I gravely doubt, if these
+steps would lead to anything definite. Nor is this very helpful: "I
+would advise reading, observing, writing. I would advise the use of
+every sense and every faculty by which we at last learn the sacredness
+of life." This is begging the question. If people, by merely wishing
+to do so, could regularly and seriously read, observe, write, and use
+every faculty and sense, there would be very little mental
+inefficiency. I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>see that I shall be driven to construct a programme
+out of my own bitter and ridiculous experiences.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>THE CURE</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"But tasks in hours of insight willed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The above lines from Matthew Arnold are quoted by one of my very
+numerous correspondents to support a certain optimism in this matter
+of a systematic attempt to improve the mind. They form part of a
+beautiful and inspiring poem, but I gravely fear that they run counter
+to the vast mass of earthly experience. More often than not I have
+found that a task willed in some hour of insight can <i>not</i> be
+fulfilled through hours of gloom. No, no, and no! To will is easy: it
+needs but the momentary bright contagion of a stronger spirit than
+one's own. To fulfil, morning after morning, or evening after evening,
+through months and years&mdash;this is the very dickens, and there is not
+one of my readers that will not agree with me. Yet such is the elastic
+quality of human nature that most of my correspondents are quite ready
+to ignore the sad fact and to demand at once: <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>"what shall we will?
+Tell us what we must will." Some seem to think that they have solved
+the difficulty when they have advocated certain systems of memory and
+mind-training. Such systems may be in themselves useful or
+useless&mdash;the evidence furnished to me is contradictory&mdash;but were they
+perfect systems, a man cannot be intellectually born again merely by
+joining a memory-class. The best system depends utterly on the man's
+power of resolution. And what really counts is not the system, but the
+spirit in which the man handles it. Now, the proper spirit can only be
+induced by a careful consideration and realization of the man's
+conditions&mdash;the limitations of his temperament, the strength of
+adverse influences, and the lessons of his past.</p>
+
+<p>Let me take an average case. Let me take your case, O man or woman of
+thirty, living in comfort, with some cares, and some responsibilities,
+and some pretty hard daily work, but not too much of any! The question
+of mental efficiency is in the air. It interests you. It touches you
+nearly. Your conscience tells you that your mind is less active and
+less informed than it might be. You suddenly spring up from the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>garden-seat, and you say to yourself that you will take your mind in
+hand and do something with it. Wait a moment. Be so good as to sink
+back into that garden-seat and clutch that tennis racket a little
+longer. You have had these "hours of insight" before, you know. You
+have not arrived at the age of thirty without having tried to carry
+out noble resolutions&mdash;and failed. What precautions are you going to
+take against failure this time? For your will is probably no stronger
+now than it was aforetime. You have admitted and accepted failure in
+the past. And no wound is more cruel to the spirit of resolve than
+that dealt by failure. You fancy the wound closed, but just at the
+critical moment it may reopen and mortally bleed you. What are your
+precautions? Have you thought of them? No. You have not.</p>
+
+<p>I have not the pleasure of your acquaintance. But I know you because I
+know myself. Your failure in the past was due to one or more of three
+causes. And the first was that you undertook too much at the
+beginning. You started off with a magnificent programme. You are
+something of an expert in physical exercises&mdash;you would <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>be ashamed
+not to be, in these physical days&mdash;and so you would never attempt a
+hurdle race or an uninterrupted hour's club-whirling without some
+preparation. The analogy between the body and the mind ought to have
+struck you. <i>This</i> time, please do not form an elaborate programme. Do
+not form any programme. Simply content yourself with a preliminary
+canter, a ridiculously easy preliminary canter. For example (and I
+give this merely as an example), you might say to yourself: "Within
+one month from this date I will read twice Herbert Spencer's little
+book on 'Education'&mdash;sixpence&mdash;and will make notes in pencil inside
+the back cover of the things that particularly strike me." You remark
+that that is nothing, that you can do it "on your head," and so on.
+Well, do it. When it is done you will at any rate possess the
+satisfaction of having resolved to do something and having done it.
+Your mind will have gained tone and healthy pride. You will be even
+justified in setting yourself some kind of a simple programme to
+extend over three months. And you will have acquired some general
+principles by the light of which to construct the programme. But best
+of all, you will have avoided failure, that dangerous wound.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>The second possible cause of previous failure was the disintegrating
+effect on the will-power of the ironic, superior smile of friends.
+Whenever a man "turns over a new leaf" he has this inane giggle to
+face. The drunkard may be less ashamed of getting drunk than of
+breaking to a crony the news that he has signed the pledge. Strange,
+but true! And human nature must be counted with. Of course, on a few
+stern spirits the effect of that smile is merely to harden the
+resolution. But on the majority its influence is deleterious.
+Therefore don't go and nail your flag to the mast. Don't raise any
+flag. Say nothing. Work as unobtrusively as you can. When you have won
+a battle or two you can begin to wave the banner, and then you will
+find that that miserable, pitiful, ironic, superior smile will die
+away ere it is born.</p>
+
+<p>The third possible cause was that you did not rearrange your day.
+Idler and time-waster though you have been, still you had done
+<i>something</i> during the twenty-four hours. You went to work with a kind
+of dim idea that there were twenty-six hours in every day. <i>Something
+large and definite has to be dropped.</i> Some space in the rank jungle
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>of the day has to be cleared and swept up for the new operations.
+Robbing yourself of sleep won't help you, nor trying to "squeeze in" a
+time for study between two other times. Use the knife, and use it
+freely. If you mean to read or think half an hour a day, arrange for
+an hour. A hundred per cent. margin is not too much for a beginner. Do
+you ask me where the knife is to be used? I should say that in nine
+cases out of ten the rites of the cult of the body might be
+abbreviated. I recently spent a week-end in a London suburb, and I was
+staggered by the wholesale attention given to physical recreation in
+all its forms. It was a gigantic debauch of the muscles on every side.
+It shocked me. "Poor withering mind!" I thought. "Cricket, and
+football, and boating, and golf, and tennis have their 'seasons,' but
+not thou!" These considerations are general and prefatory. Now I must
+come to detail.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>MENTAL CALISTHENICS</h4>
+
+<p>I have dealt with the state of mind in which one should begin a
+serious effort towards mental efficiency, and also with the probable
+causes of failure in previous efforts. We come now to what I may call
+the calisthenics of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>business, exercises which may be roughly
+compared to the technical exercises necessary in learning to play a
+musical instrument. It is curious that a person studying a musical
+instrument will have no false shame whatever in doing mere exercises
+for the fingers and wrists while a person who is trying to get his
+mind into order will almost certainly experience a false shame in
+going through performances which are undoubtedly good for him. Herein
+lies one of the great obstacles to mental efficiency. Tell a man that
+he should join a memory class, and he will hum and haw, and say, as I
+have already remarked, that memory isn't everything; and, in short, he
+won't join the memory class, partly from indolence, I grant, but more
+from false shame. (Is not this true?) He will even hesitate about
+learning things by heart. Yet there are few mental exercises better
+than learning great poetry or prose by heart. Twenty lines a week for
+six months: what a "cure" for debility! The chief, but not the only,
+merit of learning by heart as an exercise is that it compels the mind
+to concentrate. And the most important preliminary to self-development
+is the faculty of concentrating at will. Another excellent exercise is
+to read a page of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>no-matter-what, and then immediately to write
+down&mdash;in one's own words or in the author's&mdash;one's full recollection
+of it. A quarter of an hour a day! No more! And it works like magic.</p>
+
+<p>This brings me to the department of writing. I am a writer by
+profession; but I do not think I have any prejudices in favour of the
+exercise of writing. Indeed, I say to myself every morning that if
+there is one exercise in the world which I hate, it is the exercise of
+writing. But I must assert that in my opinion the exercise of writing
+is an indispensable part of any genuine effort towards mental
+efficiency. I don't care much what you write, so long as you compose
+sentences and achieve continuity. There are forty ways of writing in
+an unprofessional manner, and they are all good. You may keep "a full
+diary," as Mr. Arthur Christopher Benson says he does. This is one of
+the least good ways. Diaries, save in experienced hands like those of
+Mr. Benson, are apt to get themselves done with the very minimum of
+mental effort. They also tend to an exaggeration of egotism, and if
+they are left lying about they tend to strife. Further, one never
+knows when one may not be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>compelled to produce them in a court of
+law. A journal is better. Do not ask me to define the difference
+between a journal and a diary. I will not and I cannot. It is a
+difference that one feels instinctively. A diary treats exclusively of
+one's self and one's doings; a journal roams wider, and notes whatever
+one has observed of interest. A diary relates that one had lobster
+mayonnaise for dinner and rose the next morning with a headache,
+doubtless attributable to mental strain. A journal relates that
+Mrs. &mdash;&mdash;, whom one took into dinner, had brown eyes, and an agreeable
+trick of throwing back her head after asking a question, and gives her
+account of her husband's strange adventures in Colorado, etc. A diary
+is</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All I, I, I, I, itself I<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>(to quote a line of the transcendental poetry of Mary Baker G. Eddy).
+A journal is the large spectacle of life. A journal may be special or
+general. I know a man who keeps a journal of all cases of current
+superstition which he actually encounters. He began it without the
+slightest suspicion that he was beginning a document of astounding
+interest and real scientific value; but such was the fact. In default
+of a diary or a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>journal, one may write essays (provided one has the
+moral courage); or one may simply make notes on the book one reads. Or
+one may construct anthologies of passages which have made an
+individual and particular appeal to one's tastes. Anthology
+construction is one of the pleasantest hobbies that a person who is
+not mad about golf and bridge&mdash;that is to say, a thinking person&mdash;can
+possibly have; and I recommend it to those who, discreetly mistrusting
+their power to keep up a fast pace from start to finish, are anxious
+to begin their intellectual course gently and mildly. In any event,
+writing&mdash;the act of writing&mdash;is vital to almost any scheme. I would
+say it was vital to every scheme, without exception, were I not sure
+that some kind correspondent would instantly point out a scheme to
+which writing was obviously not vital.</p>
+
+<p>After writing comes thinking. (The sequence may be considered odd, but
+I adhere to it.) In this connexion I cannot do better than quote an
+admirable letter which I have received from a correspondent who wishes
+to be known only as "An Oxford Lecturer." The italics (except the
+last) are mine, not his. He says: "Till a man <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>has got his physical
+brain completely under his control&mdash;<i>suppressing its too-great
+receptivity, its tendencies to reproduce idly the thoughts of others,
+and to be swayed by every passing gust of emotion</i>&mdash;I hold that he
+cannot do a tenth part of the work that he would then be able to
+perform with little or no effort. Moreover, work apart, he has not
+entered upon his kingdom, and unlimited possibilities of future
+development are barred to him. Mental efficiency can be gained by
+constant practice in meditation&mdash;i.e., by concentrating the mind, say,
+for but ten minutes daily, but with absolute regularity, on some of
+the highest thoughts of which it is capable. Failures will be
+frequent, but they must be regarded with simple indifference and
+dogged perseverance in the path chosen. If that path be followed
+<i>without intermission</i> even for a few weeks the results will speak for
+themselves." I thoroughly agree with what this correspondent says, and
+am obliged to him for having so ably stated the case. But I regard
+such a practice of meditation as he indicates as being rather an
+"advanced" exercise for a beginner. After the beginner has got under
+way, and gained a little confidence in his strength of purpose, and
+acquired the skill to define his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>thoughts sufficiently to write them
+down&mdash;then it would be time enough, in my view, to undertake what "An
+Oxford Lecturer" suggests. By the way, he highly recommends Mrs. Annie
+Besant's book, <i>Thought Power: Its Control and Culture</i>. He says that
+it treats the subject with scientific clearness, and gives a practical
+method of training the mind, I endorse the latter part of the
+statement.</p>
+
+<p>So much for the more or less technical processes of stirring the mind
+from its sloth and making it exactly obedient to the aspirations of
+the soul. And here I close. Numerous correspondents have asked me to
+outline a course of reading for them. In other words, they have asked
+me to particularize for them the aspirations of their souls. My
+subject, however, was not self-development My subject was mental
+efficiency as a means to self-development. Of course, one can only
+acquire mental efficiency in the actual effort of self-development.
+But I was concerned, not with the choice of route; rather with the
+manner of following the route. You say to me that I am busying myself
+with the best method of walking, and refusing to discuss where to go.
+Precisely. One <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>man cannot tell another man where the other man wants
+to go.</p>
+
+<p>If he can't himself decide on a goal he may as well curl up and
+expire, for the root of the matter is not in him. I will content
+myself with pointing out that the entire universe is open for
+inspection. Too many people fancy that self-development means
+literature. They associate the higher life with an intimate knowledge
+of the life of Charlotte Bront&euml;, or the order of the plays of
+Shakespeare. The higher life may just as well be butterflies, or
+funeral customs, or county boundaries, or street names, or mosses, or
+stars, or slugs, as Charlotte Bront&euml; or Shakespeare. Choose what
+interests you. Lots of finely-organized, mentally-efficient persons
+can't read Shakespeare at any price, and if you asked them who was the
+author of <i>The Tenant of Wildfell Hall</i> they might proudly answer
+Emily Bront&euml;, if they didn't say they never heard of it. An accurate
+knowledge of <i>any</i> subject, coupled with a carefully nurtured sense of
+the relativity of that subject to other subjects, implies an enormous
+self-development. With this hint I conclude.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="II" id="II"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>II<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h3>EXPRESSING ONE'S INDIVIDUALITY</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>A most curious and useful thing to realize is that one never knows the
+impression one is creating on other people. One may often guess pretty
+accurately whether it is good, bad, or indifferent&mdash;some people render
+it unnecessary for one to guess, they practically inform one&mdash;but that
+is not what I mean. I mean much more than that. I mean that one has
+one's self no mental picture corresponding to the mental picture which
+one's personality leaves in the minds of one's friends. Has it ever
+struck you that there is a mysterious individual going around, walking
+the streets, calling at houses for tea, chatting, laughing, grumbling,
+arguing, and that all your friends know him and have long since added
+him up and come to a definite conclusion about him&mdash;without saying
+more than a chance, cautious word to you; and that that person is
+<i>you</i>? Supposing that <i>you</i> came into a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>drawing-room where you were
+having tea, do you think you would recognize yourself as an
+individuality? I think not. You would be apt to say to yourself, as
+guests do when disturbed in drawing-rooms by other guests: "Who's this
+chap? Seems rather queer, I hope he won't be a bore." And your first
+telling would be slightly hostile. Why, even when you meet yourself in
+an unsuspected mirror in the very clothes that you have put on that
+very day and that you know by heart, you are almost always shocked by
+the realization that you are you. And now and then, when you have gone
+to the glass to arrange your hair in the full sobriety of early
+morning, have you not looked on an absolute stranger, and has not that
+stranger piqued your curiosity? And if it is thus with precise
+external details of form, colour, and movement, what may it not be
+with the vague complex effect of the mental and moral individuality?</p>
+
+<p>A man honestly tries to make a good impression. What is the result?
+The result merely is that his friends, in the privacy of their minds,
+set him down as a man who tries to make a good impression. If much
+depends on the result of a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>single interview, or a couple of
+interviews, a man may conceivably force another to accept an
+impression of himself which he would like to convey. But if the
+receiver of the impression is to have time at his disposal, then the
+giver of the impression may just as well sit down and put his hands in
+his pockets, for nothing that he can do will modify or influence in
+any way the impression that he will ultimately give. The real impress
+is, in the end, given unconsciously, not consciously; and further, it
+is received unconsciously, not consciously. It depends partly on both
+persons. And it is immutably fixed beforehand. There can be no final
+deception. Take the extreme case, that of the mother and her son. One
+hears that the son hoodwinks his mother. Not he! If he is cruel,
+neglectful, overbearing, she is perfectly aware of it. He does not
+deceive her, and she does not deceive herself. I have often thought:
+If a son could look into a mother's heart, what an eye-opener he would
+have! "What!" he would cry. "This cold, impartial judgment, this keen
+vision for my faults, this implacable memory of little slights, and
+injustices, and callousnesses committed long ago, in the breast of my
+mother!" Yes, my friend, in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>the breast of your mother. The only
+difference between your mother and another person is that she takes
+you as you are, and loves you for what you are. She isn't blind: do
+not imagine it.</p>
+
+<p>The marvel is, not that people are such bad judges of character, but
+that they are such good judges, especially of what I may call
+fundamental character. The wiliest person cannot for ever conceal his
+fundamental character from the simplest. And people are very stern
+judges, too. Think of your best friends&mdash;are you oblivious of their
+defects? On the contrary, you are perhaps too conscious of them. When
+you summon them before your mind's eye, it is no ideal creation that
+you see. When you meet them and talk to them you are constantly making
+reservations in their disfavour&mdash;unless, of course, you happen to be a
+schoolgirl gushing over like a fountain with enthusiasm. It is well,
+when one is judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with
+the same godlike and superior impartiality. It is well to grasp the
+fact that you are going through life under the scrutiny of a band of
+acquaintances who are subject to very few illusions about you, whose
+views of you are, indeed, apt to be harsh and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>even cruel. Above all
+it is advisable to comprehend thoroughly that the things in your
+individuality which annoy your friends most are the things of which
+you are completely unconscious. It is not until years have passed that
+one begins to be able to form a dim idea of what one has looked like
+to one's friends. At forty one goes back ten years, and one says
+sadly, but with a certain amusement: "I must have been pretty blatant
+then. I can see how I must have exasperated 'em. And yet I hadn't the
+faintest notion of it at the time. My intentions were of the best.
+Only I didn't know enough." And one recollects some particularly crude
+action, and kicks one's self.... Yes, that is all very well; and the
+enlightenment which has come with increasing age is exceedingly
+satisfactory. But you are forty now. What shall you be saying of
+yourself at fifty? Such reflections foster humility, and they foster
+also a reluctance, which it is impossible to praise too highly, to
+tread on other people's toes.</p>
+
+<p>A moment ago I used the phrase "fundamental character." It is a
+reminiscence of Stevenson's phrase "fundamental decency." And <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>it is
+the final test by which one judges one's friends. "After all, he's a
+decent fellow." We must be able to use that formula concerning our
+friends. Kindliness of heart is not the greatest of human
+qualities&mdash;and its general effect on the progress of the world is not
+entirely beneficent&mdash;but it is the greatest of human qualities in
+friendship. It is the least dispensable quality. We come back to it
+with relief from more brilliant qualities. And it has the great
+advantage of always going with a broad mind. Narrow-minded people are
+never kind-hearted. You may be inclined to dispute this statement:
+please think it over; I am inclined to uphold it.</p>
+
+<p>We can forgive the absence of any quality except kindliness of heart.
+And when a man lacks that, we blame him, we will not forgive him. This
+is, of course, scandalous. A man is born as he is born. And he can as
+easily add a cubit to his stature as add kindliness to his heart. The
+feat never has been done, and never will be done. And yet we blame
+those who have not kindliness. We have the incredible, insufferable,
+and odious audacity to blame them. We think of them as though they had
+nothing <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>to do but go into a shop and buy kindliness. I hear you say
+that kindliness of heart can be "cultivated." Well, I hate to have
+even the appearance of contradicting you, but it can only be
+cultivated in the botanical sense. You can't cultivate violets on a
+nettle. A philosopher has enjoined us to suffer fools gladly. He had
+more usefully enjoined us to suffer ill-natured persons gladly.... I
+see that in a fit of absentmindedness I have strayed into the pulpit.
+I descend.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="III" id="III"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>III<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h3>BREAKING WITH THE PAST</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>On that dark morning we woke up, and it instantly occurred to us&mdash;or
+at any rate to those of us who have preserved some of our illusions
+and our <i>na&iuml;vet&eacute;</i>&mdash;that we had something to be cheerful about, some
+cause for a gay and strenuous vivacity; and then we remembered that it
+was New Year's Day, and there were those Resolutions to put into
+force! Of course, we all smile in a superior manner at the very
+mention of New Year's Resolutions; we pretend they are toys for
+children, and that we have long since ceased to regard them seriously
+as a possible aid to conduct. But we are such deceivers, such
+miserable, moral cowards, in such terror of appearing na&iuml;ve, that I
+for one am not to be taken in by that smile and that pretence. The
+individual who scoffs at New Year's Resolutions resembles the woman
+who says she doesn't look under the bed at nights; the truth is not in
+him, and in the very moment <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>of his lying, could his cranium suddenly
+become transparent, we should see Resolutions burning brightly in his
+brain like lamps in Trafalgar Square. Of this I am convinced, that
+nineteen-twentieths of us got out of bed that morning animated by that
+special feeling of gay and strenuous vivacity which Resolutions alone
+can produce. And nineteen-twentieths of us were also conscious of a
+high virtue, forgetting that it is not the making of Resolutions, but
+the keeping of them, which renders pardonable the consciousness of
+virtue.</p>
+
+<p>And at this hour, while the activity of the Resolution is yet in full
+blast, I would wish to insist on the truism, obvious perhaps, but apt
+to be overlooked, that a man cannot go forward and stand still at the
+same time. Just as moralists have often animadverted upon the tendency
+to live in the future, so I would animadvert upon the tendency to live
+in the past. Because all around me I see men carefully tying
+themselves with an unbreakable rope to an immovable post at the bottom
+of a hill and then struggling to climb the hill. If there is one
+Resolution more important than another it is the Resolution to break
+with the past. If life is not a continual <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>denial of the past, then it
+is nothing. This may seem a hard and callous doctrine, but you know
+there are aspects of common sense which decidedly are hard and
+callous. And one finds constantly in plain common-sense persons (O
+rare and select band!) a surprising quality of ruthlessness mingled
+with softer traits. Have you not noticed it? The past is absolutely
+intractable. One can't do anything with it. And an exaggerated
+attention to it is like an exaggerated attention to sepulchres&mdash;a sign
+of barbarism. Moreover, the past is usually the enemy of cheerfulness,
+and cheerfulness is a most precious attainment.</p>
+
+<p>Personally, I could even go so far as to exhibit hostility towards
+grief, and a marked hostility towards remorse&mdash;two states of mind
+which feed on the past instead of on the present. Remorse, which is
+not the same thing as repentance, serves no purpose that I have ever
+been able to discover. What one has done, one has done, and there's an
+end of it. As a great prelate unforgettably said, "Things are what
+they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be. Why,
+then, attempt to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>deceive ourselves"&mdash;that remorse for wickedness is a
+useful and praiseworthy exercise? Much better to forget. As a matter
+of fact, people "indulge" in remorse; it is a somewhat vicious form of
+spiritual pleasure. Grief, of course, is different, and it must be
+handled with delicate consideration. Nevertheless, when I see, as one
+does see, a man or a woman dedicating existence to sorrow for the loss
+of a beloved creature, and the world tacitly applauding, my feeling is
+certainly inimical. To my idea, that man or woman is not honouring,
+but dishonouring, the memory of the departed; society suffers, the
+individual suffers, and no earthly or heavenly good is achieved. Grief
+is of the past; it mars the present; it is a form of indulgence, and
+it ought to be bridled much more than it often is. The human heart is
+so large that mere remembrance should not be allowed to tyrannize over
+every part of it.</p>
+
+<p>But cases of remorse and absorbing grief are comparatively rare. What
+is not rare is that misguided loyalty to the past which dominates the
+lives of so many of us. I do not speak of leading principles, which
+are not likely to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>incommode us by changing; I speak of secondary yet
+still important things. We will not do so-and-so because we have never
+done it&mdash;as if that was a reason! Or we have always done so-and-so,
+therefore we must always do it&mdash;as if <i>that</i> was logic! This
+disposition to an irrational Toryism is curiously discoverable in
+advanced Radicals, and it will show itself in the veriest trifles. I
+remember such a man whose wife objected to his form of hat (not that I
+would call so crowning an affair as a hat a trifle!). "My dear," he
+protested, "I have always worn this sort of hat. It may not suit me,
+but it is absolutely impossible for me to alter it now." However, she
+took him by means of an omnibus to a hat shop and bought him another
+hat and put it on his head, and made a present of the old one to the
+shop assistant, and marched him out of the shop. "There!" she said,
+"you see how impossible it is." This is a parable. And I will not
+insult your intelligence by applying it.</p>
+
+<p>The faculty that we chiefly need when we are in the resolution-making
+mood is the faculty of imagination, the faculty of looking at our
+lives <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>as though we had never looked at them before&mdash;freshly, with a
+new eye. Supposing that you had been born mature and full of
+experience, and that yesterday had been the first day of your life,
+you would regard it to-day as an experiment, you would challenge each
+act in it, and you would probably arrange to-morrow in a manner that
+showed a healthy disrespect for yesterday. You certainly would not
+say: "I have done so-and-so once, therefore I must keep on doing it."
+The past is never more than an experiment. A genuine appreciation of
+this fact will make our new Resolutions more valuable and drastic than
+they usually are. I have a dim notion that the most useful Resolution
+for most of us would be to break quite fifty per cent. of all the vows
+we have ever made. "Do not accustom yourself to enchain your
+<i>volatility</i> with vows.... Take this warning; it is of great
+importance." (The wisdom is Johnson's, but I flatter myself on the
+italics.)</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="IV" id="IV"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>IV<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h3>SETTLING DOWN IN LIFE</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>The other day a well-known English novelist asked me how old I thought
+she was, <i>really</i>. "Well," I said to myself, "since she has asked for
+it, she shall have it; I will be as true to life as her novels." So I
+replied audaciously: "Thirty-eight." I fancied I was erring if at all,
+on the side of "really," and I trembled. She laughed triumphantly. "I
+am forty-three," she said. The incident might have passed off entirely
+to my satisfaction had she not proceeded: "And now tell me how old
+<i>you</i> are." That was like a woman. Women imagine that men have no
+reticences, no pretty little vanities. What an error! Of course I
+could not be beaten in candour by a woman. I had to offer myself a
+burnt sacrifice to her curiosity, and I did it, bravely but not
+unflinchingly. And then afterwards the fact of my age remained with
+me, worried me, obsessed me. I saw more clearly than ever before that
+age was telling on me. I could <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>not be blind to the deliberation of my
+movements in climbing stairs and in dressing. Once upon a time the
+majority of persons I met in the street seemed much older than myself.
+It is different now. The change has come unperceived. There is a
+generation younger than mine that smokes cigars and falls in love.
+Astounding! Once I could play left-wing forward for an hour and a half
+without dropping down dead. Once I could swim a hundred and fifty feet
+submerged at the bottom of a swimming-bath. Incredible! Simply
+incredible!... Can it be that I have already lived?</p>
+
+<p>And lo! I, at the age of nearly forty, am putting to myself the old
+questions concerning the intrinsic value of life, the fundamentally
+important questions: What have I got out of it? What am I likely to
+get out of it? In a word, what's it worth? If a man can ask himself a
+question more momentous, radical, and critical than these questions, I
+would like to know what it is. Innumerable philosophers have tried to
+answer these questions in a general way for the average individual,
+and possibly they have succeeded pretty well. Possibly I might derive
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>benefit from a perusal of their answers. But do you suppose I am going
+to read them? Not I! Do you suppose that I can recall the wisdom that
+I happen already to have read? Not I! My mind is a perfect blank at
+this moment in regard to the wisdom of others on the essential
+question. Strange, is it not? But quite a common experience, I
+believe. Besides, I don't actually care twopence what any other
+philosopher has replied to my question. In this, each man must be his
+own philosopher. There is an instinct in the profound egoism of human
+nature which prevents us from accepting such ready-made answers. What
+is it to us what Plato thought? Nothing. And thus the question remains
+ever new, and ever unanswered, and ever of dramatic interest. The
+singular, the highly singular thing is&mdash;and here I arrive at my
+point&mdash;that so few people put the question to themselves in time, that
+so many put it too late, or even die without putting it.</p>
+
+<p>I am firmly convinced that an immense proportion of my instructed
+fellow-creatures do not merely omit to strike the balance-sheet of
+their lives, they omit even the preliminary operation of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>taking
+stock. They go on, and on, and on, buying and selling they know not
+what, at unascertained prices, dropping money into the till and taking
+it out. They don't know what goods are in the shop, nor what amount is
+in the till, but they have a clear impression that the living-room
+behind the shop is by no means as luxurious and as well-ventilated as
+they would like it to be. And the years pass, and that beautiful
+furniture and that system of ventilation are not achieved. And then
+one day they die, and friends come to the funeral and remark: "Dear
+me! How stuffy this room is, and the shop's practically full of
+trash!" Or, some little time before they are dead, they stay later
+than usual in the shop one evening, and make up their minds to take
+stock and count the till, and the disillusion lays them low, and they
+struggle into the living-room and murmur: "I shall never have that
+beautiful furniture, and I shall never have that system of
+ventilation. If I had known earlier, I would have at least got a few
+inexpensive cushions to go on with, and I would have put my fist
+through a pane in the window. But it's too late now. I'm used to
+Windsor chairs, and I should feel the draught horribly."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>If I were a preacher, and if I hadn't got more than enough to do in
+minding my own affairs, and if I could look any one in the face and
+deny that I too had pursued for nearly forty years the great British
+policy of muddling through and hoping for the best&mdash;in short, if
+things were not what they are, I would hire the Alhambra Theatre or
+Exeter Hall of a Sunday night&mdash;preferably the Alhambra, because more
+people would come to my entertainment&mdash;and I would invite all men and
+women over twenty-six. I would supply the seething crowd with what
+they desired in the way of bodily refreshment (except spirits&mdash;I would
+draw the line at poisons), and having got them and myself into a nice
+amiable expansive frame of mind, I would thus address them&mdash;of course
+in ringing eloquence that John Bright might have envied:</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>Men and women (I would say), companions in the universal
+pastime of hiding one's head in the sand,&mdash;I am about to
+impart to you the very essence of human wisdom. It is not
+abstract. It is a principle of daily application, affecting
+the daily round in its entirety, from the straphanging on the
+District Railway in the morning to the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>straphanging on the
+District Railway the next morning. Beware of hope, and beware
+of ambition! Each is excellently tonic, like German
+competition, in moderation. But all of you are suffering from
+self-indulgence in the first, and very many of you are ruining
+your constitutions with the second. Be it known unto you, my
+dear men and women, that existence rightly considered is a
+fair compromise between two instincts&mdash;the instinct of hoping
+one day to live, and the instinct to live here and now. In
+most of you the first instinct has simply got the other by the
+throat and is throttling it. Prepare to live by all means, but
+for heaven's sake do not forget to live. You will never have a
+better chance than you have at present. You may think you will
+have, but you are mistaken. Pardon this bluntness. Surely you
+are not so na&iuml;ve as to imagine that the road on the other side
+of that hill there is more beautiful than the piece you are
+now traversing! Hopes are never realized; for in the act of
+realization they become something else. Ambitions may be
+attained, but ambitions attained are rather like burnt coal,
+ninety per cent. of the heat generated has gone up the chimney
+instead of into the room. Nevertheless, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>indulge in hopes and
+ambitions, which, though deceiving, are agreeable deceptions;
+let them cheat you a little, a lot. But do not let them cheat
+you too much. This that you are living now is life itself&mdash;it
+is much more life itself than that which you will be living
+twenty years hence. Grasp that truth. Dwell on it. Absorb it.
+Let it influence your conduct, to the end that neither the
+present nor the future be neglected. You search for happiness?
+Happiness is chiefly a matter of temperament. It is
+exceedingly improbable that you will by struggling gain more
+happiness than you already possess. In fine, settle down at
+once into <i>life</i>. (Loud cheers.)</p></div>
+
+<p>The cheers would of course be for the refreshments.</p>
+
+<p>There is no doubt that the mass of the audience would consider that I
+had missed my vocation, and ought to have been a caterer instead of a
+preacher. But, once started, I would not be discouraged. I would keep
+on, Sunday night after Sunday night. Our leading advertisers have
+richly proved that the public will believe anything if they are told
+of it often enough. I would practise iteration, always with
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>refreshments. In the result, it would dawn upon the corporate mind
+that there was some glimmering of sense in my doctrine, and people
+would at last begin to perceive the folly of neglecting to savour the
+present, the folly of assuming that the future can be essentially
+different from the present, the fatuity of dying before they have
+begun to live.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="V" id="V"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>V<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h3>MARRIAGE</h3>
+<br />
+
+<h4>THE DUTY OF IT</h4>
+
+<p>Every now and then it becomes necessary to deal faithfully with that
+immortal type of person, the praiser of the past at the expense of the
+present. I will not quote Horace, as by all the traditions of letters
+I ought to do, because Horace, like the incurable trimmer that he was,
+"hedged" on this question; and I do not admire him much either. The
+praiser of the past has been very rife lately. He has told us that
+pauperism and lunacy are mightily increasing, and though the exact
+opposite has been proved to be the case and he has apologized, he will
+have forgotten the correction in a few months, and will break out
+again into renewed lamentation. He has told us that we are physically
+deteriorating, and in such awful tones that we have shuddered, and
+many of us have believed. And considering that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>the death-rate is
+decreasing, that slums are decreasing, that disease is decreasing,
+that the agricultural labourer eats more than ever he did, our
+credence does not do much credit to our reasoning powers, does it? Of
+course, there is that terrible "influx" into the towns, but I for one
+should be much interested to know wherein the existence of the rustic
+in times past was healthier than the existence of the town-dwellers of
+to-day. The personal appearance of agricultural veterans does not help
+me; they resemble starved 'bus-drivers twisted out of shape by
+lightning.</p>
+
+<p>But the <i>pi&egrave;ce de r&eacute;sistance</i> of the praiser of the past is now
+marriage, with discreet hints about the birth-rate. The praiser of the
+past is going to have a magnificent time with the subject of marriage.
+The first moanings of the tempest have already been heard. Bishops
+have looked askance at the birth-rate, and have mentioned their
+displeasure. The matter is serious. As the phrase goes, "it strikes at
+the root." We are marrying later, my friends. Some of us, in the hurry
+and pre-occupation of business, are quite forgetting to marry. It is
+the duty of the citizen <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>to marry and have children, and we are
+neglecting our duty, we are growing selfish! No longer are produced
+the glorious "quiverfuls" of old times! Our fathers married at twenty;
+we marry at thirty-five. Why? Because a gross and enervating luxury
+has overtaken us. What will become of England if this continues? There
+will be no England! Hence we must look to it! And so on, in the same
+strain.</p>
+
+<p>I should like to ask all those who have raised and will raise such
+outcries. Have you read "X"? Now, the book that I refer to as "X" is a
+mysterious work, written rather more than a hundred years ago by an
+English curate. It is a classic of English science; indeed, it is one
+of the great scientific books of the world. It has immensely
+influenced all the scientific thought of the nineteenth century,
+especially Darwin's. Mr. H.G. Wells, as cited in "Chambers's
+Cyclop&aelig;dia of English Literature," describes it as "the most
+'shattering' book that ever has or will be written." If I may make a
+personal reference, I would say that it affected me more deeply than
+any other scientific book that I have read. Although it is perfectly
+easy to understand, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>free from the slightest technicality, it is
+the most misunderstood book in English literature, simply because it
+is <i>not</i> read. The current notion about it is utterly false. It might
+be a powerful instrument of education, general and sociological, but
+publishers will not reprint it&mdash;at least, they do not. And yet it is
+forty times more interesting and four hundred times more educational
+than Gilbert White's remarks on the birds of Selborne. I will leave
+you to guess what "X" is, but I do not offer a prize for the solution
+of a problem which a vast number of my readers will certainly solve at
+once.</p>
+
+<p>If those who are worrying themselves about the change in our system of
+marriage would read "X," they would probably cease from worrying. For
+they would perceive that they had been putting the cart before the
+horse; that they had elevated to the dignity of fundamental principles
+certain average rules of conduct which had sprung solely from certain
+average instincts in certain average conditions, and that they were
+now frightened because, the conditions having changed, the rules of
+conduct had changed with them. One of the truths that "X" makes clear
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>is that conduct conforms to conditions, and not conditions to conduct.</p>
+
+<p>The payment of taxes is a duty which the citizen owes to the state.
+Marriage, with the begetting of children, is not a duty which the
+citizen owes to the state. Marriage, with its consequences, is a
+matter of personal inclination and convenience. It never has been
+anything else, and it never will be anything else. How could it be
+otherwise? If a man goes against inclination and convenience in a
+matter where inclination is "of the essence of the contract," he
+merely presents the state with a discontented citizen (if not two) in
+exchange for a contented one! The happiness of the state is the sum of
+the happiness of all its citizens; to decrease one's own happiness,
+then, is a singular way of doing one's duty to the state! Do you
+imagine that when people married early and much they did so from a
+sense of duty to the state&mdash;a sense of duty which our "modern luxury"
+has weakened? I imagine they married simply because it suited 'em.
+They married from sheer selfishness, as all decent people do marry.
+And do those who clatter about the duty of marriage kiss the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>girls of
+their hearts with an eye to the general welfare? I can fancy them
+saying, "My angel, I love you&mdash;from a sense of duty to the state. Let
+us rear innumerable progeny&mdash;from a sense of duty to the state." How
+charmed the girls would be!</p>
+
+<p>If the marrying age changes, if the birth-rate shows a sympathetic
+tendency to follow the death-rate (as it must&mdash;see "X"), no one need
+be alarmed. Elementary principles of right and wrong are not trembling
+on their bases. The human conscience is not silenced. The nation is
+not going to the dogs. Conduct is adjusting itself to new conditions,
+and that is all. We may not be able to see exactly <i>how</i> conditions
+are changing; that is a detail; our descendants will see exactly;
+meanwhile the change in our conduct affords us some clew. And although
+certain nervous persons do get alarmed, and do preach, and do "take
+measures," the rest of us may remain placid in the sure faith that
+"measures" will avail nothing whatever. If there are two things set
+high above legislation, "movements," crusades, and preaching, one is
+the marrying age and the other is the birth-rate. For there <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>the
+supreme instinct comes along and stamps ruthlessly on all insincere
+reasonings and sham altruisms; stamps on everything, in fact, and
+blandly remarks: "I shall suit my own convenience, and no one but
+Nature herself (with a big, big N) shall talk to <i>me</i>. Don't pester me
+with Right and Wrong. I <i>am</i> Right and Wrong...." Having thus
+attempted to clear the ground a little of fudge, I propose next to
+offer a few simple remarks on marriage.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>THE ADVENTURE OF IT</h4>
+
+<p>Having endeavoured to show that men do not, and should not, marry from
+a sense of duty to the state or to mankind, but simply and solely from
+an egoistic inclination to marry, I now proceed to the individual case
+of the man who is "in a position to marry" and whose affections are
+not employed. Of course, if he has fallen in love, unless he happens
+to be a person of extremely powerful will, he will not weigh the pros
+and cons of marriage; he will merely marry, and forty thousand cons
+will not prevent him. And he will be absolutely right and justified,
+just as the straw as it rushes down the current is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>absolutely right
+and justified. But the privilege of falling in love is not given to
+everybody, and the inestimable privilege of falling deeply in love is
+given to few. However, the man whom circumstances permit to marry but
+who is not in love, or is only slightly amorous, will still think of
+marriage. How will he think of it?</p>
+
+<p>I will tell you. In the first place, if he has reached the age of
+thirty unscathed by Aphrodite, he will reflect that that peculiar
+feeling of romantic expectation with which he gets up every morning
+would cease to exist after marriage&mdash;and it is a highly agreeable
+feeling! In its stead, in moments of depression, he would have the
+feeling of having done something irremediable, of having definitely
+closed an avenue for the outlet of his individuality. (Kindly remember
+that I am not describing what this human man ought to think. I am
+describing what he does think.) In the second place, he will reflect
+that, after marriage, he could no longer expect the charming welcomes
+which bachelors so often receive from women; he would be "done with"
+as a possibility, and he does not relish the prospect of being done
+with as a possibility. Such <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>considerations, all connected more or
+less with the loss of "freedom" (oh, mysterious and thrilling word!),
+will affect his theoretical attitude. And be it known that even the
+freedom to be lonely and melancholy is still freedom.</p>
+
+<p>Other ideas will suggest themselves. One morning while brushing his
+hair he will see a gray hair, and, however young he may be, the
+anticipation of old age will come to him. A solitary old age! A
+senility dependent for its social and domestic requirements on
+condescending nephews and nieces, or even more distant relations!
+Awful! Unthinkable! And his first movement, especially if he has read
+that terrible novel, "<i>Fort comme la Mort</i>," of De Maupassant, is to
+rush out into the street and propose to the first girl he encounters,
+in order to avoid this dreadful nightmare of a solitary old age. But
+before he has got as far as the doorstep he reflects further. Suppose
+he marries, and after twenty years his wife dies and leaves him a
+widower! He will still have a solitary old age, and a vastly more
+tragical one than if he had remained single. Marriage is not,
+therefore, a sure remedy for a solitary old age; it may <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>intensify the
+evil. Children? But suppose he doesn't have any children! Suppose,
+there being children, they die&mdash;what anguish! Suppose merely that they
+are seriously ill and recover&mdash;what an ageing experience! Suppose they
+prove a disappointment&mdash;what endless regret! Suppose they "turn out
+badly" (children do)&mdash;what shame! Suppose he finally becomes dependent
+upon the grudging kindness of an ungrateful child&mdash;what a supreme
+humiliation! All these things are occurring constantly everywhere.
+Suppose his wife, having loved him, ceased to love him, or suppose he
+ceased to love his wife! <i>Ces choses ne se commandent pas</i>&mdash;these
+things do not command themselves. Personally, I should estimate that
+in not one per cent. even of romantic marriages are the husband and
+wife capable of <i>passion</i> for each other after three years. So brief
+is the violence of love! In perhaps thirty-three per cent. passion
+settles down into a tranquil affection&mdash;which is ideal. In fifty per
+cent. it sinks into sheer indifference, and one becomes used to one's
+wife or one's husband as to one's other habits. And in the remaining
+sixteen per cent. it develops into dislike or detestation. Do you
+think my percentages are <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>wrong, you who have been married a long time
+and know what the world is? Well, you may modify them a little&mdash;you
+won't want to modify them much.</p>
+
+<p>The risk of finding one's self ultimately among the sixteen per cent.
+can be avoided by the simple expedient of not marrying. And by the
+same expedient the other risks can be avoided, together with yet
+others that I have not mentioned. It is entirely obvious, then (in
+fact, I beg pardon for mentioning it), that the attitude towards
+marriage of the heart-free bachelor must be at best a highly cautious
+attitude. He knows he is already in the frying-pan (none knows
+better), but, considering the propinquity of the fire, he doubts
+whether he had not better stay where he is. His life will be calmer,
+more like that of a hibernating snake; his sensibilities will be
+dulled; but the chances of poignant suffering will be very materially
+reduced.</p>
+
+<p>So that the bachelor in a position to marry but not in love will
+assuredly decide in theory against marriage&mdash;that is to say, if he is
+timid, if he prefers frying-pans, if he is lacking in initiative, if
+he has the soul of a rat, if he wants to live as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>little as possible,
+if he hates his kind, if his egoism is of the miserable sort that
+dares not mingle with another's. But if he has been more happily
+gifted he will decide that the magnificent adventure is worth plunging
+into; the ineradicable and fine gambling instinct in him will urge him
+to take, at the first chance, a ticket in the only lottery permitted
+by the British Government. Because, after all, the mutual sense of
+ownership felt by the normal husband and the normal wife is something
+unique, something the like of which cannot be obtained without
+marriage. I saw a man and a woman at a sale the other day; I was too
+far off to hear them, but I could perceive they were having a most
+lively argument&mdash;perhaps it was only about initials on pillowcases;
+they were <i>absorbed</i> in themselves; the world did not exist for them.
+And I thought: "What miraculous exquisite Force is it that brings
+together that strange, sombre, laconic organism in a silk hat and a
+loose, black overcoat, and that strange, bright, vivacious, querulous,
+irrational organism in brilliant fur and feathers?" And when they
+moved away the most interesting phenomenon in the universe moved away.
+And I thought: "Just as no beer <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>is bad, but some beer is better than
+other beer, so no marriage is bad." The chief reward of marriage is
+something which marriage is bound to give&mdash;companionship whose
+mysterious <i>interestingness</i> nothing can stale. A man may hate his
+wife so that she can't thread a needle without annoying him, but when
+he dies, or she dies, he will say: "Well, <i>I was interested</i>." And one
+always is. Said a bachelor of forty-six to me the other night:
+"Anything is better than the void."</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>THE TWO WAYS OF IT</h4>
+
+<p>Sabine and other summary methods of marrying being now abandoned by
+all nice people, there remain two broad general ways. The first is the
+English way. We let nature take her course. We give heed to the
+heart's cry. When, amid the hazards and accidents of the world, two
+souls "find each other," we rejoice. Our instinctive wish is that they
+shall marry, if the matter can anyhow be arranged. We frankly
+recognise the claim of romance in life, and we are prepared to make
+sacrifices to it. We see a young couple at the altar; they are in
+love. Good! They are poor. So much the worse! But nevertheless we feel
+that love will <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>pull them through. The revolting French system of
+bargain and barter is the one thing that we can neither comprehend nor
+pardon in the customs of our great neighbours. We endeavour to be
+polite about that system; we simply cannot. It shocks our finest,
+tenderest feelings. It is so obviously contrary to nature.</p>
+
+<p>The second is the French way, just alluded to as bargain and barter.
+Now, if there is one thing a Frenchman can neither comprehend nor
+pardon in the customs of a race so marvellously practical and sagacious
+as ourselves, it is the English marriage system. He endeavours to be
+polite about it, and he succeeds. But it shocks his finest, tenderest
+feelings. He admits that it is in accordance with nature; but he is apt
+to argue that the whole progress of civilisation has been the result of
+an effort to get away from nature. "What! Leave the most important
+relation into which a man can enter to the mercy of chance, when a mere
+gesture may arouse passion, or the colour of a corsage induce desire!
+No, you English, you who are so self-controlled, you are not going
+seriously to defend that! You talk of love as though it lasted for
+ever. You <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>talk of sacrificing to love; but what you really sacrifice,
+or risk sacrificing, is the whole of the latter part of married
+existence for the sake of the first two or three years. Marriage is not
+one long honeymoon. We wish it were. When <i>you</i> agree to a marriage you
+fix your eyes on the honeymoon. When <i>we</i> agree to a marriage we try to
+see it as it will be five or ten years hence. We assert that, in the
+average instance, five years after the wedding it doesn't matter
+whether or not the parties were in love on the wedding-day. Hence we
+will not yield to the gusts of the moment. Your system is, moreover, if
+we may be permitted the observation, a premium on improvidence; it is,
+to some extent, the result of improvidence. You can marry your
+daughters without dowries, and the ability to do so tempts you to
+neglect your plain duty to your daughters, and you do not always resist
+the temptation. Do your marriages of 'romance' turn out better than our
+marriages of prudence, of careful thought, of long foresight? We do not
+think they do."</p>
+
+<p>So much for the two ways. Patriotism being the last refuge of a
+scoundrel, according to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>Doctor Johnson, I have no intention of
+judging between them, as my heart prompts me to do, lest I should be
+accused of it. Nevertheless, I may hint that, while perfectly
+convinced by the admirable logic of the French, I am still, with the
+charming illogicalness of the English, in favour of romantic marriages
+(it being, of course, understood that dowries <i>ought</i> to be far more
+plentiful than they are in England). If a Frenchman accuses me of
+being ready to risk sacrificing the whole of the latter part of
+married life for the sake of the first two or three years, I would
+unhesitatingly reply: "Yes, I <i>am</i> ready to risk that sacrifice. I
+reckon the first two or three years are worth it." But, then, I am
+English, and therefore romantic by nature. Look at London, that city
+whose outstanding quality is its romantic quality; and look at the
+Englishwomen going their ways in the wonderful streets thereof! Their
+very eyes are full of romance. They may, they do, lack <i>chic</i>, but
+they are heroines of drama. Then look at Paris; there is little
+romance in the fine right lines of Paris. Look at the Parisiennes.
+They are the most astounding and adorable women yet invented by
+nature. But they aren't romantic, you know. They <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>don't know what
+romance is. They are so matter-of-fact that when you think of their
+matter-of-factness it gives you a shiver in the small of your back.</p>
+
+<p>To return. One may view the two ways in another light. Perhaps the
+difference between them is, fundamentally, less a difference between
+the ideas of two races than a difference between the ideas of two
+"times of life"; and in France the elderly attitude predominates. As
+people get on in years, even English people, they are more and more in
+favour of the marriage of reason as against the marriage of romance.
+Young people, even French people, object strongly to the theory and
+practice of the marriage of reason. But with them the unique and
+precious ecstasy of youth is not past, whereas their elders have
+forgotten its savour. Which is right? No one will ever be able to
+decide. But neither the one system nor the other will apply itself
+well to all or nearly all cases. There have been thousands of romantic
+marriages in England of which it may be said that it would have been
+better had the French system been in force to prevent their existence.
+And, equally, thousands of possible <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>romantic marriages have been
+prevented in France which, had the English system prevailed there,
+would have turned out excellently. The prevalence of dowries in
+England would not render the English system perfect (for it must be
+remembered that money is only one of several ingredients in the French
+marriage), but it would considerably improve it. However, we are not a
+provident race, and we are not likely to become one. So our young men
+must reconcile themselves to the continued absence of dowries.</p>
+
+<p>The reader may be excused for imagining that I am at the end of my
+remarks. I am not. All that precedes is a mere preliminary to what
+follows. I want to regard the case of the man who has given the
+English system a fair trial and found it futile. Thus, we wait on
+chance in England. We wait for love to arrive. Suppose it doesn't
+arrive? Where is the English system then? Assume that a man in a
+position to marry reaches thirty-five or forty without having fallen
+in love. Why should he not try the French system for a change? Any
+marriage is better than none at all. Naturally, in England, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>he
+couldn't go up to the Chosen Fair and announce: "I am not precisely in
+love with you, but will you marry me?" He would put it differently.
+And she would understand. And do you think she would refuse?</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="VI" id="VI"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>VI<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h3>BOOKS</h3>
+<br />
+
+<h4>THE PHYSICAL SIDE</h4>
+
+<p>The chief interest of many of my readers is avowedly books; they may,
+they probably do, profess other interests, but they are primarily
+"bookmen," and when one is a bookman one is a bookman during about
+twenty-three and three-quarter hours in every day. Now, bookmen are
+capable of understanding things about books which cannot be put into
+words; they are not like mere subscribers to circulating libraries;
+for them a book is not just a book&mdash;it is a <i>book</i>. If these lines
+should happen to catch the eye of any persons not bookmen, such
+persons may imagine that I am writing nonsense; but I trust that the
+bookmen will comprehend me. And I venture, then, to offer a few
+reflections upon an aspect of modern bookishness that is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>becoming
+more and more "actual" as the enterprise of publishers and the
+beneficent effects of education grow and increase together. I refer to
+"popular editions" of classics.</p>
+
+<p>Now, I am very grateful to the devisers of cheap and handy editions.
+The first book I ever bought was the first volume of the first modern
+series of presentable and really cheap reprints, namely, Macaulay's
+"Warren Hastings," in "Cassell's National Library" (sixpence, in
+cloth). That foundation stone of my library has unfortunately
+disappeared beneath the successive deposits, but another volume of the
+same series, F.T. Palgrave's "Visions of England" (an otherwise scarce
+book), still remains to me through the vicissitudes of seventeen years
+of sale, purchase, and exchange, and I would not care to part with it.
+I have over two hundred volumes of that inestimable and incomparable
+series, "The Temple Classics," besides several hundred assorted
+volumes of various other series. And when I heard of the new
+"Everyman's Library," projected by that benefactor of bookmen, Mr.
+J.M. Dent, my first impassioned act was to sit down and write a
+postcard <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>to my bookseller ordering George Finlay's "The Byzantine
+Empire," a work which has waited sixty years for popular recognition.
+So that I cannot be said to be really antagonistic to cheap reprints.</p>
+
+<p>Strong in this consciousness, I beg to state that cheap and handy
+reprints are "all very well in their way"&mdash;which is a manner of saying
+that they are not the Alpha and Omega of bookishness. By expending &pound;20
+yearly during the next five years a man might collect, in cheap and
+handy reprints, all that was worth having in classic English
+literature. But I for one would not be willing to regard such a
+library as a real library. I would regard it as only a cheap edition
+of a library. There would be something about it that would arouse in
+me a certain benevolent disdain, even though every volume was well
+printed on good paper and inoffensively bound. Why? Well, although it
+is my profession in life to say what I feel in plain words, I do not
+know that in this connection I <i>can</i> say what I feel in plain words. I
+have to rely on a sympathetic comprehension of my attitude in the
+bookish breasts of my readers.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>In the first place, I have an instinctive antipathy to a "series." I
+do not want "The Golden Legend" and "The Essays of Elia" uniformed
+alike in a regiment of books. It makes me think of conscription and
+barracks. Even the noblest series of reprints ever planned (not at all
+cheap, either, nor heterogeneous in matter), the Tudor Translations,
+faintly annoys me in the mass. Its appearances in a series seems to me
+to rob a book of something very delicate and subtle in the aroma of
+its individuality&mdash;something which, it being inexplicable, I will not
+try to explain.</p>
+
+<p>In the second place, most cheap and handy reprints are small in size.
+They may be typographically excellent, with large type and opaque
+paper; they may be convenient to handle; they may be surpassingly
+suitable for the pocket and the very thing for travel; they may save
+precious space where shelf-room is limited; but they are small in
+size. And there is, as regards most literature, a distinct moral value
+in size. Do I carry my audience with me? I hope so. Let "Paradise
+Lost" be so produced that you can put it in your waistcoat pocket, and
+it is no more "Paradise Lost." Milton needs a solid octavo <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>form, with
+stoutish paper and long primer type. I have "Walpole's Letters" in
+Newnes's "Thin Paper Classics," a marvellous volume of near nine
+hundred pages, with a portrait and a good index and a beautiful
+binding, for three and six, and I am exceedingly indebted to Messrs.
+Newnes for creating that volume. It was sheer genius on their part to
+do so. I get charming sensations from it, but sensations not so
+charming as I should get from Mrs. Paget Toynbee's many-volumed and
+grandiose edition, even aside from Mrs. Toynbee's erudite notes and
+the extra letters which she has been able to print. The same letter in
+Mrs. Toynbee's edition would have a higher &aelig;sthetic and moral value
+for me than in the "editionlet" of Messrs. Newnes. The one cheap
+series which satisfies my desire for size is Macmillan's "Library of
+English Classics," in which I have the "Travels" of that mythical
+personage, Sir John Mandeville. But it is only in paying for it that
+you know this edition to be cheap, for it measures nine inches by six
+inches by two inches.</p>
+
+<p>And in the third place, when one buys series, one only partially
+chooses one's books; they are <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>mainly chosen for one by the publisher.
+And even if they are not chosen for one by the publisher, they are
+suggested <i>to</i> one by the publisher. Not so does the genuine bookman
+form his library. The genuine bookman begins by having specific
+desires. His study of authorities gives him a demand, and the demand
+forces him to find the supply. He does not let the supply create the
+demand. Such a state of affairs would be almost humiliating, almost
+like the <i>parvenu</i> who calls in the wholesale furnisher and decorator
+to provide him with a home. A library must be, primarily, the
+expression of the owner's personality.</p>
+
+<p>Let me assert again that I am strongly in favour of cheap series of
+reprints. Their influence though not the very finest, is undisputably
+good. They are as great a boon as cheap bread. They are indispensable
+where money or space is limited, and in travelling. They decidedly
+help to educate a taste for books that are neither cheap nor handy;
+and the most luxurious collectors may not afford to ignore them
+entirely. But they have their limitations, their disadvantages. They
+cannot form the backbone of a "proper" library. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>They make, however,
+admirable embroidery to a library. My own would look rather plain if
+it was stripped of them.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>THE PHILOSOPHY OF BOOK-BUYING</h4>
+
+<p>For some considerable time I have been living, as regards books, with
+the minimum of comfort and decency&mdash;with, in fact, the bare
+necessaries of life, such necessaries being, in my case, sundry
+dictionaries, Boswell, an atlas, Wordsworth, an encyclop&aelig;dia,
+Shakespere, Whitaker, some De Maupassant, a poetical anthology,
+Verlaine, Baudelaire, a natural history of my native county, an old
+directory of my native town, Sir Thomas Browne, Poe, Walpole's
+Letters, and a book of memoirs that I will not name. A curious list,
+you will say. Well, never mind! We do not all care to eat beefsteak
+and chip potatoes off an oak table, with a foaming quart to the right
+hand. We have our idiosyncrasies. The point is that I existed on the
+bare necessaries of life (very healthy&mdash;doctors say) for a long time.
+And then, just lately, I summoned energy and caused fifteen hundred
+volumes to be transported to me; and I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>arranged them on shelves; and
+I re-arranged them on shelves; and I left them to arrange themselves
+on shelves.</p>
+
+<p>Well, you know, the way that I walk up and down in front of these
+volumes, whose faces I had half-forgotten, is perfectly infantile. It
+is like the way of a child at a menagerie. There, in its cage, is that
+1839 edition of Shelley, edited by Mrs. Shelley, that I once nearly
+sold to the British Museum because the Keeper of Printed Books thought
+he hadn't got a copy&mdash;only he had! And there, in a cage by himself,
+because of his terrible hugeness, is the 1652 Paris edition of
+Montaigne's Essays. And so I might continue, and so I would continue,
+were it not essential that I come to my argument.</p>
+
+<p>Do you suppose that the presence of these books, after our long
+separation, is making me read more than I did? Do you suppose I am
+engaged in looking up my favourite passages? Not a bit. The other
+evening I had a long tram journey, and, before starting, I tried to
+select a book to take with me. I couldn't find one to suit just the
+tram-mood. As I had to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span><i>catch</i> the tram I was obliged to settle on
+something, and in the end I went off with nothing more original than
+"Hamlet," which I am really too familiar with.... Then I bought an
+evening paper, and read it all through, including advertisements. So I
+said to myself: "This is a nice result of all my trouble to resume
+company with some of my books!" However, as I have long since ceased
+to be surprised at the eccentric manner in which human nature refuses
+to act as one would have expected it to act, I was able to keep calm
+and unashamed during this extraordinary experience. And I am still
+walking up and down in front of my books and enjoying them without
+reading them.</p>
+
+<p>I wish to argue that a great deal of cant is talked (and written)
+about reading. Papers such as the "Anthen&aelig;um," which nevertheless I
+peruse with joy from end to end every week, can scarcely notice a new
+edition of a classic without expressing, in a grieved and pessimistic
+tone, the fear that more people buy these agreeable editions than read
+them. And if it is so? What then? Are we only to buy the books that we
+read? The question has merely to be thus bluntly put, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>it answers
+itself. All impassioned bookmen, except a few who devote their whole
+lives to reading, have rows of books on their shelves which they have
+never read, and which they never will read. I know that I have
+hundreds such. My eye rests on the works of Berkeley in three volumes,
+with a preface by the Right Honourable Arthur James Balfour. I cannot
+conceive the circumstances under which I shall ever read Berkeley; but
+I do not regret having bought him in a good edition, and I would buy
+him again if I had him not; for when I look at him some of his virtue
+passes into me; I am the better for him. A certain aroma of philosophy
+informs my soul, and I am less crude than I should otherwise be. This
+is not fancy, but fact.</p>
+
+<p>Taking Berkeley simply as an instance, I will utilise him a little
+further. I ought to have read Berkeley, you say; just as I ought to
+have read Spenser, Ben Jonson, George Eliot, Victor Hugo. Not at all.
+There is no "ought" about it. If the mass of obtainable first-class
+literature were, as it was perhaps a century ago, not too large to be
+assimilated by a man of ordinary limited leisure <i>in</i> his leisure and
+during the first <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>half of his life, then possibly there might be an
+"ought" about it. But the mass has grown unmanageable, even by those
+robust professional readers who can "grapple with whole libraries."
+And I am not a professional reader. I am a writer, just as I might be
+a hotel-keeper, a solicitor, a doctor, a grocer, or an earthenware
+manufacturer. I read in my scanty spare time, and I don't read in all
+my spare time, either. I have other distractions. I read what I feel
+inclined to read, and I am conscious of no duty to finish a book that
+I don't care to finish. I read in my leisure, not from a sense of
+duty, not to improve myself, but solely because it gives me pleasure
+to read. Sometimes it takes me a month to get through one book. I
+expect my case is quite an average case. But am I going to fetter my
+buying to my reading? Not exactly! I want to have lots of books on my
+shelves because I know they are good, because I know they would amuse
+me, because I like to look at them, and because one day I might have a
+caprice to read them. (Berkeley, even thy turn may come!) In short, I
+want them because I want them. And shall I be deterred from possessing
+them by the fear of some <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>sequestered and singular person, some person
+who has read vastly but who doesn't know the difference between a J.S.
+Muria cigar and an R.P. Muria, strolling in and bullying me with the
+dreadful query: "<i>Sir, do you read your books?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Therefore I say: In buying a book, be influenced by two considerations
+only. Are you reasonably sure that it is a good book? Have you a
+desire to possess it? Do not be influenced by the probability or the
+improbability of your reading it. After all, one does read a certain
+proportion of what one buys. And further, instinct counts. The man who
+spends half a crown on Stubbs's "Early Plantagenets" instead of going
+into the Gaiety pit to see "The Spring Chicken," will probably be the
+sort of man who can suck goodness out of Stubbs's "Early Plantagenets"
+years before he bestirs himself to read it.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="VII" id="VII"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>VII<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h3>SUCCESS</h3>
+<br />
+
+<h4>CANDID REMARKS</h4>
+
+<p>There are times when the whole free and enlightened Press of the
+United Kingdom seems to become strangely interested in the subject of
+"success," of getting on in life. We are passing through such a period
+now. It would be difficult to name the prominent journalists who have
+not lately written, in some form or another, about success. Most
+singular phenomenon of all, Dr. Emil Reich has left Plato, duchesses,
+and Claridge's Hotel, in order to instruct the million readers of a
+morning paper in the principles of success! What the million readers
+thought of the Doctor's stirring and strenuous sentences I will not
+imagine; but I know what I thought, as a plain man. After taking due
+cognizance of his airy play with the "constants" and "variables" of
+success, after watching him treat "energetics" (his wonderful <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>new
+name for the "science" of success) as though because he had made it
+end in "ics" it resembled mathematics, I thought that the sublime and
+venerable art of mystification could no further go. If my
+fellow-pilgrim through this vale of woe, the average young man who
+arrives at Waterloo at 9.40 every morning with a cigarette in his
+mouth and a second-class season over his heart and vague aspirations
+in his soul, was half as mystified as I was, he has probably ere this
+decided that the science of success has all the disadvantages of
+algebra without any of the advantages of cricket, and that he may as
+well leave it alone lest evil should befall him. On the off-chance
+that he has come as yet to no decision about the science of success, I
+am determined to deal with the subject in a disturbingly candid
+manner. I feel that it is as dangerous to tell the truth about success
+as it is to tell the truth about the United States; but being
+thoroughly accustomed to the whistle of bullets round my head, I will
+nevertheless try.</p>
+
+<p>Most writers on success are, through sheer goodness of heart, wickedly
+disingenuous. For the basis of their argument is that nearly any <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>one
+who gives his mind to it can achieve success. This is, to put it
+briefly, untrue. The very central idea of success is separation from
+the multitude of plain men; it is perhaps the only idea common to all
+the various sorts of success&mdash;differentiation from the crowd. To
+address the population at large, and tell it how to separate itself
+from itself, is merely silly. I am now, of course, using the word
+success in its ordinary sense. If human nature were more perfect than
+it is, success in life would mean an intimate knowledge of one's self
+and the achievement of a philosophic inward calm, and such a goal
+might well be reached by the majority of mortals. But to us success
+signifies something else. It may be divided into four branches: (1)
+Distinction in pure or applied science. This is the least gross of all
+forms of success as we regard it, for it frequently implies poverty,
+and it does not by any means always imply fame. (2) Distinction in the
+arts. Fame and adulation are usually implied in this, though they do
+not commonly bring riches with them. (3) Direct influence and power
+over the material lives of other men; that is to say, distinction in
+politics, national or local. (4) Success in amassing money. This <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>last
+is the commonest and easiest. Most forms of success will fall under
+one of these heads. Are they possible to that renowned and
+much-flattered person, the man in the street? They are not, and well
+you know it, all you professors of the science of success! Only a
+small minority of us can even become rich.</p>
+
+<p>Happily, while it is true that success in its common acceptation is,
+by its very essence, impossible to the majority, there is an
+accompanying truth which adjusts the balance; to wit, that the
+majority do not desire success. This may seem a bold saying, but it is
+in accordance with the facts. Conceive the man in the street suddenly,
+by some miracle, invested with political power, and, of course, under
+the obligation to use it. He would be so upset, worried, wearied, and
+exasperated at the end of a week that he would be ready to give the
+eyes out of his head in order to get rid of it. As for success in
+science or in art, the average person's interest in such matters is so
+slight, compared with that of the man of science or the artist, that
+he cannot be said to have an interest in them. And supposing that
+distinction in them were thrust upon him he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>would rapidly lose that
+distinction by simple indifference and neglect. The average person
+certainly wants some money, and the average person does not usually
+rest until he has got as much as is needed for the satisfaction of his
+instinctive needs. He will move the heaven and earth of his
+environment to earn sufficient money for marriage in the "station" to
+which he has been accustomed; and precisely at that point his genuine
+desire for money will cease to be active. The average man has this in
+common with the most exceptional genius, that his career in its main
+contours is governed by his instincts. The average man flourishes and
+finds his ease in an atmosphere of peaceful routine. Men destined for
+success flourish and find their ease in an atmosphere of collision and
+disturbance. The two temperaments are diverse. Naturally the average
+man dreams vaguely, upon occasion; he dreams how nice it would be to
+be famous and rich. We all dream vaguely upon such things. But to
+dream vaguely is not to desire. I often tell myself that I would give
+anything to be the equal of Cinquevalli, the juggler, or to be the
+captain of the largest Atlantic liner. But the reflective part of me
+tells me that my <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>yearning to emulate these astonishing personages is
+not a genuine desire, and that its realization would not increase my
+happiness.</p>
+
+<p>To obtain a passably true notion of what happens to the mass of
+mankind in its progress from the cradle to the grave, one must not
+attempt to survey a whole nation, nor even a great metropolis, nor
+even a very big city like Manchester or Liverpool. These panoramas are
+so immense and confusing that they defeat the observing eye. It is
+better to take a small town of, say, twenty or thirty thousand
+inhabitants&mdash;such a town as most of us know, more or less intimately.
+The extremely few individuals whose instincts mark them out to take
+part in the struggle for success can be identified at once. For the
+first thing they do is to leave the town. The air of the town is not
+bracing enough for them. Their nostrils dilate for something keener.
+Those who are left form a microcosm which is representative enough of
+the world at large. Between the ages of thirty and forty they begin to
+sort themselves out. In their own sphere they take their places. A
+dozen or so politicians form the town council and rule the town. Half
+a dozen business men stand for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>the town's commercial activity and its
+wealth. A few others teach science and art, or are locally known as
+botanists, geologists, amateurs of music, or amateurs of some other
+art. These are the distinguished, and it will be perceived that they
+cannot be more numerous than they are. What of the rest? Have they
+struggled for success and been beaten? Not they. Do they, as they grow
+old, resemble disappointed men? Not they. They have fulfilled
+themselves modestly. They have got what they genuinely tried to get.
+They have never even gone near the outskirts of the battle for
+success. But they have not failed. The number of failures is
+surprisingly small. You see a shabby, disappointed, ageing man flit
+down the main street, and someone replies to your inquiry: "That's
+So-and-so, one of life's failures, poor fellow!" And the very tone in
+which the words are uttered proves the excessive rarity of the real
+failure. It goes without saying that the case of the handful who have
+left the town in search of the Success with the capital S has a
+tremendous interest of curiosity for the mass who remain. I will
+consider it.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span><br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>THE SUCCESSFUL AND THE UNSUCCESSFUL</h4>
+
+<p>Having boldly stated that success is not, and cannot be, within grasp
+of the majority, I now proceed to state, as regards the minority, that
+they do not achieve it in the manner in which they are commonly
+supposed to achieve it. And I may add an expression of my thankfulness
+that they do not. The popular delusion is that success is attained by
+what I may call the "Benjamin Franklin" method. Franklin was a very
+great man; he united in his character a set of splendid qualities as
+various, in their different ways, as those possessed by Leonardo da
+Vinci. I have an immense admiration for him. But his Autobiography
+does make me angry. His Autobiography is understood to be a classic,
+and if you say a word against it in the United States you are apt to
+get killed. I do not, however, contemplate an immediate visit to the
+United States, and I shall venture to assert that Benjamin Franklin's
+Autobiography is a detestable book and a misleading book. I can recall
+only two other volumes which I would more willingly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>revile. One is
+<i>Samuel Budgett: The Successful Merchant</i>, and the other is <i>From Log
+Cabin to White House</i>, being the history of President Garfield. Such
+books may impose on boys, and it is conceivable that they do not harm
+boys (Franklin, by the way, began his Autobiography in the form of a
+letter to his son), but the grown man who can support them without
+nausea ought to go and see a doctor, for there is something wrong with
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"I began now," blandly remarks Franklin, "to have some acquaintance
+among the young people of the town that were lovers of reading, with
+whom I spent my evenings very pleasantly; <i>and gained money by my
+industry and frugality</i>." Or again: "It was about this time I
+conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral
+perfection.... I made a little book, in which I allotted a page for
+each of the virtues. I ruled each page with red ink, so as to have
+seven columns, one for each day of the week.... I crossed these
+columns with thirteen red lines, marking the beginning of each line
+with the first letter of one of the virtues; on which line, and in its
+proper column, I might mark, by a little black <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>spot, every fault I
+found upon examination to have been committed respecting that virtue,
+upon that day." Shade of Franklin, where'er thou art, this is really a
+little bit stiff! A man may be excused even such infamies of
+priggishness, but truly he ought not to go and write them down,
+especially to his son. And why the detail about red ink? If Franklin's
+son was not driven to evil courses by the perusal of that monstrous
+Autobiography, he must have been a man almost as astounding as his
+father. Now Franklin could only have written his "immortal classic"
+from one of three motives: (1) Sheer conceit. He was a prig, but he
+was not conceited. (2) A desire that others should profit by his
+mistakes. He never made any mistakes. Now and again he emphasizes some
+trifling error, but that is "only his fun." (3) A desire that others
+should profit by the recital of his virtuous sagacity to reach a
+similar success. The last was undoubtedly his principal motive. Honest
+fellow, who happened to be a genius! But the point is that his success
+was in no way the result of his virtuous sagacity. I would go further,
+and say that his dreadful virtuous sagacity often hindered his
+success.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>No one is a worse guide to success than your typical successful man. He
+seldom understands the reasons of his own success; and when he is asked
+by a popular magazine to give his experiences for the benefit of the
+youth of a whole nation, it is impossible for him to be natural and
+sincere. He knows the kind of thing that is expected from him, and if
+he didn't come to London with half a crown in his pocket he probably
+did something equally silly, and he puts <i>that</i> down, and the note of
+the article or interview is struck, and good-bye to genuine truth!
+There recently appeared in a daily paper an autobiographic-didactic
+article by one of the world's richest men which was the most
+"inadequate" article of the sort that I have ever come across.
+Successful men forget so much of their lives! Moreover, nothing is
+easier than to explain an accomplished fact in a nice, agreeable,
+conventional way. The entire business of success is a gigantic tacit
+conspiracy on the part of the minority to deceive the majority.</p>
+
+<p>Are successful men more industrious, frugal, and intelligent than men
+who are not successful? I maintain that they are not, and I have
+studied <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>successful men at close quarters. One of the commonest
+characteristics of the successful man is his idleness, his immense
+capacity for wasting time. I stoutly assert that as a rule successful
+men are by habit comparatively idle. As for frugality, it is
+practically unknown among the successful classes: this statement
+applies with particular force to financiers. As for intelligence, I
+have over and over again been startled by the lack of intelligence in
+successful men. They are, indeed, capable of stupidities that would be
+the ruin of a plain clerk. And much of the talk in those circles which
+surround the successful man is devoted to the enumeration of instances
+of his lack of intelligence. Another point: successful men seldom
+succeed as the result of an ordered arrangement of their lives; they
+are the least methodical of creatures. Naturally when they have
+"arrived" they amuse themselves and impress the majority by being
+convinced that right from the start, with a steady eye on the goal,
+they had carefully planned every foot of the route.</p>
+
+<p>No! Great success never depends on the practice of the humbler
+virtues, though it may occasionally depend on the practice of the
+prouder <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>vices. Use industry, frugality, and common sense by all
+means, but do not expect that they will help you to success. Because
+they will not. I shall no doubt be told that what I have just written
+has an immoral tendency, and is a direct encouragement to sloth,
+thriftlessness, etc. One of our chief national faults is our
+hypocritical desire to suppress the truth on the pretext that to admit
+it would encourage sin, whereas the real explanation is that we are
+afraid of the truth. I will not be guilty of that fault. I do like to
+look a fact in the face without blinking. I am fully persuaded that,
+per head, there is more of the virtues in the unsuccessful majority
+than in the successful minority. In London alone are there not
+hundreds of miles of streets crammed with industry, frugality, and
+prudence? Some of the most brilliant men I have known have been
+failures, and not through lack of character either. And some of the
+least gifted have been marvellously successful. It is impossible to
+point to a single branch of human activity in which success can be
+explained by the conventional principles that find general acceptance.
+I hear you, O reader, murmuring to yourself: "This is all very well,
+but he is simply being paradoxical for his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>own diversion." I would
+that I could persuade you of my intense seriousness! I have
+endeavoured to show what does not make success. I will next endeavour
+to show what does make it. But my hope is forlorn.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>THE INWARDNESS OF SUCCESS</h4>
+
+<p>Of course, one can no more explain success than one can explain
+Beethoven's C minor symphony. One may state what key it is written in,
+and make expert reflections upon its form, and catalogue its themes,
+and relate it to symphonies that preceded it and symphonies that
+followed it, but in the end one is reduced to saying that the C minor
+symphony is beautiful&mdash;because it is. In the same manner one is
+reduced to saying that the sole real difference between success and
+failure is that success succeeds. This being frankly admitted at the
+outset, I will allow myself to assert that there are three sorts of
+success. Success A is the accidental sort. It is due to the thing we
+call chance, and to nothing else. We are all of us still very
+superstitious, and the caprices of chance have a singular effect upon
+us. Suppose that I go to Monte Carlo and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>announce to a friend my firm
+conviction that red will turn up next time, and I back red for the
+maximum and red does turn up; my friend, in spite of his intellect,
+will vaguely attribute to me a mysterious power. Yet chance alone
+would be responsible. If I did that six times running all the players
+at the table would be interested in me. If I did it a dozen times all
+the players in the Casino would regard me with awe. Yet chance alone
+would be responsible. If I did it eighteen times my name would be in
+every newspaper in Europe. Yet chance alone would be responsible. I
+should be, in that department of human activity, an extremely
+successful man, and the vast majority of people would instinctively
+credit me with gifts that I do not possess.</p>
+
+<p>If such phenomena of superstition can occur in an affair where the
+agency of chance is open and avowed, how much more probable is it that
+people should refuse to be satisfied with the explanation of "sheer
+accident" in affairs where it is to the interest of the principal
+actors to conceal the r&ocirc;le played by chance! Nevertheless, there can
+be no doubt in the minds of persons who have viewed success at close
+quarters that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>a proportion of it is due solely and utterly to chance.
+Successful men flourish to-day, and have flourished in the past, who
+have no quality whatever to differentiate them from the multitude. Red
+has turned up for them a sufficient number of times, and the universal
+superstitious instinct not to believe in chance has accordingly
+surrounded them with a halo. It is merely ridiculous to say, as some
+do say, that success is never due to chance alone. Because nearly
+everybody is personally acquainted with reasonable proof, on a great
+or a small scale, to the contrary.</p>
+
+<p>The second sort of success, B, is that made by men who, while not
+gifted with first-class talents, have, beyond doubt, the talent to
+succeed. I should describe these men by saying that, though they
+deserve something, they do not deserve the dazzling reward known as
+success. They strike us as overpaid. We meet them in all professions
+and trades, and we do not really respect them. They excite our
+curiosity, and perhaps our envy. They may rise very high indeed, but
+they must always be unpleasantly conscious of a serious reservation in
+our attitude towards them. And if they could read their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>obituary
+notices they would assuredly discern therein a certain chilliness,
+however kindly we acted up to our great national motto of <i>De mortuis
+nil nist bunkum</i>. It is this class of success which puzzles the social
+student. How comes it that men without any other talent possess a
+mysterious and indefinable talent to succeed? Well, it seems to me
+that such men always display certain characteristics. And the chief of
+these characteristics is the continual, insatiable <i>wish</i> to succeed.
+They are preoccupied with the idea of succeeding. We others are not so
+preoccupied. We dream of success at intervals, but we have not the
+passion for success. We don't lie awake at nights pondering upon it.</p>
+
+<p>The second characteristic of these men springs naturally from the
+first. They are always on the look-out. This does not mean that they
+are industrious. I stated in a previous article my belief that as a
+rule successful men are not particularly industrious. A man on a raft
+with his shirt for a signal cannot be termed industrious, but he will
+keep his eyes open for a sail on the horizon. If he simply lies down
+and goes to sleep he may miss the chance of his life, in a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>very
+special sense. The man with the talent to succeed is the man on the
+raft who never goes to sleep. His indefatigable orb sweeps the main
+from sunset to sunset. Having sighted a sail, he gets up on his hind
+legs and waves that shirt in so determined a manner that the ship is
+bound to see him and take him off. Occasionally he plunges into the
+sea, risking sharks and other perils. If he doesn't "get there," we
+hear nothing of him. If he does, some person will ultimately multiply
+by ten the number of sharks that he braved: that person is called a
+biographer.</p>
+
+<p>Let me drop the metaphor. Another characteristic of these men is that
+they seem to have the exact contrary of what is known as common sense.
+They will become enamoured of some enterprise which infallibly
+impresses the average common-sense person as a mad and hopeless
+enterprise. The average common-sense person will demolish the hopes of
+that enterprise by incontrovertible argument. He will point out that
+it is foolish on the face of it, that it has never been attempted
+before, and that it responds to no need of humanity. He will say to
+himself: "This fellow with his precious enterprise has a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>twist in his
+brain. He can't reply to my arguments, and yet he obstinately persists
+in going on." And the man destined to success does go on. Perhaps the
+enterprise fails; it often fails; and then the average common-sense
+person expends much breath in "I told you so's." But the man continues
+to be on the look-out. His thirst is unassuaged; his taste for
+enterprises foredoomed to failure is incurable. And one day some
+enterprise foredoomed to failure develops into a success. We all hear
+of it. We all open our mouths and gape. Of the failures we have heard
+nothing. Once the man has achieved success, the thing becomes a habit
+with him. The difference between a success and a failure is often so
+slight that a reputation for succeeding will ensure success, and a
+reputation for failing will ensure failure. Chance plays an important
+part in such careers, but not a paramount part. One can only say that
+it is more useful to have luck at the beginning than later on. These
+"men of success" generally have pliable temperaments. They are not
+frequently un-moral, but they regard a conscience as a good servant
+and a bad master. They live in an atmosphere of compromise.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>There remains class C of success&mdash;the class of sheer high merit. I am
+not a pessimist, nor am I an optimist. I try to arrive at the truth,
+and I should say that in putting success C at ten per cent. of the sum
+total of all successes, I am being generous to class C. Not that I
+believe that vast quantities of merit go unappreciated. My reason for
+giving to Class C only a modest share is the fact that there is so
+little sheer high merit. And does it not stand to reason that high
+merit must be very exceptional? This sort of success needs no
+explanation, no accounting for. It is the justification of our
+singular belief in the principle of the triumph of justice, and it is
+among natural phenomena perhaps the only justification that can be
+advanced for that belief. And certainly when we behold the spectacle
+of genuine distinguished merit gaining, without undue delay and
+without the sacrifice of dignity or of conscience, the applause of the
+kind-hearted but obtuse and insensible majority of the human race, we
+have fair reason to hug ourselves.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>VIII<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h3>THE PETTY ARTIFICIALITIES</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>The phrase "petty artificialities," employed by one of the
+correspondents in the great Simple Life argument, has stuck in my
+mind, although I gave it a plain intimation that it was no longer
+wanted there. Perhaps it sheds more light than I had at first imagined
+on the mental state of the persons who use it when they wish to
+arraign the conditions of "modern life." A vituperative epithet is
+capable of making a big show. "Artificialities" is a sufficiently
+scornful word, but when you add "petty" you somehow give the quietus
+to the pretensions of modern life. Modern life had better hide its
+diminished head, after that. Modern life is settled and done for&mdash;in
+the opinion of those who have thrown the dart. Only it isn't done for,
+really, you know. "Petty," after all, means nothing in that connexion.
+Are there, then, artificialities which are not "petty," <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>which are
+noble, large, and grand? "Petty" means merely that the users of the
+word are just a little cross and out of temper. What they think they
+object to is artificialities of any kind, and so to get rid of their
+spleen they refer to "petty" artificialities. The device is a common
+one, and as brilliant as it is futile. Rude adjectives are like blank
+cartridge. They impress a vain people, including the birds of the air,
+but they do no execution.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, let me admit that I deeply sympathize with the
+irritated users of the impolite phrase "petty artificialities." For it
+does at any rate show a "divine discontent"; it does prove a high
+dissatisfaction with conditions which at best are not the final
+expression of the eternal purpose. It does make for a sort of crude
+and churlish righteousness. I well know that feeling which induces one
+to spit out savagely the phrase "petty artificialities of modern
+life." One has it usually either on getting up or on going to bed.
+What a petty artificial business it is, getting up, even for a male!
+Shaving! Why shave? And then going to a drawer and choosing a necktie.
+Fancy an immortal soul, fancy a fragment of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>eternal and
+indestructible energy, which exists from everlasting to everlasting,
+deliberately expending its activity on the choice of a necktie! Why a
+necktie? Then one goes downstairs and exchanges banal phrases with
+other immortals. And one can't start breakfast immediately, because
+some sleepy mortal is late.</p>
+
+<p>Why babble? Why wait? Why not say straight out: "Go to the deuce, all
+of you! Here it's nearly ten o'clock, and me anxious to begin living
+the higher life at once instead of fiddling around in petty
+artificialities. Shut up, every one of you. Give me my bacon
+instantly, and let me gobble it down quick and be off. I'm sick of
+your ceremonies!" This would at any rate not be artificial. It would
+save time. And if a similar policy were strictly applied through the
+day, one could retire to a well-earned repose in the full assurance
+that the day had been simplified. The time for living the higher life,
+the time for pushing forward those vast schemes of self-improvement
+which we all cherish, would decidedly have been increased. One would
+not have that maddening feeling, which one so frequently does have
+when the shades of night are <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>falling fast, that the day had been
+"frittered away." And yet&mdash;and yet&mdash;I gravely doubt whether this
+wholesale massacre of those poor petty artificialities would bring us
+appreciably nearer the millennium.</p>
+
+<p>For there is one thing, and a thing of fundamental importance, which
+the revolutionists against petty artificialities always fail to
+appreciate, and that is the necessity and the value of convention. I
+cannot in a paragraph deal effectively with this most difficult and
+complex question. I can only point the reader to analogous phenomena
+in the arts. All the arts are a conventionalization, an ordering of
+nature. Even in a garden you put the plants in rows, and you
+subordinate the well-being of one to the general well-being. The sole
+difference between a garden and the wild woods is a petty
+artificiality. In writing a sonnet you actually cramp the profoundest
+emotional conceptions into a length and a number of lines and a
+jingling of like sounds arbitrarily fixed beforehand! Wordsworth's
+"The world is too much with us" is a solid, horrid mass of petty
+artificiality. Why couldn't the fellow say what he meant and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>have
+done with it, instead of making "powers" rhyme with "ours," and
+worrying himself to use exactly a hundred and forty syllables? As for
+music, the amount of time that must have been devoted to petty
+artificiality in the construction of an affair like Bach's Chaconne is
+simply staggering. Then look at pictures, absurdly confined in frames,
+with their ingenious contrasts of light and shade and mass against
+mass. Nothing but petty artificiality! In other words, nothing but
+"form"&mdash;"form" which is the basis of all beauty, whether material or
+otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>Now, what form is in art, conventions (petty artificialities) are in
+life. Just as you can have too much form in art, so you can have too
+much convention in life. But no art that is not planned in form is
+worth consideration, and no life that is not planned in convention can
+ever be satisfactory. Convention is not the essence of life, but it is
+the protecting garment and preservative of life, and it is also one
+very valuable means by which life can express itself. It is largely
+symbolic; and symbols, while being expressive, are also great
+time-savers. The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>despisers of petty artificialities should think of
+this. Take the striking instance of that pettiest artificiality,
+leaving cards. Well, searchers after the real, what would you
+substitute for it? If you dropped it and substituted nothing, the
+result would tend towards a loosening of the bonds of society, and it
+would tend towards the diminution of the number of your friends. And
+if you dropped it and tried to substitute something less artificial
+and more real, you would accomplish no more than you accomplish with
+cards, you would inconvenience everybody, and waste a good deal of
+your own time. I cannot too strongly insist that the basis of
+convention is a symbolism, primarily meant to display a regard for the
+feelings of other people. If you do not display a regard for the
+feelings of other people, you may as well go and live on herbs in the
+desert. And if you are to display such a regard you cannot do it more
+expeditiously, at a smaller outlay of time and brains, than by
+adopting the code of convention now generally practised. It comes to
+this&mdash;that you cannot have all the advantages of living in the desert
+while you are living in a society. It would be delightful for you if
+you could, but you can't.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>There are two further reasons for the continuance of conventionality.
+And one is the mysterious but indisputable fact that the full beauty
+of an activity is never brought out until it is subjected to
+discipline and strict ordering and nice balancing. A life without
+petty artificiality would be the life of a tiger in the forest. A
+beautiful life, perhaps, a life of "burning bright," but not reaching
+the highest ideal of beauty! Laws and rules, forms and ceremonies are
+good in themselves, from a merely &aelig;sthetic point of view, apart from
+their social value and necessity.</p>
+
+<p>And the other reason is that one cannot always be at the full strain
+of "self-improvement," and "evolutionary progress," and generally
+beating the big drum. Human nature will not stand it. There is, if we
+will only be patient, ample time for the "artificial" as well as for
+the "real." Those persons who think that there isn't, ought to return
+to school and learn arithmetic. Supposing that all "petty
+artificialities" were suddenly swept away, and we were able to show
+our regard and consideration for our fellow creatures by the swift
+processes of thought alone, we should find ourselves with a terrible
+lot of time <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>hanging heavy on our hands. We can no more spend all our
+waking hours in consciously striving towards higher things than we can
+dine exclusively off jam. What frightful prigs we should become if we
+had nothing to do but cultivate our noblest faculties! I beg the
+despisers of artificiality to reflect upon these observations, however
+incomplete these observations may be, and to consider whether they
+would be quite content if they got what they are crying out for.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="IX" id="IX"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>IX<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h3>THE SECRET OF CONTENT</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>I have said lightly &agrave; propos of the conclusion arrived at by several
+correspondents and by myself that the cry for the simple life was
+merely a new form of the old cry for happiness, that I would explain
+what it was that made life worth living for me. The word has gone
+forth, and I must endeavour to redeem my promise. But I do so with
+qualms and with diffidence. First, there is the natural instinct
+against speaking of that which is in the core of one's mind. Second,
+there is the fear, nearly amounting to certainty, of being
+misunderstood or not comprehended at all. And third, there is the
+absurd insufficiency of space. However!... For me, spiritual content
+(I will not use the word "happiness," which implies too much) springs
+essentially from no mental or physical facts. It springs from the
+spiritual fact that there is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>something higher in man than the mind,
+and that that something can control the mind. Call that something the
+soul, or what you will. My sense of security amid the collisions of
+existence lies in the firm consciousness that just as my body is the
+servant of my mind, so is my mind the servant of <i>me</i>. An unruly
+servant, but a servant&mdash;and possibly getting less unruly every day!
+Often have I said to that restive brain: "Now, O mind, sole means of
+communication between the divine <i>me</i> and all external phenomena, you
+are not a free agent; you are a subordinate; you are nothing but a
+piece of machinery; and obey me you <i>shall</i>."</p>
+
+<p>The mind can only be conquered by regular meditation, by deciding
+beforehand what direction its activity ought to take, and insisting
+that its activity takes that direction; also by never leaving it idle,
+undirected, masterless, to play at random like a child in the streets
+after dark. This is extremely difficult, but it can be done, and it is
+marvellously well worth doing. The fault of the epoch is the absence
+of meditativeness. A sagacious man will strive to correct in himself
+the faults of his epoch. In some deep <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>ways the twelfth century had
+advantages over the twentieth. It practised meditation. The twentieth
+does Sandow exercises. Meditation (I speak only for myself) is the
+least dispensable of the day's doings. What do I force my mind to
+meditate upon? Upon various things, but chiefly upon one.</p>
+
+<p>Namely, that Force, Energy, Life&mdash;the Incomprehensible has many
+names&mdash;is indestructible, and that, in the last analysis, there is
+only one single, unique Force, Energy, Life. Science is gradually
+reducing all elements to one element. Science is making it
+increasingly difficult to conceive matter apart from spirit.
+Everything lives. Even my razor gets "tired." And the fatigue of my
+razor is no more nor less explicable than my fatigue after a passage
+of arms with my mind. The Force in it, and in me, has been
+transformed, not lost. All Force is the same force. Science just now
+has a tendency to call it electricity; but I am indifferent to such
+baptisms. The same Force pervades my razor, my cow in my field, and
+the central <i>me</i> which dominates my mind: the same force in different
+stages of evolution. And that Force persists forever. In such <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>paths
+do I compel my mind to walk daily. Daily it has to recognize that the
+mysterious Ego controlling it is a part of that divine Force which
+exists from everlasting to everlasting, and which, in its ultimate
+atoms, nothing can harm. By such a course of training, even the mind,
+the coarse, practical mind, at last perceives that worldly accidents
+don't count.</p>
+
+<p>"But," you will exclaim, "this is nothing but the immortality of the
+soul over again!" Well, in a slightly more abstract form, it is. (I
+never said I had discovered anything new.) I do not permit myself to
+be dogmatic about the persistence of personality, or even of
+individuality after death. But, in basing my physical and mental life
+on the assumption that there is something in me which is
+indestructible and essentially changeless, I go no further than
+science points. Yes, if it gives you pleasure, let us call it the
+immortality of the soul. If I miss my train, or my tailor disgraces
+himself, or I lose that earthly manifestation of Force that happens to
+be dearest to me, I say to my mind: "Mind, concentrate your powers
+upon the full realization of the fact that I, your master, am immortal
+and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>beyond the reach of accidents." And my mind, knowing by this time
+that I am a hard master, obediently does so. Am I, a portion of the
+Infinite Force that existed billions of years ago, and which will
+exist billions of years hence, going to allow myself to be worried by
+any terrestrial physical or mental event? I am not. As for the
+vicissitudes of my body, that servant of my servant, it had better
+keep its place, and not make too much fuss. Not that any fuss
+occurring in either of these outward envelopes of the eternal <i>me</i>
+could really disturb me. The eternal is calm; it has the best reason
+for being so.</p>
+
+<p>So you say to yourselves: "Here is a man in a penny weekly paper
+advocating daily meditation upon the immortality of the soul as a cure
+for discontent and unhappiness! A strange phenomenon!" That it should
+be strange is an indictment of the epoch. My only reply to you is
+this: Try it. Of course, I freely grant that such meditation, while it
+"casts out fear," slowly kills desire and makes for a certain high
+indifference; and that the extinguishing of desire, with an
+accompanying indifference, be it high or low, is bad for youth. But I
+am not a youth, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>to-day I am writing for those who have tasted
+disillusion: which youth has not. Yet I would not have you believe
+that I scorn the brief joys of this world. My attitude towards them
+would fain be that of Socrates, as stated by the incomparable Marcus
+Aurelius: "He knew how to lack, and how to enjoy, those things in the
+lack whereof most men show themselves weak; and in the fruition,
+intemperate."</p>
+
+<p>Besides commanding my mind to dwell upon the indestructibly and final
+omnipotence of the Force which is me, I command it to dwell upon the
+logical consequence of that <i>unity</i> of force which science is now
+beginning to teach. The same essential force that is <i>me</i> is also
+<i>you</i>. Says the Indian proverb: "I met a hundred men on the road to
+Delhi, and they were all my brothers." Yes, and they were all my twin
+brothers, if I may so express it, and a thousand times closer to me
+even than the common conception of twin brothers. We are all of us the
+same in essence; what separates us is merely differences in our
+respective stages of evolution. Constant reflection upon this fact
+must produce that universal sympathy which alone can <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>produce a
+positive content. It must do away with such ridiculous feelings as
+blame, irritation, anger, resentment. It must establish in the mind an
+all-embracing tolerance. Until a man can look upon the drunkard in his
+drunkenness, and upon the wife-beater in his brutality, with pure and
+calm compassion; until his heart goes out instinctively to every other
+manifestation of the unique Force; until he is surcharged with an
+eager and unconquerable benevolence towards everything that lives;
+until he has utterly abandoned the presumptuous practice of judging
+and condemning&mdash;he will never attain real content. "Ah!" you exclaim
+again, "he has nothing newer to tell us than that 'the greatest of
+these is charity'!" I have not. It may strike you as excessively
+funny, but I have discovered nothing newer than that. I merely remind
+you of it. Thus it is, twins on the road to Delhi, by continual
+meditation upon the indestructibility of Force, that I try to
+cultivate calm, and by continual meditation upon the oneness of Force
+that I try to cultivate charity, being fully convinced that in
+calmness and in charity lies the secret of a placid if not ecstatic
+happiness. It is often said that no thinking <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>person can be happy in
+this world. My view is that the more a man thinks the more happy he is
+likely to be. I have spoken. I am overwhelmingly aware that I have
+spoken crudely, abruptly, inadequately, confusedly.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>THE END</h4>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<div class="block2">
+<h3>THE NOVELS OF ARNOLD BENNETT</h3>
+<br />
+
+<h3 class="left">WHOM GOD HATH JOINED:</h3>
+
+<p class="noin">&nbsp; <span class="price">Price $1.20 Net</span></p>
+
+<p>WHOM GOD HATH JOINED is a dramatic presentation of the working of the
+English divorce laws. Their injustice to woman has long been
+acknowledged; Arnold Bennett proves them almost as unjust to man.</p>
+
+<p>The novel is a stern morality, with laughter interspersed. It
+possesses the sincerity and vitality which come of a careful study of
+the problem.</p>
+
+<p>It contains passages of the most brilliant motive analysis which have
+been written in recent years. It presents a vivid world of actual
+personages.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<h3 class="left">THE GLIMPSE:</h3>
+
+<p class="noin"><i>The Adventures of a Soul.</i> <span class="price">Price $1.20 Net</span></p>
+
+<p>The story is told of a man who passed over to the Other Side and
+remained there long enough to gain a glimpse&mdash;only to return again.</p>
+
+<p>Written with the careful realism which distinguishes all Arnold
+Bennett's work, it is curious to note the fine use that he makes of
+his realistic genius in the handling of a visionary situation.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<h3 class="left">A MAN FROM THE NORTH:</h3>
+
+<p class="noin">&nbsp; <span class="price">Price $1.20 Net</span></p>
+
+<p>The story of a young man from the Five Towns, who comes up London to
+seek his fortune. He is grossly ignorant of life and naively curious
+about love. This is the history of his adventures towards love and of
+his enlightenment.</p>
+
+<p>All the loneliness, passion and quenchless curiosity of youth are in
+these pages&mdash;and the magic power of youth to wrap about the
+commonplace the cloak of romance.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<h3>GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY, Publishers</h3>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h3>ARNOLD BENNETT: PLAYS</h3>
+<br />
+
+<h3 class="left">CUPID AND COMMON-SENSE:</h3>
+
+<p class="noin"><i>A Play in Four Acts, with a Preface on the Crisis in the Theatre.</i></p>
+
+<p class="noin">&nbsp; <span class="price">Price $1.00 Net</span></p>
+
+<p>"Cupid and Common-Sense" reads well, and reads as if it would prove
+still more effective and enjoyable when acted.&mdash;<i>The Scotsman.</i></p>
+
+<br />
+
+<h3 class="left">WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS: A Play.</h3>
+
+<p class="noin">&nbsp; <span class="price">Price $1.00 Net</span></p>
+
+<p>This clever comedy, based on modern neswpaperdom, reveals Arnold
+Bennett in another phase.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<h3 class="left">POLITE FARCES: Three Plays.</h3>
+
+<p class="noin">&nbsp; <span class="price">Price $1.00 Net</span></p>
+
+<p>The three farces which comprise this book deal with possible domestic
+and refined crises of everyday life.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<h3 class="left">THE HONEYMOON:</h3>
+
+<p class="noin"><i>A Comedy in Three Acts.</i> <span class="price">Price $1.00 Net</span></p>
+
+<p>Originality without grotesquerie and satire without malice combine to
+make a play that is full of sparkle and genuine charm.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<h3 class="left">THE GREAT ADVENTURE:</h3>
+
+<p class="noin"><i>A Play of Fancy in Four Acts.</i> <span class="price">Price $1.00 Net</span></p>
+
+<p>The play based on Mr. Bennett's successful novel, "Buried Alive." As
+the novel stands out among humorous fiction so THE GREAT ADVENTURE
+stands out among modern comedies.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<h3 class="left">ARNOLD BENNETT AND EDWARD KNOBLAUCH<br />
+
+MILESTONES:</h3>
+
+<p class="noin"><i>A Play in Three Acts.</i> <span class="price">Price $1.00 Net</span></p>
+
+<p>This is the play which has created a sensation because of its boldness
+and novelty. It passes, in rapid survey, three generations&mdash;the
+milestones of the last half century. A big New York success.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<h3>GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY, Publishers</h3>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<div class="tr">
+<p class="cen"><a name="TN" id="TN"></a>Typographical errors corrected in text:</p>
+<br />
+Page 110: &nbsp;&nbsp;artificialties replaced with artificialities<br />
+Page 114: &nbsp;&nbsp;prevades replaced with pervades<br />
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mental Efficiency, by Arnold Bennett
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mental Efficiency, by Arnold Bennett
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mental Efficiency
+       And Other Hints to Men and Women
+
+Author: Arnold Bennett
+
+Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23347]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MENTAL EFFICIENCY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Jeannie Howse and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                       |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For     |
+    | a complete list, please see the end of this document.     |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+MENTAL EFFICIENCY
+
+
+
+
+         +--------------------------------------------+
+         |             BY ARNOLD BENNETT              |
+         |                                            |
+         |                  _Novels_                  |
+         |                                            |
+         |            THE OLD WIVES' TALE             |
+         |          HELEN WITH THE HIGH HAND          |
+         |            THE BOOK OF CARLOTTA            |
+         |                BURIED ALIVE                |
+         |                A GREAT MAN                 |
+         |                  LEONORA                   |
+         |            WHOM GOD HATH JOINED            |
+         |            A MAN FROM THE NORTH            |
+         |           ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS           |
+         |                THE GLIMPSE                 |
+         |                                            |
+         |           _Pocket Philosophies_            |
+         |                                            |
+         |       HOW TO LIVE ON 24 HOURS A DAY        |
+         |             THE HUMAN MACHINE              |
+         |               LITERARY TASTE               |
+         |             MENTAL EFFICIENCY              |
+         |                                            |
+         |              _Miscellaneous_               |
+         |                                            |
+         |       CUPID AND COMMONSENSE: A Play        |
+         |       WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS: A Play        |
+         |         THE TRUTH ABOUT AN AUTHOR          |
+         |          THE FEAST OF ST. FRIEND           |
+         |                                            |
+         |          GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY           |
+         |                  NEW YORK                  |
+         +--------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+MENTAL EFFICIENCY
+
+AND OTHER HINTS
+TO
+MEN AND WOMEN
+
+BY
+
+ARNOLD BENNETT
+
+Author of "How to Live on 24 Hours a Day"
+"The Old Wives' Tale," etc.
+
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+PUBLISHERS           NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1911
+By George H. Doran Company
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                             Page
+
+I. Mental Efficiency                                            7
+    The Appeal                                                  7
+    The Replies                                                13
+    The Cure                                                   19
+    Mental Calisthenics                                        24
+
+II. Expressing One's Individuality                             32
+
+III. Breaking with the Past                                    39
+
+IV. Settling Down in Life                                      45
+
+V. Marriage                                                    53
+    The Duty of It                                             53
+    The Adventure of It                                        59
+    The Two Ways of It                                         65
+
+VI. Books                                                      72
+    The Physical Side                                          72
+    The Philosophy of Book Buying                              78
+
+VII. Success                                                   84
+    Candid Remarks                                             84
+    The Successful and the Unsuccessful                        91
+    The Inwardness of Success                                  97
+
+VIII. The Petty Artificialities                               104
+
+IX. The Secret of Content                                     112
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+MENTAL EFFICIENCY
+
+
+THE APPEAL
+
+If there is any virtue in advertisements--and a journalist should be
+the last person to say that there is not--the American nation is
+rapidly reaching a state of physical efficiency of which the world has
+probably not seen the like since Sparta. In all the American
+newspapers and all the American monthlies are innumerable illustrated
+announcements of "physical-culture specialists," who guarantee to make
+all the organs of the body perform their duties with the mighty
+precision of a 60 h.p. motor-car that never breaks down. I saw a book
+the other day written by one of these specialists, to show how perfect
+health could be attained by devoting a quarter of an hour a day to
+certain exercises. The advertisements multiply and increase in size.
+They cost a great deal of money. Therefore they must bring in a great
+deal of business. Therefore vast numbers of people must be worried
+about the non-efficiency of their bodies, and on the way to achieve
+efficiency. In our more modest British fashion, we have the same
+phenomenon in England. And it is growing. Our muscles are growing
+also. Surprise a man in his bedroom of a morning, and you will find
+him lying on his back on the floor, or standing on his head, or
+whirling clubs, in pursuit of physical efficiency. I remember that
+once I "went in" for physical efficiency myself. I, too, lay on the
+floor, my delicate epidermis separated from the carpet by only the
+thinnest of garments, and I contorted myself according to the fifteen
+diagrams of a large chart (believed to be the _magna charta_ of
+physical efficiency) daily after shaving. In three weeks my collars
+would not meet round my prize-fighter's neck; my hosier reaped immense
+profits, and I came to the conclusion that I had carried physical
+efficiency quite far enough.
+
+A strange thing--was it not?--that I never had the idea of devoting a
+quarter of an hour a day after shaving to the pursuit of mental
+efficiency. The average body is a pretty complicated affair, sadly
+out of order, but happily susceptible to culture. The average mind is
+vastly more complicated, not less sadly out of order, but perhaps even
+more susceptible to culture. We compare our arms to the arms of the
+gentleman illustrated in the physical efficiency advertisement, and we
+murmur to ourselves the classic phrase: "This will never do." And we
+set about developing the muscles of our arms until we can show them
+off (through a frock coat) to women at afternoon tea. But it does not,
+perhaps, occur to us that the mind has its muscles, and a lot of
+apparatus besides, and that these invisible, yet paramount, mental
+organs are far less efficient than they ought to be; that some of them
+are atrophied, others starved, others out of shape, etc. A man of
+sedentary occupation goes for a very long walk on Easter Monday, and
+in the evening is so exhausted that he can scarcely eat. He wakes up
+to the inefficiency of his body, caused by his neglect of it, and he
+is so shocked that he determines on remedial measures. Either he will
+walk to the office, or he will play golf, or he will execute the
+post-shaving exercises. But let the same man after a prolonged
+sedentary course of newspapers, magazines, and novels, take his mind
+out for a stiff climb among the rocks of a scientific, philosophic, or
+artistic subject. What will he do? Will he stay out all day, and
+return in the evening too tired even to read his paper? Not he. It is
+ten to one that, finding himself puffing for breath after a quarter of
+an hour, he won't even persist till he gets his second wind, but will
+come back at once. Will he remark with genuine concern that his mind
+is sadly out of condition and that he really must do something to get
+it into order? Not he. It is a hundred to one that he will tranquilly
+accept the _status quo_, without shame and without very poignant
+regret. Do I make my meaning clear?
+
+I say, without a _very poignant_ regret, because a certain vague
+regret is indubitably caused by realizing that one is handicapped by a
+mental inefficiency which might, without too much difficulty, be
+cured. That vague regret exudes like a vapour from the more cultivated
+section of the public. It is to be detected everywhere, and especially
+among people who are near the half-way house of life. They perceive
+the existence of immense quantities of knowledge, not the smallest
+particle of which will they ever make their own. They stroll forth
+from their orderly dwellings on a starlit night, and feel dimly the
+wonder of the heavens. But the still small voice is telling them that,
+though they have read in a newspaper that there are fifty thousand
+stars in the Pleiades, they cannot even point to the Pleiades in the
+sky. How they would like to grasp the significance of the nebular
+theory, the most overwhelming of all theories! And the years are
+passing; and there are twenty-four hours in every day, out of which
+they work only six or seven; and it needs only an impulse, an effort,
+a system, in order gradually to cure the mind of its slackness, to
+give "tone" to its muscles, and to enable it to grapple with the
+splendours of knowledge and sensation that await it! But the regret is
+not poignant enough. They do nothing. They go on doing nothing. It is
+as though they passed for ever along the length of an endless table
+filled with delicacies, and could not stretch out a hand to seize. Do
+I exaggerate? Is there not deep in the consciousness of most of us a
+mournful feeling that our minds are like the liver of the
+advertisement--sluggish, and that for the sluggishness of our minds
+there is the excuse neither of incompetence, nor of lack of time, nor
+of lack of opportunity, nor of lack of means?
+
+Why does not some mental efficiency specialist come forward and show
+us how to make our minds do the work which our minds are certainly
+capable of doing? I do not mean a quack. All the physical efficiency
+specialists who advertise largely are not quacks. Some of them achieve
+very genuine results. If a course of treatment can be devised for the
+body, a course of treatment can be devised for the mind. Thus we might
+realize some of the ambitions which all of us cherish in regard to the
+utilization in our spare time of that magnificent machine which we
+allow to rust within our craniums. We have the desire to perfect
+ourselves, to round off our careers with the graces of knowledge and
+taste. How many people would not gladly undertake some branch of
+serious study, so that they might not die under the reproach of having
+lived and died without ever really having known anything about
+anything! It is not the absence of desire that prevents them. It is,
+first, the absence of will-power--not the will to begin, but the will
+to continue; and, second, a mental apparatus which is out of
+condition, "puffy," "weedy," through sheer neglect. The remedy, then,
+divides itself into two parts, the cultivation of will-power, and the
+getting into condition of the mental apparatus. And these two branches
+of the cure must be worked concurrently.
+
+I am sure that the considerations which I have presented to you must
+have already presented themselves to tens of thousands of my readers,
+and that thousands must have attempted the cure. I doubt not that many
+have succeeded. I shall deem it a favour if those readers who have
+interested themselves in the question will communicate to me at once
+the result of their experience, whatever its outcome. I will make such
+use as I can of the letters I receive, and afterwards I will give my
+own experience.
+
+
+THE REPLIES
+
+The correspondence which I have received in answer to my appeal shows
+that at any rate I did not overstate the case. There is, among a vast
+mass of reflecting people in this country, a clear consciousness of
+being mentally less than efficient, and a strong (though ineffective)
+desire that such mental inefficiency should cease to be. The desire is
+stronger than I had imagined, but it does not seem to have led to
+much hitherto. And that "course of treatment for the mind," by means
+of which we are to "realize some of the ambitions which all of us
+cherish in regard to the utilization in our spare time of the
+magnificent machine which we allow to rust within our craniums"--that
+desiderated course of treatment has not apparently been devised by
+anybody. The Sandow of the brain has not yet loomed up above the
+horizon. On the other hand, there appears to be a general expectancy
+that I personally am going to play the role of the Sandow of the
+brain. Vain thought!
+
+I have been very much interested in the letters, some of which, as a
+statement of the matter in question, are admirable. It is perhaps not
+surprising that the best of them come from women--for (genius apart)
+woman is usually more touchingly lyrical than man in the yearning for
+the ideal. The most enthusiastic of all the letters I have received,
+however, is from a gentleman whose notion is that we should be
+hypnotised into mental efficiency. After advocating the establishment
+of "an institution of practical psychology from whence there can be
+graduated fit and proper people whose efforts would be in the
+direction of the subconscious mental mechanism of the child or even
+the adult," this hypnotist proceeds: "Between the academician, whose
+specialty is an inconsequential cobweb, the medical man who has got it
+into his head that he is the logical foster-father for psychonomical
+matters, and the blatant 'professor' who deals with monkey tricks on a
+few somnambules on the music-hall stage, you are allowing to go
+unrecognized one of the most potent factors of mental development." Am
+I? I have not the least idea what this gentleman means, but I can
+assure him that he is wrong. I can make more sense out of the remarks
+of another correspondent who, utterly despising the things of the
+mind, compares a certain class of young men to "a halfpenny bloater
+with the roe out," and asserts that he himself "got out of the groove"
+by dint of having to unload ten tons of coal in three hours and a half
+every day during several years. This is interesting and it is
+constructive, but it is just a little beside the point.
+
+A lady, whose optimism is indicated by her pseudonym, "Esperance,"
+puts her finger on the spot, or, rather, on one of the spots, in a
+very sensible letter. "It appears to me," she says, "that the great
+cause of mental inefficiency is lack of concentration, perhaps
+especially in the case of women. I can trace my chief failures to this
+cause. Concentration, is a talent. It may be in a measure cultivated,
+but it needs to be inborn.... The greater number of us are in a state
+of semi-slumber, with minds which are only exerted to one-half of
+their capability." I thoroughly agree that inability to concentrate is
+one of the chief symptoms of the mental machine being out of
+condition. "Esperance's" suggested cure is rather drastic. She says:
+"Perhaps one of the best cures for mental sedentariness is arithmetic,
+for there is nothing else which requires greater power of
+concentration." Perhaps arithmetic might be an effective cure, but it
+is not a practical cure, because no one, or scarcely any one, would
+practise it. I cannot imagine the plain man who, having a couple of
+hours to spare of a night, and having also the sincere desire but not
+the will-power to improve his taste and knowledge, would deliberately
+sit down and work sums by way of preliminary mental calisthenics. As
+Ibsen's puppet said: "People don't do these things." Why do they not?
+The answer is: Simply because they won't; simply because human nature
+will not run to it. "Esperance's" suggestion of learning poetry is
+slightly better.
+
+Certainly the best letter I have had is from Miss H. D. She says:
+"This idea [to avoid the reproach of 'living and dying without ever
+really knowing anything about anything'] came to me of itself from
+somewhere when I was a small girl. And looking back I fancy that the
+thought itself spurred me to do something in this world, to get into
+line with people who did things--people who painted pictures, wrote
+books, built bridges, or did something beyond the ordinary. This only
+has seemed to me, all my life since, worth while." Here I must
+interject that such a statement is somewhat sweeping. In fact, it
+sweeps a whole lot of fine and legitimate ambitions straight into the
+rubbish heap of the Not-worth-while. I think the writer would wish to
+modify it. She continues: "And when the day comes in which I have not
+done some serious reading, however small the measure, or some writing
+... or I have been too sad or dull to notice the brightness of colour
+of the sun, of grass and flowers, of the sea, or the moonlight on the
+water, I think the day ill-spent. So I must think the _incentive_ to
+do a little each day beyond the ordinary towards the real culture of
+the mind, is the beginning of the cure of mental inefficiency." This
+is very ingenious and good. Further: "The day comes when the mental
+habit has become a part of our life, and we value mental work for the
+work's sake." But I am not sure about that. For myself, I have never
+valued work for its own sake, and I never shall. And I only value such
+mental work for the more full and more intense consciousness of being
+alive which it gives me.
+
+Miss H. D.'s remedies are vague. As to lack of will-power, "the first
+step is to realize your weakness; the next step is to have ordinary
+shame that you are defective." I doubt, I gravely doubt, if these
+steps would lead to anything definite. Nor is this very helpful: "I
+would advise reading, observing, writing. I would advise the use of
+every sense and every faculty by which we at last learn the sacredness
+of life." This is begging the question. If people, by merely wishing
+to do so, could regularly and seriously read, observe, write, and use
+every faculty and sense, there would be very little mental
+inefficiency. I see that I shall be driven to construct a programme
+out of my own bitter and ridiculous experiences.
+
+
+THE CURE
+
+    "But tasks in hours of insight willed
+    Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled."
+
+The above lines from Matthew Arnold are quoted by one of my very
+numerous correspondents to support a certain optimism in this matter
+of a systematic attempt to improve the mind. They form part of a
+beautiful and inspiring poem, but I gravely fear that they run counter
+to the vast mass of earthly experience. More often than not I have
+found that a task willed in some hour of insight can _not_ be
+fulfilled through hours of gloom. No, no, and no! To will is easy: it
+needs but the momentary bright contagion of a stronger spirit than
+one's own. To fulfil, morning after morning, or evening after evening,
+through months and years--this is the very dickens, and there is not
+one of my readers that will not agree with me. Yet such is the elastic
+quality of human nature that most of my correspondents are quite ready
+to ignore the sad fact and to demand at once: "what shall we will?
+Tell us what we must will." Some seem to think that they have solved
+the difficulty when they have advocated certain systems of memory and
+mind-training. Such systems may be in themselves useful or
+useless--the evidence furnished to me is contradictory--but were they
+perfect systems, a man cannot be intellectually born again merely by
+joining a memory-class. The best system depends utterly on the man's
+power of resolution. And what really counts is not the system, but the
+spirit in which the man handles it. Now, the proper spirit can only be
+induced by a careful consideration and realization of the man's
+conditions--the limitations of his temperament, the strength of
+adverse influences, and the lessons of his past.
+
+Let me take an average case. Let me take your case, O man or woman of
+thirty, living in comfort, with some cares, and some responsibilities,
+and some pretty hard daily work, but not too much of any! The question
+of mental efficiency is in the air. It interests you. It touches you
+nearly. Your conscience tells you that your mind is less active and
+less informed than it might be. You suddenly spring up from the
+garden-seat, and you say to yourself that you will take your mind in
+hand and do something with it. Wait a moment. Be so good as to sink
+back into that garden-seat and clutch that tennis racket a little
+longer. You have had these "hours of insight" before, you know. You
+have not arrived at the age of thirty without having tried to carry
+out noble resolutions--and failed. What precautions are you going to
+take against failure this time? For your will is probably no stronger
+now than it was aforetime. You have admitted and accepted failure in
+the past. And no wound is more cruel to the spirit of resolve than
+that dealt by failure. You fancy the wound closed, but just at the
+critical moment it may reopen and mortally bleed you. What are your
+precautions? Have you thought of them? No. You have not.
+
+I have not the pleasure of your acquaintance. But I know you because I
+know myself. Your failure in the past was due to one or more of three
+causes. And the first was that you undertook too much at the
+beginning. You started off with a magnificent programme. You are
+something of an expert in physical exercises--you would be ashamed
+not to be, in these physical days--and so you would never attempt a
+hurdle race or an uninterrupted hour's club-whirling without some
+preparation. The analogy between the body and the mind ought to have
+struck you. _This_ time, please do not form an elaborate programme. Do
+not form any programme. Simply content yourself with a preliminary
+canter, a ridiculously easy preliminary canter. For example (and I
+give this merely as an example), you might say to yourself: "Within
+one month from this date I will read twice Herbert Spencer's little
+book on 'Education'--sixpence--and will make notes in pencil inside
+the back cover of the things that particularly strike me." You remark
+that that is nothing, that you can do it "on your head," and so on.
+Well, do it. When it is done you will at any rate possess the
+satisfaction of having resolved to do something and having done it.
+Your mind will have gained tone and healthy pride. You will be even
+justified in setting yourself some kind of a simple programme to
+extend over three months. And you will have acquired some general
+principles by the light of which to construct the programme. But best
+of all, you will have avoided failure, that dangerous wound.
+
+The second possible cause of previous failure was the disintegrating
+effect on the will-power of the ironic, superior smile of friends.
+Whenever a man "turns over a new leaf" he has this inane giggle to
+face. The drunkard may be less ashamed of getting drunk than of
+breaking to a crony the news that he has signed the pledge. Strange,
+but true! And human nature must be counted with. Of course, on a few
+stern spirits the effect of that smile is merely to harden the
+resolution. But on the majority its influence is deleterious.
+Therefore don't go and nail your flag to the mast. Don't raise any
+flag. Say nothing. Work as unobtrusively as you can. When you have won
+a battle or two you can begin to wave the banner, and then you will
+find that that miserable, pitiful, ironic, superior smile will die
+away ere it is born.
+
+The third possible cause was that you did not rearrange your day.
+Idler and time-waster though you have been, still you had done
+_something_ during the twenty-four hours. You went to work with a kind
+of dim idea that there were twenty-six hours in every day. _Something
+large and definite has to be dropped._ Some space in the rank jungle
+of the day has to be cleared and swept up for the new operations.
+Robbing yourself of sleep won't help you, nor trying to "squeeze in" a
+time for study between two other times. Use the knife, and use it
+freely. If you mean to read or think half an hour a day, arrange for
+an hour. A hundred per cent. margin is not too much for a beginner. Do
+you ask me where the knife is to be used? I should say that in nine
+cases out of ten the rites of the cult of the body might be
+abbreviated. I recently spent a week-end in a London suburb, and I was
+staggered by the wholesale attention given to physical recreation in
+all its forms. It was a gigantic debauch of the muscles on every side.
+It shocked me. "Poor withering mind!" I thought. "Cricket, and
+football, and boating, and golf, and tennis have their 'seasons,' but
+not thou!" These considerations are general and prefatory. Now I must
+come to detail.
+
+
+MENTAL CALISTHENICS
+
+I have dealt with the state of mind in which one should begin a
+serious effort towards mental efficiency, and also with the probable
+causes of failure in previous efforts. We come now to what I may call
+the calisthenics of the business, exercises which may be roughly
+compared to the technical exercises necessary in learning to play a
+musical instrument. It is curious that a person studying a musical
+instrument will have no false shame whatever in doing mere exercises
+for the fingers and wrists while a person who is trying to get his
+mind into order will almost certainly experience a false shame in
+going through performances which are undoubtedly good for him. Herein
+lies one of the great obstacles to mental efficiency. Tell a man that
+he should join a memory class, and he will hum and haw, and say, as I
+have already remarked, that memory isn't everything; and, in short, he
+won't join the memory class, partly from indolence, I grant, but more
+from false shame. (Is not this true?) He will even hesitate about
+learning things by heart. Yet there are few mental exercises better
+than learning great poetry or prose by heart. Twenty lines a week for
+six months: what a "cure" for debility! The chief, but not the only,
+merit of learning by heart as an exercise is that it compels the mind
+to concentrate. And the most important preliminary to self-development
+is the faculty of concentrating at will. Another excellent exercise is
+to read a page of no-matter-what, and then immediately to write
+down--in one's own words or in the author's--one's full recollection
+of it. A quarter of an hour a day! No more! And it works like magic.
+
+This brings me to the department of writing. I am a writer by
+profession; but I do not think I have any prejudices in favour of the
+exercise of writing. Indeed, I say to myself every morning that if
+there is one exercise in the world which I hate, it is the exercise of
+writing. But I must assert that in my opinion the exercise of writing
+is an indispensable part of any genuine effort towards mental
+efficiency. I don't care much what you write, so long as you compose
+sentences and achieve continuity. There are forty ways of writing in
+an unprofessional manner, and they are all good. You may keep "a full
+diary," as Mr. Arthur Christopher Benson says he does. This is one of
+the least good ways. Diaries, save in experienced hands like those of
+Mr. Benson, are apt to get themselves done with the very minimum of
+mental effort. They also tend to an exaggeration of egotism, and if
+they are left lying about they tend to strife. Further, one never
+knows when one may not be compelled to produce them in a court of
+law. A journal is better. Do not ask me to define the difference
+between a journal and a diary. I will not and I cannot. It is a
+difference that one feels instinctively. A diary treats exclusively of
+one's self and one's doings; a journal roams wider, and notes whatever
+one has observed of interest. A diary relates that one had lobster
+mayonnaise for dinner and rose the next morning with a headache,
+doubtless attributable to mental strain. A journal relates that
+Mrs. ----, whom one took into dinner, had brown eyes, and an agreeable
+trick of throwing back her head after asking a question, and gives her
+account of her husband's strange adventures in Colorado, etc. A diary
+is
+
+    All I, I, I, I, itself I
+
+(to quote a line of the transcendental poetry of Mary Baker G. Eddy).
+A journal is the large spectacle of life. A journal may be special or
+general. I know a man who keeps a journal of all cases of current
+superstition which he actually encounters. He began it without the
+slightest suspicion that he was beginning a document of astounding
+interest and real scientific value; but such was the fact. In default
+of a diary or a journal, one may write essays (provided one has the
+moral courage); or one may simply make notes on the book one reads. Or
+one may construct anthologies of passages which have made an
+individual and particular appeal to one's tastes. Anthology
+construction is one of the pleasantest hobbies that a person who is
+not mad about golf and bridge--that is to say, a thinking person--can
+possibly have; and I recommend it to those who, discreetly mistrusting
+their power to keep up a fast pace from start to finish, are anxious
+to begin their intellectual course gently and mildly. In any event,
+writing--the act of writing--is vital to almost any scheme. I would
+say it was vital to every scheme, without exception, were I not sure
+that some kind correspondent would instantly point out a scheme to
+which writing was obviously not vital.
+
+After writing comes thinking. (The sequence may be considered odd, but
+I adhere to it.) In this connexion I cannot do better than quote an
+admirable letter which I have received from a correspondent who wishes
+to be known only as "An Oxford Lecturer." The italics (except the
+last) are mine, not his. He says: "Till a man has got his physical
+brain completely under his control--_suppressing its too-great
+receptivity, its tendencies to reproduce idly the thoughts of others,
+and to be swayed by every passing gust of emotion_--I hold that he
+cannot do a tenth part of the work that he would then be able to
+perform with little or no effort. Moreover, work apart, he has not
+entered upon his kingdom, and unlimited possibilities of future
+development are barred to him. Mental efficiency can be gained by
+constant practice in meditation--i.e., by concentrating the mind, say,
+for but ten minutes daily, but with absolute regularity, on some of
+the highest thoughts of which it is capable. Failures will be
+frequent, but they must be regarded with simple indifference and
+dogged perseverance in the path chosen. If that path be followed
+_without intermission_ even for a few weeks the results will speak for
+themselves." I thoroughly agree with what this correspondent says, and
+am obliged to him for having so ably stated the case. But I regard
+such a practice of meditation as he indicates as being rather an
+"advanced" exercise for a beginner. After the beginner has got under
+way, and gained a little confidence in his strength of purpose, and
+acquired the skill to define his thoughts sufficiently to write them
+down--then it would be time enough, in my view, to undertake what "An
+Oxford Lecturer" suggests. By the way, he highly recommends Mrs. Annie
+Besant's book, _Thought Power: Its Control and Culture_. He says that
+it treats the subject with scientific clearness, and gives a practical
+method of training the mind, I endorse the latter part of the
+statement.
+
+So much for the more or less technical processes of stirring the mind
+from its sloth and making it exactly obedient to the aspirations of
+the soul. And here I close. Numerous correspondents have asked me to
+outline a course of reading for them. In other words, they have asked
+me to particularize for them the aspirations of their souls. My
+subject, however, was not self-development My subject was mental
+efficiency as a means to self-development. Of course, one can only
+acquire mental efficiency in the actual effort of self-development.
+But I was concerned, not with the choice of route; rather with the
+manner of following the route. You say to me that I am busying myself
+with the best method of walking, and refusing to discuss where to go.
+Precisely. One man cannot tell another man where the other man wants
+to go.
+
+If he can't himself decide on a goal he may as well curl up and
+expire, for the root of the matter is not in him. I will content
+myself with pointing out that the entire universe is open for
+inspection. Too many people fancy that self-development means
+literature. They associate the higher life with an intimate knowledge
+of the life of Charlotte Bronte, or the order of the plays of
+Shakespeare. The higher life may just as well be butterflies, or
+funeral customs, or county boundaries, or street names, or mosses, or
+stars, or slugs, as Charlotte Bronte or Shakespeare. Choose what
+interests you. Lots of finely-organized, mentally-efficient persons
+can't read Shakespeare at any price, and if you asked them who was the
+author of _The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_ they might proudly answer
+Emily Bronte, if they didn't say they never heard of it. An accurate
+knowledge of _any_ subject, coupled with a carefully nurtured sense of
+the relativity of that subject to other subjects, implies an enormous
+self-development. With this hint I conclude.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+EXPRESSING ONE'S INDIVIDUALITY
+
+
+A most curious and useful thing to realize is that one never knows the
+impression one is creating on other people. One may often guess pretty
+accurately whether it is good, bad, or indifferent--some people render
+it unnecessary for one to guess, they practically inform one--but that
+is not what I mean. I mean much more than that. I mean that one has
+one's self no mental picture corresponding to the mental picture which
+one's personality leaves in the minds of one's friends. Has it ever
+struck you that there is a mysterious individual going around, walking
+the streets, calling at houses for tea, chatting, laughing, grumbling,
+arguing, and that all your friends know him and have long since added
+him up and come to a definite conclusion about him--without saying
+more than a chance, cautious word to you; and that that person is
+_you_? Supposing that _you_ came into a drawing-room where you were
+having tea, do you think you would recognize yourself as an
+individuality? I think not. You would be apt to say to yourself, as
+guests do when disturbed in drawing-rooms by other guests: "Who's this
+chap? Seems rather queer, I hope he won't be a bore." And your first
+telling would be slightly hostile. Why, even when you meet yourself in
+an unsuspected mirror in the very clothes that you have put on that
+very day and that you know by heart, you are almost always shocked by
+the realization that you are you. And now and then, when you have gone
+to the glass to arrange your hair in the full sobriety of early
+morning, have you not looked on an absolute stranger, and has not that
+stranger piqued your curiosity? And if it is thus with precise
+external details of form, colour, and movement, what may it not be
+with the vague complex effect of the mental and moral individuality?
+
+A man honestly tries to make a good impression. What is the result?
+The result merely is that his friends, in the privacy of their minds,
+set him down as a man who tries to make a good impression. If much
+depends on the result of a single interview, or a couple of
+interviews, a man may conceivably force another to accept an
+impression of himself which he would like to convey. But if the
+receiver of the impression is to have time at his disposal, then the
+giver of the impression may just as well sit down and put his hands in
+his pockets, for nothing that he can do will modify or influence in
+any way the impression that he will ultimately give. The real impress
+is, in the end, given unconsciously, not consciously; and further, it
+is received unconsciously, not consciously. It depends partly on both
+persons. And it is immutably fixed beforehand. There can be no final
+deception. Take the extreme case, that of the mother and her son. One
+hears that the son hoodwinks his mother. Not he! If he is cruel,
+neglectful, overbearing, she is perfectly aware of it. He does not
+deceive her, and she does not deceive herself. I have often thought:
+If a son could look into a mother's heart, what an eye-opener he would
+have! "What!" he would cry. "This cold, impartial judgment, this keen
+vision for my faults, this implacable memory of little slights, and
+injustices, and callousnesses committed long ago, in the breast of my
+mother!" Yes, my friend, in the breast of your mother. The only
+difference between your mother and another person is that she takes
+you as you are, and loves you for what you are. She isn't blind: do
+not imagine it.
+
+The marvel is, not that people are such bad judges of character, but
+that they are such good judges, especially of what I may call
+fundamental character. The wiliest person cannot for ever conceal his
+fundamental character from the simplest. And people are very stern
+judges, too. Think of your best friends--are you oblivious of their
+defects? On the contrary, you are perhaps too conscious of them. When
+you summon them before your mind's eye, it is no ideal creation that
+you see. When you meet them and talk to them you are constantly making
+reservations in their disfavour--unless, of course, you happen to be a
+schoolgirl gushing over like a fountain with enthusiasm. It is well,
+when one is judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with
+the same godlike and superior impartiality. It is well to grasp the
+fact that you are going through life under the scrutiny of a band of
+acquaintances who are subject to very few illusions about you, whose
+views of you are, indeed, apt to be harsh and even cruel. Above all
+it is advisable to comprehend thoroughly that the things in your
+individuality which annoy your friends most are the things of which
+you are completely unconscious. It is not until years have passed that
+one begins to be able to form a dim idea of what one has looked like
+to one's friends. At forty one goes back ten years, and one says
+sadly, but with a certain amusement: "I must have been pretty blatant
+then. I can see how I must have exasperated 'em. And yet I hadn't the
+faintest notion of it at the time. My intentions were of the best.
+Only I didn't know enough." And one recollects some particularly crude
+action, and kicks one's self.... Yes, that is all very well; and the
+enlightenment which has come with increasing age is exceedingly
+satisfactory. But you are forty now. What shall you be saying of
+yourself at fifty? Such reflections foster humility, and they foster
+also a reluctance, which it is impossible to praise too highly, to
+tread on other people's toes.
+
+A moment ago I used the phrase "fundamental character." It is a
+reminiscence of Stevenson's phrase "fundamental decency." And it is
+the final test by which one judges one's friends. "After all, he's a
+decent fellow." We must be able to use that formula concerning our
+friends. Kindliness of heart is not the greatest of human
+qualities--and its general effect on the progress of the world is not
+entirely beneficent--but it is the greatest of human qualities in
+friendship. It is the least dispensable quality. We come back to it
+with relief from more brilliant qualities. And it has the great
+advantage of always going with a broad mind. Narrow-minded people are
+never kind-hearted. You may be inclined to dispute this statement:
+please think it over; I am inclined to uphold it.
+
+We can forgive the absence of any quality except kindliness of heart.
+And when a man lacks that, we blame him, we will not forgive him. This
+is, of course, scandalous. A man is born as he is born. And he can as
+easily add a cubit to his stature as add kindliness to his heart. The
+feat never has been done, and never will be done. And yet we blame
+those who have not kindliness. We have the incredible, insufferable,
+and odious audacity to blame them. We think of them as though they had
+nothing to do but go into a shop and buy kindliness. I hear you say
+that kindliness of heart can be "cultivated." Well, I hate to have
+even the appearance of contradicting you, but it can only be
+cultivated in the botanical sense. You can't cultivate violets on a
+nettle. A philosopher has enjoined us to suffer fools gladly. He had
+more usefully enjoined us to suffer ill-natured persons gladly.... I
+see that in a fit of absentmindedness I have strayed into the pulpit.
+I descend.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+BREAKING WITH THE PAST
+
+
+On that dark morning we woke up, and it instantly occurred to us--or
+at any rate to those of us who have preserved some of our illusions
+and our _naivete_--that we had something to be cheerful about, some
+cause for a gay and strenuous vivacity; and then we remembered that it
+was New Year's Day, and there were those Resolutions to put into
+force! Of course, we all smile in a superior manner at the very
+mention of New Year's Resolutions; we pretend they are toys for
+children, and that we have long since ceased to regard them seriously
+as a possible aid to conduct. But we are such deceivers, such
+miserable, moral cowards, in such terror of appearing naive, that I
+for one am not to be taken in by that smile and that pretence. The
+individual who scoffs at New Year's Resolutions resembles the woman
+who says she doesn't look under the bed at nights; the truth is not in
+him, and in the very moment of his lying, could his cranium suddenly
+become transparent, we should see Resolutions burning brightly in his
+brain like lamps in Trafalgar Square. Of this I am convinced, that
+nineteen-twentieths of us got out of bed that morning animated by that
+special feeling of gay and strenuous vivacity which Resolutions alone
+can produce. And nineteen-twentieths of us were also conscious of a
+high virtue, forgetting that it is not the making of Resolutions, but
+the keeping of them, which renders pardonable the consciousness of
+virtue.
+
+And at this hour, while the activity of the Resolution is yet in full
+blast, I would wish to insist on the truism, obvious perhaps, but apt
+to be overlooked, that a man cannot go forward and stand still at the
+same time. Just as moralists have often animadverted upon the tendency
+to live in the future, so I would animadvert upon the tendency to live
+in the past. Because all around me I see men carefully tying
+themselves with an unbreakable rope to an immovable post at the bottom
+of a hill and then struggling to climb the hill. If there is one
+Resolution more important than another it is the Resolution to break
+with the past. If life is not a continual denial of the past, then it
+is nothing. This may seem a hard and callous doctrine, but you know
+there are aspects of common sense which decidedly are hard and
+callous. And one finds constantly in plain common-sense persons (O
+rare and select band!) a surprising quality of ruthlessness mingled
+with softer traits. Have you not noticed it? The past is absolutely
+intractable. One can't do anything with it. And an exaggerated
+attention to it is like an exaggerated attention to sepulchres--a sign
+of barbarism. Moreover, the past is usually the enemy of cheerfulness,
+and cheerfulness is a most precious attainment.
+
+Personally, I could even go so far as to exhibit hostility towards
+grief, and a marked hostility towards remorse--two states of mind
+which feed on the past instead of on the present. Remorse, which is
+not the same thing as repentance, serves no purpose that I have ever
+been able to discover. What one has done, one has done, and there's an
+end of it. As a great prelate unforgettably said, "Things are what
+they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be. Why,
+then, attempt to deceive ourselves"--that remorse for wickedness is a
+useful and praiseworthy exercise? Much better to forget. As a matter
+of fact, people "indulge" in remorse; it is a somewhat vicious form of
+spiritual pleasure. Grief, of course, is different, and it must be
+handled with delicate consideration. Nevertheless, when I see, as one
+does see, a man or a woman dedicating existence to sorrow for the loss
+of a beloved creature, and the world tacitly applauding, my feeling is
+certainly inimical. To my idea, that man or woman is not honouring,
+but dishonouring, the memory of the departed; society suffers, the
+individual suffers, and no earthly or heavenly good is achieved. Grief
+is of the past; it mars the present; it is a form of indulgence, and
+it ought to be bridled much more than it often is. The human heart is
+so large that mere remembrance should not be allowed to tyrannize over
+every part of it.
+
+But cases of remorse and absorbing grief are comparatively rare. What
+is not rare is that misguided loyalty to the past which dominates the
+lives of so many of us. I do not speak of leading principles, which
+are not likely to incommode us by changing; I speak of secondary yet
+still important things. We will not do so-and-so because we have never
+done it--as if that was a reason! Or we have always done so-and-so,
+therefore we must always do it--as if _that_ was logic! This
+disposition to an irrational Toryism is curiously discoverable in
+advanced Radicals, and it will show itself in the veriest trifles. I
+remember such a man whose wife objected to his form of hat (not that I
+would call so crowning an affair as a hat a trifle!). "My dear," he
+protested, "I have always worn this sort of hat. It may not suit me,
+but it is absolutely impossible for me to alter it now." However, she
+took him by means of an omnibus to a hat shop and bought him another
+hat and put it on his head, and made a present of the old one to the
+shop assistant, and marched him out of the shop. "There!" she said,
+"you see how impossible it is." This is a parable. And I will not
+insult your intelligence by applying it.
+
+The faculty that we chiefly need when we are in the resolution-making
+mood is the faculty of imagination, the faculty of looking at our
+lives as though we had never looked at them before--freshly, with a
+new eye. Supposing that you had been born mature and full of
+experience, and that yesterday had been the first day of your life,
+you would regard it to-day as an experiment, you would challenge each
+act in it, and you would probably arrange to-morrow in a manner that
+showed a healthy disrespect for yesterday. You certainly would not
+say: "I have done so-and-so once, therefore I must keep on doing it."
+The past is never more than an experiment. A genuine appreciation of
+this fact will make our new Resolutions more valuable and drastic than
+they usually are. I have a dim notion that the most useful Resolution
+for most of us would be to break quite fifty per cent. of all the vows
+we have ever made. "Do not accustom yourself to enchain your
+_volatility_ with vows.... Take this warning; it is of great
+importance." (The wisdom is Johnson's, but I flatter myself on the
+italics.)
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+SETTLING DOWN IN LIFE
+
+
+The other day a well-known English novelist asked me how old I thought
+she was, _really_. "Well," I said to myself, "since she has asked for
+it, she shall have it; I will be as true to life as her novels." So I
+replied audaciously: "Thirty-eight." I fancied I was erring if at all,
+on the side of "really," and I trembled. She laughed triumphantly. "I
+am forty-three," she said. The incident might have passed off entirely
+to my satisfaction had she not proceeded: "And now tell me how old
+_you_ are." That was like a woman. Women imagine that men have no
+reticences, no pretty little vanities. What an error! Of course I
+could not be beaten in candour by a woman. I had to offer myself a
+burnt sacrifice to her curiosity, and I did it, bravely but not
+unflinchingly. And then afterwards the fact of my age remained with
+me, worried me, obsessed me. I saw more clearly than ever before that
+age was telling on me. I could not be blind to the deliberation of my
+movements in climbing stairs and in dressing. Once upon a time the
+majority of persons I met in the street seemed much older than myself.
+It is different now. The change has come unperceived. There is a
+generation younger than mine that smokes cigars and falls in love.
+Astounding! Once I could play left-wing forward for an hour and a half
+without dropping down dead. Once I could swim a hundred and fifty feet
+submerged at the bottom of a swimming-bath. Incredible! Simply
+incredible!... Can it be that I have already lived?
+
+And lo! I, at the age of nearly forty, am putting to myself the old
+questions concerning the intrinsic value of life, the fundamentally
+important questions: What have I got out of it? What am I likely to
+get out of it? In a word, what's it worth? If a man can ask himself a
+question more momentous, radical, and critical than these questions, I
+would like to know what it is. Innumerable philosophers have tried to
+answer these questions in a general way for the average individual,
+and possibly they have succeeded pretty well. Possibly I might derive
+benefit from a perusal of their answers. But do you suppose I am going
+to read them? Not I! Do you suppose that I can recall the wisdom that
+I happen already to have read? Not I! My mind is a perfect blank at
+this moment in regard to the wisdom of others on the essential
+question. Strange, is it not? But quite a common experience, I
+believe. Besides, I don't actually care twopence what any other
+philosopher has replied to my question. In this, each man must be his
+own philosopher. There is an instinct in the profound egoism of human
+nature which prevents us from accepting such ready-made answers. What
+is it to us what Plato thought? Nothing. And thus the question remains
+ever new, and ever unanswered, and ever of dramatic interest. The
+singular, the highly singular thing is--and here I arrive at my
+point--that so few people put the question to themselves in time, that
+so many put it too late, or even die without putting it.
+
+I am firmly convinced that an immense proportion of my instructed
+fellow-creatures do not merely omit to strike the balance-sheet of
+their lives, they omit even the preliminary operation of taking
+stock. They go on, and on, and on, buying and selling they know not
+what, at unascertained prices, dropping money into the till and taking
+it out. They don't know what goods are in the shop, nor what amount is
+in the till, but they have a clear impression that the living-room
+behind the shop is by no means as luxurious and as well-ventilated as
+they would like it to be. And the years pass, and that beautiful
+furniture and that system of ventilation are not achieved. And then
+one day they die, and friends come to the funeral and remark: "Dear
+me! How stuffy this room is, and the shop's practically full of
+trash!" Or, some little time before they are dead, they stay later
+than usual in the shop one evening, and make up their minds to take
+stock and count the till, and the disillusion lays them low, and they
+struggle into the living-room and murmur: "I shall never have that
+beautiful furniture, and I shall never have that system of
+ventilation. If I had known earlier, I would have at least got a few
+inexpensive cushions to go on with, and I would have put my fist
+through a pane in the window. But it's too late now. I'm used to
+Windsor chairs, and I should feel the draught horribly."
+
+If I were a preacher, and if I hadn't got more than enough to do in
+minding my own affairs, and if I could look any one in the face and
+deny that I too had pursued for nearly forty years the great British
+policy of muddling through and hoping for the best--in short, if
+things were not what they are, I would hire the Alhambra Theatre or
+Exeter Hall of a Sunday night--preferably the Alhambra, because more
+people would come to my entertainment--and I would invite all men and
+women over twenty-six. I would supply the seething crowd with what
+they desired in the way of bodily refreshment (except spirits--I would
+draw the line at poisons), and having got them and myself into a nice
+amiable expansive frame of mind, I would thus address them--of course
+in ringing eloquence that John Bright might have envied:
+
+  Men and women (I would say), companions in the universal pastime
+  of hiding one's head in the sand,--I am about to impart to you the
+  very essence of human wisdom. It is not abstract. It is a
+  principle of daily application, affecting the daily round in its
+  entirety, from the straphanging on the District Railway in the
+  morning to the straphanging on the District Railway the next
+  morning. Beware of hope, and beware of ambition! Each is
+  excellently tonic, like German competition, in moderation. But all
+  of you are suffering from self-indulgence in the first, and very
+  many of you are ruining your constitutions with the second. Be it
+  known unto you, my dear men and women, that existence rightly
+  considered is a fair compromise between two instincts--the
+  instinct of hoping one day to live, and the instinct to live here
+  and now. In most of you the first instinct has simply got the
+  other by the throat and is throttling it. Prepare to live by all
+  means, but for heaven's sake do not forget to live. You will never
+  have a better chance than you have at present. You may think you
+  will have, but you are mistaken. Pardon this bluntness. Surely you
+  are not so naive as to imagine that the road on the other side of
+  that hill there is more beautiful than the piece you are now
+  traversing! Hopes are never realized; for in the act of
+  realization they become something else. Ambitions may be attained,
+  but ambitions attained are rather like burnt coal, ninety per
+  cent. of the heat generated has gone up the chimney instead of
+  into the room. Nevertheless, indulge in hopes and ambitions,
+  which, though deceiving, are agreeable deceptions; let them cheat
+  you a little, a lot. But do not let them cheat you too much. This
+  that you are living now is life itself--it is much more life
+  itself than that which you will be living twenty years hence.
+  Grasp that truth. Dwell on it. Absorb it. Let it influence your
+  conduct, to the end that neither the present nor the future be
+  neglected. You search for happiness? Happiness is chiefly a matter
+  of temperament. It is exceedingly improbable that you will by
+  struggling gain more happiness than you already possess. In fine,
+  settle down at once into _life_. (Loud cheers.)
+
+The cheers would of course be for the refreshments.
+
+There is no doubt that the mass of the audience would consider that I
+had missed my vocation, and ought to have been a caterer instead of a
+preacher. But, once started, I would not be discouraged. I would keep
+on, Sunday night after Sunday night. Our leading advertisers have
+richly proved that the public will believe anything if they are told
+of it often enough. I would practise iteration, always with
+refreshments. In the result, it would dawn upon the corporate mind
+that there was some glimmering of sense in my doctrine, and people
+would at last begin to perceive the folly of neglecting to savour the
+present, the folly of assuming that the future can be essentially
+different from the present, the fatuity of dying before they have
+begun to live.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+MARRIAGE
+
+
+THE DUTY OF IT
+
+Every now and then it becomes necessary to deal faithfully with that
+immortal type of person, the praiser of the past at the expense of the
+present. I will not quote Horace, as by all the traditions of letters
+I ought to do, because Horace, like the incurable trimmer that he was,
+"hedged" on this question; and I do not admire him much either. The
+praiser of the past has been very rife lately. He has told us that
+pauperism and lunacy are mightily increasing, and though the exact
+opposite has been proved to be the case and he has apologized, he will
+have forgotten the correction in a few months, and will break out
+again into renewed lamentation. He has told us that we are physically
+deteriorating, and in such awful tones that we have shuddered, and
+many of us have believed. And considering that the death-rate is
+decreasing, that slums are decreasing, that disease is decreasing,
+that the agricultural labourer eats more than ever he did, our
+credence does not do much credit to our reasoning powers, does it? Of
+course, there is that terrible "influx" into the towns, but I for one
+should be much interested to know wherein the existence of the rustic
+in times past was healthier than the existence of the town-dwellers of
+to-day. The personal appearance of agricultural veterans does not help
+me; they resemble starved 'bus-drivers twisted out of shape by
+lightning.
+
+But the _piece de resistance_ of the praiser of the past is now
+marriage, with discreet hints about the birth-rate. The praiser of the
+past is going to have a magnificent time with the subject of marriage.
+The first moanings of the tempest have already been heard. Bishops
+have looked askance at the birth-rate, and have mentioned their
+displeasure. The matter is serious. As the phrase goes, "it strikes at
+the root." We are marrying later, my friends. Some of us, in the hurry
+and pre-occupation of business, are quite forgetting to marry. It is
+the duty of the citizen to marry and have children, and we are
+neglecting our duty, we are growing selfish! No longer are produced
+the glorious "quiverfuls" of old times! Our fathers married at twenty;
+we marry at thirty-five. Why? Because a gross and enervating luxury
+has overtaken us. What will become of England if this continues? There
+will be no England! Hence we must look to it! And so on, in the same
+strain.
+
+I should like to ask all those who have raised and will raise such
+outcries. Have you read "X"? Now, the book that I refer to as "X" is a
+mysterious work, written rather more than a hundred years ago by an
+English curate. It is a classic of English science; indeed, it is one
+of the great scientific books of the world. It has immensely
+influenced all the scientific thought of the nineteenth century,
+especially Darwin's. Mr. H.G. Wells, as cited in "Chambers's
+Cyclopaedia of English Literature," describes it as "the most
+'shattering' book that ever has or will be written." If I may make a
+personal reference, I would say that it affected me more deeply than
+any other scientific book that I have read. Although it is perfectly
+easy to understand, and free from the slightest technicality, it is
+the most misunderstood book in English literature, simply because it
+is _not_ read. The current notion about it is utterly false. It might
+be a powerful instrument of education, general and sociological, but
+publishers will not reprint it--at least, they do not. And yet it is
+forty times more interesting and four hundred times more educational
+than Gilbert White's remarks on the birds of Selborne. I will leave
+you to guess what "X" is, but I do not offer a prize for the solution
+of a problem which a vast number of my readers will certainly solve at
+once.
+
+If those who are worrying themselves about the change in our system of
+marriage would read "X," they would probably cease from worrying. For
+they would perceive that they had been putting the cart before the
+horse; that they had elevated to the dignity of fundamental principles
+certain average rules of conduct which had sprung solely from certain
+average instincts in certain average conditions, and that they were
+now frightened because, the conditions having changed, the rules of
+conduct had changed with them. One of the truths that "X" makes clear
+is that conduct conforms to conditions, and not conditions to conduct.
+
+The payment of taxes is a duty which the citizen owes to the state.
+Marriage, with the begetting of children, is not a duty which the
+citizen owes to the state. Marriage, with its consequences, is a
+matter of personal inclination and convenience. It never has been
+anything else, and it never will be anything else. How could it be
+otherwise? If a man goes against inclination and convenience in a
+matter where inclination is "of the essence of the contract," he
+merely presents the state with a discontented citizen (if not two) in
+exchange for a contented one! The happiness of the state is the sum of
+the happiness of all its citizens; to decrease one's own happiness,
+then, is a singular way of doing one's duty to the state! Do you
+imagine that when people married early and much they did so from a
+sense of duty to the state--a sense of duty which our "modern luxury"
+has weakened? I imagine they married simply because it suited 'em.
+They married from sheer selfishness, as all decent people do marry.
+And do those who clatter about the duty of marriage kiss the girls of
+their hearts with an eye to the general welfare? I can fancy them
+saying, "My angel, I love you--from a sense of duty to the state. Let
+us rear innumerable progeny--from a sense of duty to the state." How
+charmed the girls would be!
+
+If the marrying age changes, if the birth-rate shows a sympathetic
+tendency to follow the death-rate (as it must--see "X"), no one need
+be alarmed. Elementary principles of right and wrong are not trembling
+on their bases. The human conscience is not silenced. The nation is
+not going to the dogs. Conduct is adjusting itself to new conditions,
+and that is all. We may not be able to see exactly _how_ conditions
+are changing; that is a detail; our descendants will see exactly;
+meanwhile the change in our conduct affords us some clew. And although
+certain nervous persons do get alarmed, and do preach, and do "take
+measures," the rest of us may remain placid in the sure faith that
+"measures" will avail nothing whatever. If there are two things set
+high above legislation, "movements," crusades, and preaching, one is
+the marrying age and the other is the birth-rate. For there the
+supreme instinct comes along and stamps ruthlessly on all insincere
+reasonings and sham altruisms; stamps on everything, in fact, and
+blandly remarks: "I shall suit my own convenience, and no one but
+Nature herself (with a big, big N) shall talk to _me_. Don't pester me
+with Right and Wrong. I _am_ Right and Wrong...." Having thus
+attempted to clear the ground a little of fudge, I propose next to
+offer a few simple remarks on marriage.
+
+
+THE ADVENTURE OF IT
+
+Having endeavoured to show that men do not, and should not, marry from
+a sense of duty to the state or to mankind, but simply and solely from
+an egoistic inclination to marry, I now proceed to the individual case
+of the man who is "in a position to marry" and whose affections are
+not employed. Of course, if he has fallen in love, unless he happens
+to be a person of extremely powerful will, he will not weigh the pros
+and cons of marriage; he will merely marry, and forty thousand cons
+will not prevent him. And he will be absolutely right and justified,
+just as the straw as it rushes down the current is absolutely right
+and justified. But the privilege of falling in love is not given to
+everybody, and the inestimable privilege of falling deeply in love is
+given to few. However, the man whom circumstances permit to marry but
+who is not in love, or is only slightly amorous, will still think of
+marriage. How will he think of it?
+
+I will tell you. In the first place, if he has reached the age of
+thirty unscathed by Aphrodite, he will reflect that that peculiar
+feeling of romantic expectation with which he gets up every morning
+would cease to exist after marriage--and it is a highly agreeable
+feeling! In its stead, in moments of depression, he would have the
+feeling of having done something irremediable, of having definitely
+closed an avenue for the outlet of his individuality. (Kindly remember
+that I am not describing what this human man ought to think. I am
+describing what he does think.) In the second place, he will reflect
+that, after marriage, he could no longer expect the charming welcomes
+which bachelors so often receive from women; he would be "done with"
+as a possibility, and he does not relish the prospect of being done
+with as a possibility. Such considerations, all connected more or
+less with the loss of "freedom" (oh, mysterious and thrilling word!),
+will affect his theoretical attitude. And be it known that even the
+freedom to be lonely and melancholy is still freedom.
+
+Other ideas will suggest themselves. One morning while brushing his
+hair he will see a gray hair, and, however young he may be, the
+anticipation of old age will come to him. A solitary old age! A
+senility dependent for its social and domestic requirements on
+condescending nephews and nieces, or even more distant relations!
+Awful! Unthinkable! And his first movement, especially if he has read
+that terrible novel, "_Fort comme la Mort_," of De Maupassant, is to
+rush out into the street and propose to the first girl he encounters,
+in order to avoid this dreadful nightmare of a solitary old age. But
+before he has got as far as the doorstep he reflects further. Suppose
+he marries, and after twenty years his wife dies and leaves him a
+widower! He will still have a solitary old age, and a vastly more
+tragical one than if he had remained single. Marriage is not,
+therefore, a sure remedy for a solitary old age; it may intensify the
+evil. Children? But suppose he doesn't have any children! Suppose,
+there being children, they die--what anguish! Suppose merely that they
+are seriously ill and recover--what an ageing experience! Suppose they
+prove a disappointment--what endless regret! Suppose they "turn out
+badly" (children do)--what shame! Suppose he finally becomes dependent
+upon the grudging kindness of an ungrateful child--what a supreme
+humiliation! All these things are occurring constantly everywhere.
+Suppose his wife, having loved him, ceased to love him, or suppose he
+ceased to love his wife! _Ces choses ne se commandent pas_--these
+things do not command themselves. Personally, I should estimate that
+in not one per cent. even of romantic marriages are the husband and
+wife capable of _passion_ for each other after three years. So brief
+is the violence of love! In perhaps thirty-three per cent. passion
+settles down into a tranquil affection--which is ideal. In fifty per
+cent. it sinks into sheer indifference, and one becomes used to one's
+wife or one's husband as to one's other habits. And in the remaining
+sixteen per cent. it develops into dislike or detestation. Do you
+think my percentages are wrong, you who have been married a long time
+and know what the world is? Well, you may modify them a little--you
+won't want to modify them much.
+
+The risk of finding one's self ultimately among the sixteen per cent.
+can be avoided by the simple expedient of not marrying. And by the
+same expedient the other risks can be avoided, together with yet
+others that I have not mentioned. It is entirely obvious, then (in
+fact, I beg pardon for mentioning it), that the attitude towards
+marriage of the heart-free bachelor must be at best a highly cautious
+attitude. He knows he is already in the frying-pan (none knows
+better), but, considering the propinquity of the fire, he doubts
+whether he had not better stay where he is. His life will be calmer,
+more like that of a hibernating snake; his sensibilities will be
+dulled; but the chances of poignant suffering will be very materially
+reduced.
+
+So that the bachelor in a position to marry but not in love will
+assuredly decide in theory against marriage--that is to say, if he is
+timid, if he prefers frying-pans, if he is lacking in initiative, if
+he has the soul of a rat, if he wants to live as little as possible,
+if he hates his kind, if his egoism is of the miserable sort that
+dares not mingle with another's. But if he has been more happily
+gifted he will decide that the magnificent adventure is worth plunging
+into; the ineradicable and fine gambling instinct in him will urge him
+to take, at the first chance, a ticket in the only lottery permitted
+by the British Government. Because, after all, the mutual sense of
+ownership felt by the normal husband and the normal wife is something
+unique, something the like of which cannot be obtained without
+marriage. I saw a man and a woman at a sale the other day; I was too
+far off to hear them, but I could perceive they were having a most
+lively argument--perhaps it was only about initials on pillowcases;
+they were _absorbed_ in themselves; the world did not exist for them.
+And I thought: "What miraculous exquisite Force is it that brings
+together that strange, sombre, laconic organism in a silk hat and a
+loose, black overcoat, and that strange, bright, vivacious, querulous,
+irrational organism in brilliant fur and feathers?" And when they
+moved away the most interesting phenomenon in the universe moved away.
+And I thought: "Just as no beer is bad, but some beer is better than
+other beer, so no marriage is bad." The chief reward of marriage is
+something which marriage is bound to give--companionship whose
+mysterious _interestingness_ nothing can stale. A man may hate his
+wife so that she can't thread a needle without annoying him, but when
+he dies, or she dies, he will say: "Well, _I was interested_." And one
+always is. Said a bachelor of forty-six to me the other night:
+"Anything is better than the void."
+
+
+THE TWO WAYS OF IT
+
+Sabine and other summary methods of marrying being now abandoned by
+all nice people, there remain two broad general ways. The first is the
+English way. We let nature take her course. We give heed to the
+heart's cry. When, amid the hazards and accidents of the world, two
+souls "find each other," we rejoice. Our instinctive wish is that they
+shall marry, if the matter can anyhow be arranged. We frankly
+recognise the claim of romance in life, and we are prepared to make
+sacrifices to it. We see a young couple at the altar; they are in
+love. Good! They are poor. So much the worse! But nevertheless we feel
+that love will pull them through. The revolting French system of
+bargain and barter is the one thing that we can neither comprehend nor
+pardon in the customs of our great neighbours. We endeavour to be
+polite about that system; we simply cannot. It shocks our finest,
+tenderest feelings. It is so obviously contrary to nature.
+
+The second is the French way, just alluded to as bargain and barter.
+Now, if there is one thing a Frenchman can neither comprehend nor
+pardon in the customs of a race so marvellously practical and sagacious
+as ourselves, it is the English marriage system. He endeavours to be
+polite about it, and he succeeds. But it shocks his finest, tenderest
+feelings. He admits that it is in accordance with nature; but he is apt
+to argue that the whole progress of civilisation has been the result of
+an effort to get away from nature. "What! Leave the most important
+relation into which a man can enter to the mercy of chance, when a mere
+gesture may arouse passion, or the colour of a corsage induce desire!
+No, you English, you who are so self-controlled, you are not going
+seriously to defend that! You talk of love as though it lasted for
+ever. You talk of sacrificing to love; but what you really sacrifice,
+or risk sacrificing, is the whole of the latter part of married
+existence for the sake of the first two or three years. Marriage is not
+one long honeymoon. We wish it were. When _you_ agree to a marriage you
+fix your eyes on the honeymoon. When _we_ agree to a marriage we try to
+see it as it will be five or ten years hence. We assert that, in the
+average instance, five years after the wedding it doesn't matter
+whether or not the parties were in love on the wedding-day. Hence we
+will not yield to the gusts of the moment. Your system is, moreover, if
+we may be permitted the observation, a premium on improvidence; it is,
+to some extent, the result of improvidence. You can marry your
+daughters without dowries, and the ability to do so tempts you to
+neglect your plain duty to your daughters, and you do not always resist
+the temptation. Do your marriages of 'romance' turn out better than our
+marriages of prudence, of careful thought, of long foresight? We do not
+think they do."
+
+So much for the two ways. Patriotism being the last refuge of a
+scoundrel, according to Doctor Johnson, I have no intention of
+judging between them, as my heart prompts me to do, lest I should be
+accused of it. Nevertheless, I may hint that, while perfectly
+convinced by the admirable logic of the French, I am still, with the
+charming illogicalness of the English, in favour of romantic marriages
+(it being, of course, understood that dowries _ought_ to be far more
+plentiful than they are in England). If a Frenchman accuses me of
+being ready to risk sacrificing the whole of the latter part of
+married life for the sake of the first two or three years, I would
+unhesitatingly reply: "Yes, I _am_ ready to risk that sacrifice. I
+reckon the first two or three years are worth it." But, then, I am
+English, and therefore romantic by nature. Look at London, that city
+whose outstanding quality is its romantic quality; and look at the
+Englishwomen going their ways in the wonderful streets thereof! Their
+very eyes are full of romance. They may, they do, lack _chic_, but
+they are heroines of drama. Then look at Paris; there is little
+romance in the fine right lines of Paris. Look at the Parisiennes.
+They are the most astounding and adorable women yet invented by
+nature. But they aren't romantic, you know. They don't know what
+romance is. They are so matter-of-fact that when you think of their
+matter-of-factness it gives you a shiver in the small of your back.
+
+To return. One may view the two ways in another light. Perhaps the
+difference between them is, fundamentally, less a difference between
+the ideas of two races than a difference between the ideas of two
+"times of life"; and in France the elderly attitude predominates. As
+people get on in years, even English people, they are more and more in
+favour of the marriage of reason as against the marriage of romance.
+Young people, even French people, object strongly to the theory and
+practice of the marriage of reason. But with them the unique and
+precious ecstasy of youth is not past, whereas their elders have
+forgotten its savour. Which is right? No one will ever be able to
+decide. But neither the one system nor the other will apply itself
+well to all or nearly all cases. There have been thousands of romantic
+marriages in England of which it may be said that it would have been
+better had the French system been in force to prevent their existence.
+And, equally, thousands of possible romantic marriages have been
+prevented in France which, had the English system prevailed there,
+would have turned out excellently. The prevalence of dowries in
+England would not render the English system perfect (for it must be
+remembered that money is only one of several ingredients in the French
+marriage), but it would considerably improve it. However, we are not a
+provident race, and we are not likely to become one. So our young men
+must reconcile themselves to the continued absence of dowries.
+
+The reader may be excused for imagining that I am at the end of my
+remarks. I am not. All that precedes is a mere preliminary to what
+follows. I want to regard the case of the man who has given the
+English system a fair trial and found it futile. Thus, we wait on
+chance in England. We wait for love to arrive. Suppose it doesn't
+arrive? Where is the English system then? Assume that a man in a
+position to marry reaches thirty-five or forty without having fallen
+in love. Why should he not try the French system for a change? Any
+marriage is better than none at all. Naturally, in England, he
+couldn't go up to the Chosen Fair and announce: "I am not precisely in
+love with you, but will you marry me?" He would put it differently.
+And she would understand. And do you think she would refuse?
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+BOOKS
+
+
+THE PHYSICAL SIDE
+
+The chief interest of many of my readers is avowedly books; they may,
+they probably do, profess other interests, but they are primarily
+"bookmen," and when one is a bookman one is a bookman during about
+twenty-three and three-quarter hours in every day. Now, bookmen are
+capable of understanding things about books which cannot be put into
+words; they are not like mere subscribers to circulating libraries;
+for them a book is not just a book--it is a _book_. If these lines
+should happen to catch the eye of any persons not bookmen, such
+persons may imagine that I am writing nonsense; but I trust that the
+bookmen will comprehend me. And I venture, then, to offer a few
+reflections upon an aspect of modern bookishness that is becoming
+more and more "actual" as the enterprise of publishers and the
+beneficent effects of education grow and increase together. I refer to
+"popular editions" of classics.
+
+Now, I am very grateful to the devisers of cheap and handy editions.
+The first book I ever bought was the first volume of the first modern
+series of presentable and really cheap reprints, namely, Macaulay's
+"Warren Hastings," in "Cassell's National Library" (sixpence, in
+cloth). That foundation stone of my library has unfortunately
+disappeared beneath the successive deposits, but another volume of the
+same series, F.T. Palgrave's "Visions of England" (an otherwise scarce
+book), still remains to me through the vicissitudes of seventeen years
+of sale, purchase, and exchange, and I would not care to part with it.
+I have over two hundred volumes of that inestimable and incomparable
+series, "The Temple Classics," besides several hundred assorted
+volumes of various other series. And when I heard of the new
+"Everyman's Library," projected by that benefactor of bookmen, Mr.
+J.M. Dent, my first impassioned act was to sit down and write a
+postcard to my bookseller ordering George Finlay's "The Byzantine
+Empire," a work which has waited sixty years for popular recognition.
+So that I cannot be said to be really antagonistic to cheap reprints.
+
+Strong in this consciousness, I beg to state that cheap and handy
+reprints are "all very well in their way"--which is a manner of saying
+that they are not the Alpha and Omega of bookishness. By expending L20
+yearly during the next five years a man might collect, in cheap and
+handy reprints, all that was worth having in classic English
+literature. But I for one would not be willing to regard such a
+library as a real library. I would regard it as only a cheap edition
+of a library. There would be something about it that would arouse in
+me a certain benevolent disdain, even though every volume was well
+printed on good paper and inoffensively bound. Why? Well, although it
+is my profession in life to say what I feel in plain words, I do not
+know that in this connection I _can_ say what I feel in plain words. I
+have to rely on a sympathetic comprehension of my attitude in the
+bookish breasts of my readers.
+
+In the first place, I have an instinctive antipathy to a "series." I
+do not want "The Golden Legend" and "The Essays of Elia" uniformed
+alike in a regiment of books. It makes me think of conscription and
+barracks. Even the noblest series of reprints ever planned (not at all
+cheap, either, nor heterogeneous in matter), the Tudor Translations,
+faintly annoys me in the mass. Its appearances in a series seems to me
+to rob a book of something very delicate and subtle in the aroma of
+its individuality--something which, it being inexplicable, I will not
+try to explain.
+
+In the second place, most cheap and handy reprints are small in size.
+They may be typographically excellent, with large type and opaque
+paper; they may be convenient to handle; they may be surpassingly
+suitable for the pocket and the very thing for travel; they may save
+precious space where shelf-room is limited; but they are small in
+size. And there is, as regards most literature, a distinct moral value
+in size. Do I carry my audience with me? I hope so. Let "Paradise
+Lost" be so produced that you can put it in your waistcoat pocket, and
+it is no more "Paradise Lost." Milton needs a solid octavo form, with
+stoutish paper and long primer type. I have "Walpole's Letters" in
+Newnes's "Thin Paper Classics," a marvellous volume of near nine
+hundred pages, with a portrait and a good index and a beautiful
+binding, for three and six, and I am exceedingly indebted to Messrs.
+Newnes for creating that volume. It was sheer genius on their part to
+do so. I get charming sensations from it, but sensations not so
+charming as I should get from Mrs. Paget Toynbee's many-volumed and
+grandiose edition, even aside from Mrs. Toynbee's erudite notes and
+the extra letters which she has been able to print. The same letter in
+Mrs. Toynbee's edition would have a higher aesthetic and moral value
+for me than in the "editionlet" of Messrs. Newnes. The one cheap
+series which satisfies my desire for size is Macmillan's "Library of
+English Classics," in which I have the "Travels" of that mythical
+personage, Sir John Mandeville. But it is only in paying for it that
+you know this edition to be cheap, for it measures nine inches by six
+inches by two inches.
+
+And in the third place, when one buys series, one only partially
+chooses one's books; they are mainly chosen for one by the publisher.
+And even if they are not chosen for one by the publisher, they are
+suggested _to_ one by the publisher. Not so does the genuine bookman
+form his library. The genuine bookman begins by having specific
+desires. His study of authorities gives him a demand, and the demand
+forces him to find the supply. He does not let the supply create the
+demand. Such a state of affairs would be almost humiliating, almost
+like the _parvenu_ who calls in the wholesale furnisher and decorator
+to provide him with a home. A library must be, primarily, the
+expression of the owner's personality.
+
+Let me assert again that I am strongly in favour of cheap series of
+reprints. Their influence though not the very finest, is undisputably
+good. They are as great a boon as cheap bread. They are indispensable
+where money or space is limited, and in travelling. They decidedly
+help to educate a taste for books that are neither cheap nor handy;
+and the most luxurious collectors may not afford to ignore them
+entirely. But they have their limitations, their disadvantages. They
+cannot form the backbone of a "proper" library. They make, however,
+admirable embroidery to a library. My own would look rather plain if
+it was stripped of them.
+
+
+THE PHILOSOPHY OF BOOK-BUYING
+
+For some considerable time I have been living, as regards books, with
+the minimum of comfort and decency--with, in fact, the bare
+necessaries of life, such necessaries being, in my case, sundry
+dictionaries, Boswell, an atlas, Wordsworth, an encyclopaedia,
+Shakespere, Whitaker, some De Maupassant, a poetical anthology,
+Verlaine, Baudelaire, a natural history of my native county, an old
+directory of my native town, Sir Thomas Browne, Poe, Walpole's
+Letters, and a book of memoirs that I will not name. A curious list,
+you will say. Well, never mind! We do not all care to eat beefsteak
+and chip potatoes off an oak table, with a foaming quart to the right
+hand. We have our idiosyncrasies. The point is that I existed on the
+bare necessaries of life (very healthy--doctors say) for a long time.
+And then, just lately, I summoned energy and caused fifteen hundred
+volumes to be transported to me; and I arranged them on shelves; and
+I re-arranged them on shelves; and I left them to arrange themselves
+on shelves.
+
+Well, you know, the way that I walk up and down in front of these
+volumes, whose faces I had half-forgotten, is perfectly infantile. It
+is like the way of a child at a menagerie. There, in its cage, is that
+1839 edition of Shelley, edited by Mrs. Shelley, that I once nearly
+sold to the British Museum because the Keeper of Printed Books thought
+he hadn't got a copy--only he had! And there, in a cage by himself,
+because of his terrible hugeness, is the 1652 Paris edition of
+Montaigne's Essays. And so I might continue, and so I would continue,
+were it not essential that I come to my argument.
+
+Do you suppose that the presence of these books, after our long
+separation, is making me read more than I did? Do you suppose I am
+engaged in looking up my favourite passages? Not a bit. The other
+evening I had a long tram journey, and, before starting, I tried to
+select a book to take with me. I couldn't find one to suit just the
+tram-mood. As I had to _catch_ the tram I was obliged to settle on
+something, and in the end I went off with nothing more original than
+"Hamlet," which I am really too familiar with.... Then I bought an
+evening paper, and read it all through, including advertisements. So I
+said to myself: "This is a nice result of all my trouble to resume
+company with some of my books!" However, as I have long since ceased
+to be surprised at the eccentric manner in which human nature refuses
+to act as one would have expected it to act, I was able to keep calm
+and unashamed during this extraordinary experience. And I am still
+walking up and down in front of my books and enjoying them without
+reading them.
+
+I wish to argue that a great deal of cant is talked (and written)
+about reading. Papers such as the "Anthenaeum," which nevertheless I
+peruse with joy from end to end every week, can scarcely notice a new
+edition of a classic without expressing, in a grieved and pessimistic
+tone, the fear that more people buy these agreeable editions than read
+them. And if it is so? What then? Are we only to buy the books that we
+read? The question has merely to be thus bluntly put, and it answers
+itself. All impassioned bookmen, except a few who devote their whole
+lives to reading, have rows of books on their shelves which they have
+never read, and which they never will read. I know that I have
+hundreds such. My eye rests on the works of Berkeley in three volumes,
+with a preface by the Right Honourable Arthur James Balfour. I cannot
+conceive the circumstances under which I shall ever read Berkeley; but
+I do not regret having bought him in a good edition, and I would buy
+him again if I had him not; for when I look at him some of his virtue
+passes into me; I am the better for him. A certain aroma of philosophy
+informs my soul, and I am less crude than I should otherwise be. This
+is not fancy, but fact.
+
+Taking Berkeley simply as an instance, I will utilise him a little
+further. I ought to have read Berkeley, you say; just as I ought to
+have read Spenser, Ben Jonson, George Eliot, Victor Hugo. Not at all.
+There is no "ought" about it. If the mass of obtainable first-class
+literature were, as it was perhaps a century ago, not too large to be
+assimilated by a man of ordinary limited leisure _in_ his leisure and
+during the first half of his life, then possibly there might be an
+"ought" about it. But the mass has grown unmanageable, even by those
+robust professional readers who can "grapple with whole libraries."
+And I am not a professional reader. I am a writer, just as I might be
+a hotel-keeper, a solicitor, a doctor, a grocer, or an earthenware
+manufacturer. I read in my scanty spare time, and I don't read in all
+my spare time, either. I have other distractions. I read what I feel
+inclined to read, and I am conscious of no duty to finish a book that
+I don't care to finish. I read in my leisure, not from a sense of
+duty, not to improve myself, but solely because it gives me pleasure
+to read. Sometimes it takes me a month to get through one book. I
+expect my case is quite an average case. But am I going to fetter my
+buying to my reading? Not exactly! I want to have lots of books on my
+shelves because I know they are good, because I know they would amuse
+me, because I like to look at them, and because one day I might have a
+caprice to read them. (Berkeley, even thy turn may come!) In short, I
+want them because I want them. And shall I be deterred from possessing
+them by the fear of some sequestered and singular person, some person
+who has read vastly but who doesn't know the difference between a J.S.
+Muria cigar and an R.P. Muria, strolling in and bullying me with the
+dreadful query: "_Sir, do you read your books?_"
+
+Therefore I say: In buying a book, be influenced by two considerations
+only. Are you reasonably sure that it is a good book? Have you a
+desire to possess it? Do not be influenced by the probability or the
+improbability of your reading it. After all, one does read a certain
+proportion of what one buys. And further, instinct counts. The man who
+spends half a crown on Stubbs's "Early Plantagenets" instead of going
+into the Gaiety pit to see "The Spring Chicken," will probably be the
+sort of man who can suck goodness out of Stubbs's "Early Plantagenets"
+years before he bestirs himself to read it.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+SUCCESS
+
+
+CANDID REMARKS
+
+There are times when the whole free and enlightened Press of the
+United Kingdom seems to become strangely interested in the subject of
+"success," of getting on in life. We are passing through such a period
+now. It would be difficult to name the prominent journalists who have
+not lately written, in some form or another, about success. Most
+singular phenomenon of all, Dr. Emil Reich has left Plato, duchesses,
+and Claridge's Hotel, in order to instruct the million readers of a
+morning paper in the principles of success! What the million readers
+thought of the Doctor's stirring and strenuous sentences I will not
+imagine; but I know what I thought, as a plain man. After taking due
+cognizance of his airy play with the "constants" and "variables" of
+success, after watching him treat "energetics" (his wonderful new
+name for the "science" of success) as though because he had made it
+end in "ics" it resembled mathematics, I thought that the sublime and
+venerable art of mystification could no further go. If my
+fellow-pilgrim through this vale of woe, the average young man who
+arrives at Waterloo at 9.40 every morning with a cigarette in his
+mouth and a second-class season over his heart and vague aspirations
+in his soul, was half as mystified as I was, he has probably ere this
+decided that the science of success has all the disadvantages of
+algebra without any of the advantages of cricket, and that he may as
+well leave it alone lest evil should befall him. On the off-chance
+that he has come as yet to no decision about the science of success, I
+am determined to deal with the subject in a disturbingly candid
+manner. I feel that it is as dangerous to tell the truth about success
+as it is to tell the truth about the United States; but being
+thoroughly accustomed to the whistle of bullets round my head, I will
+nevertheless try.
+
+Most writers on success are, through sheer goodness of heart, wickedly
+disingenuous. For the basis of their argument is that nearly any one
+who gives his mind to it can achieve success. This is, to put it
+briefly, untrue. The very central idea of success is separation from
+the multitude of plain men; it is perhaps the only idea common to all
+the various sorts of success--differentiation from the crowd. To
+address the population at large, and tell it how to separate itself
+from itself, is merely silly. I am now, of course, using the word
+success in its ordinary sense. If human nature were more perfect than
+it is, success in life would mean an intimate knowledge of one's self
+and the achievement of a philosophic inward calm, and such a goal
+might well be reached by the majority of mortals. But to us success
+signifies something else. It may be divided into four branches: (1)
+Distinction in pure or applied science. This is the least gross of all
+forms of success as we regard it, for it frequently implies poverty,
+and it does not by any means always imply fame. (2) Distinction in the
+arts. Fame and adulation are usually implied in this, though they do
+not commonly bring riches with them. (3) Direct influence and power
+over the material lives of other men; that is to say, distinction in
+politics, national or local. (4) Success in amassing money. This last
+is the commonest and easiest. Most forms of success will fall under
+one of these heads. Are they possible to that renowned and
+much-flattered person, the man in the street? They are not, and well
+you know it, all you professors of the science of success! Only a
+small minority of us can even become rich.
+
+Happily, while it is true that success in its common acceptation is,
+by its very essence, impossible to the majority, there is an
+accompanying truth which adjusts the balance; to wit, that the
+majority do not desire success. This may seem a bold saying, but it is
+in accordance with the facts. Conceive the man in the street suddenly,
+by some miracle, invested with political power, and, of course, under
+the obligation to use it. He would be so upset, worried, wearied, and
+exasperated at the end of a week that he would be ready to give the
+eyes out of his head in order to get rid of it. As for success in
+science or in art, the average person's interest in such matters is so
+slight, compared with that of the man of science or the artist, that
+he cannot be said to have an interest in them. And supposing that
+distinction in them were thrust upon him he would rapidly lose that
+distinction by simple indifference and neglect. The average person
+certainly wants some money, and the average person does not usually
+rest until he has got as much as is needed for the satisfaction of his
+instinctive needs. He will move the heaven and earth of his
+environment to earn sufficient money for marriage in the "station" to
+which he has been accustomed; and precisely at that point his genuine
+desire for money will cease to be active. The average man has this in
+common with the most exceptional genius, that his career in its main
+contours is governed by his instincts. The average man flourishes and
+finds his ease in an atmosphere of peaceful routine. Men destined for
+success flourish and find their ease in an atmosphere of collision and
+disturbance. The two temperaments are diverse. Naturally the average
+man dreams vaguely, upon occasion; he dreams how nice it would be to
+be famous and rich. We all dream vaguely upon such things. But to
+dream vaguely is not to desire. I often tell myself that I would give
+anything to be the equal of Cinquevalli, the juggler, or to be the
+captain of the largest Atlantic liner. But the reflective part of me
+tells me that my yearning to emulate these astonishing personages is
+not a genuine desire, and that its realization would not increase my
+happiness.
+
+To obtain a passably true notion of what happens to the mass of
+mankind in its progress from the cradle to the grave, one must not
+attempt to survey a whole nation, nor even a great metropolis, nor
+even a very big city like Manchester or Liverpool. These panoramas are
+so immense and confusing that they defeat the observing eye. It is
+better to take a small town of, say, twenty or thirty thousand
+inhabitants--such a town as most of us know, more or less intimately.
+The extremely few individuals whose instincts mark them out to take
+part in the struggle for success can be identified at once. For the
+first thing they do is to leave the town. The air of the town is not
+bracing enough for them. Their nostrils dilate for something keener.
+Those who are left form a microcosm which is representative enough of
+the world at large. Between the ages of thirty and forty they begin to
+sort themselves out. In their own sphere they take their places. A
+dozen or so politicians form the town council and rule the town. Half
+a dozen business men stand for the town's commercial activity and its
+wealth. A few others teach science and art, or are locally known as
+botanists, geologists, amateurs of music, or amateurs of some other
+art. These are the distinguished, and it will be perceived that they
+cannot be more numerous than they are. What of the rest? Have they
+struggled for success and been beaten? Not they. Do they, as they grow
+old, resemble disappointed men? Not they. They have fulfilled
+themselves modestly. They have got what they genuinely tried to get.
+They have never even gone near the outskirts of the battle for
+success. But they have not failed. The number of failures is
+surprisingly small. You see a shabby, disappointed, ageing man flit
+down the main street, and someone replies to your inquiry: "That's
+So-and-so, one of life's failures, poor fellow!" And the very tone in
+which the words are uttered proves the excessive rarity of the real
+failure. It goes without saying that the case of the handful who have
+left the town in search of the Success with the capital S has a
+tremendous interest of curiosity for the mass who remain. I will
+consider it.
+
+
+THE SUCCESSFUL AND THE UNSUCCESSFUL
+
+Having boldly stated that success is not, and cannot be, within grasp
+of the majority, I now proceed to state, as regards the minority, that
+they do not achieve it in the manner in which they are commonly
+supposed to achieve it. And I may add an expression of my thankfulness
+that they do not. The popular delusion is that success is attained by
+what I may call the "Benjamin Franklin" method. Franklin was a very
+great man; he united in his character a set of splendid qualities as
+various, in their different ways, as those possessed by Leonardo da
+Vinci. I have an immense admiration for him. But his Autobiography
+does make me angry. His Autobiography is understood to be a classic,
+and if you say a word against it in the United States you are apt to
+get killed. I do not, however, contemplate an immediate visit to the
+United States, and I shall venture to assert that Benjamin Franklin's
+Autobiography is a detestable book and a misleading book. I can recall
+only two other volumes which I would more willingly revile. One is
+_Samuel Budgett: The Successful Merchant_, and the other is _From Log
+Cabin to White House_, being the history of President Garfield. Such
+books may impose on boys, and it is conceivable that they do not harm
+boys (Franklin, by the way, began his Autobiography in the form of a
+letter to his son), but the grown man who can support them without
+nausea ought to go and see a doctor, for there is something wrong with
+him.
+
+"I began now," blandly remarks Franklin, "to have some acquaintance
+among the young people of the town that were lovers of reading, with
+whom I spent my evenings very pleasantly; _and gained money by my
+industry and frugality_." Or again: "It was about this time I
+conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral
+perfection.... I made a little book, in which I allotted a page for
+each of the virtues. I ruled each page with red ink, so as to have
+seven columns, one for each day of the week.... I crossed these
+columns with thirteen red lines, marking the beginning of each line
+with the first letter of one of the virtues; on which line, and in its
+proper column, I might mark, by a little black spot, every fault I
+found upon examination to have been committed respecting that virtue,
+upon that day." Shade of Franklin, where'er thou art, this is really a
+little bit stiff! A man may be excused even such infamies of
+priggishness, but truly he ought not to go and write them down,
+especially to his son. And why the detail about red ink? If Franklin's
+son was not driven to evil courses by the perusal of that monstrous
+Autobiography, he must have been a man almost as astounding as his
+father. Now Franklin could only have written his "immortal classic"
+from one of three motives: (1) Sheer conceit. He was a prig, but he
+was not conceited. (2) A desire that others should profit by his
+mistakes. He never made any mistakes. Now and again he emphasizes some
+trifling error, but that is "only his fun." (3) A desire that others
+should profit by the recital of his virtuous sagacity to reach a
+similar success. The last was undoubtedly his principal motive. Honest
+fellow, who happened to be a genius! But the point is that his success
+was in no way the result of his virtuous sagacity. I would go further,
+and say that his dreadful virtuous sagacity often hindered his
+success.
+
+No one is a worse guide to success than your typical successful man. He
+seldom understands the reasons of his own success; and when he is asked
+by a popular magazine to give his experiences for the benefit of the
+youth of a whole nation, it is impossible for him to be natural and
+sincere. He knows the kind of thing that is expected from him, and if
+he didn't come to London with half a crown in his pocket he probably
+did something equally silly, and he puts _that_ down, and the note of
+the article or interview is struck, and good-bye to genuine truth!
+There recently appeared in a daily paper an autobiographic-didactic
+article by one of the world's richest men which was the most
+"inadequate" article of the sort that I have ever come across.
+Successful men forget so much of their lives! Moreover, nothing is
+easier than to explain an accomplished fact in a nice, agreeable,
+conventional way. The entire business of success is a gigantic tacit
+conspiracy on the part of the minority to deceive the majority.
+
+Are successful men more industrious, frugal, and intelligent than men
+who are not successful? I maintain that they are not, and I have
+studied successful men at close quarters. One of the commonest
+characteristics of the successful man is his idleness, his immense
+capacity for wasting time. I stoutly assert that as a rule successful
+men are by habit comparatively idle. As for frugality, it is
+practically unknown among the successful classes: this statement
+applies with particular force to financiers. As for intelligence, I
+have over and over again been startled by the lack of intelligence in
+successful men. They are, indeed, capable of stupidities that would be
+the ruin of a plain clerk. And much of the talk in those circles which
+surround the successful man is devoted to the enumeration of instances
+of his lack of intelligence. Another point: successful men seldom
+succeed as the result of an ordered arrangement of their lives; they
+are the least methodical of creatures. Naturally when they have
+"arrived" they amuse themselves and impress the majority by being
+convinced that right from the start, with a steady eye on the goal,
+they had carefully planned every foot of the route.
+
+No! Great success never depends on the practice of the humbler
+virtues, though it may occasionally depend on the practice of the
+prouder vices. Use industry, frugality, and common sense by all
+means, but do not expect that they will help you to success. Because
+they will not. I shall no doubt be told that what I have just written
+has an immoral tendency, and is a direct encouragement to sloth,
+thriftlessness, etc. One of our chief national faults is our
+hypocritical desire to suppress the truth on the pretext that to admit
+it would encourage sin, whereas the real explanation is that we are
+afraid of the truth. I will not be guilty of that fault. I do like to
+look a fact in the face without blinking. I am fully persuaded that,
+per head, there is more of the virtues in the unsuccessful majority
+than in the successful minority. In London alone are there not
+hundreds of miles of streets crammed with industry, frugality, and
+prudence? Some of the most brilliant men I have known have been
+failures, and not through lack of character either. And some of the
+least gifted have been marvellously successful. It is impossible to
+point to a single branch of human activity in which success can be
+explained by the conventional principles that find general acceptance.
+I hear you, O reader, murmuring to yourself: "This is all very well,
+but he is simply being paradoxical for his own diversion." I would
+that I could persuade you of my intense seriousness! I have
+endeavoured to show what does not make success. I will next endeavour
+to show what does make it. But my hope is forlorn.
+
+
+THE INWARDNESS OF SUCCESS
+
+Of course, one can no more explain success than one can explain
+Beethoven's C minor symphony. One may state what key it is written in,
+and make expert reflections upon its form, and catalogue its themes,
+and relate it to symphonies that preceded it and symphonies that
+followed it, but in the end one is reduced to saying that the C minor
+symphony is beautiful--because it is. In the same manner one is
+reduced to saying that the sole real difference between success and
+failure is that success succeeds. This being frankly admitted at the
+outset, I will allow myself to assert that there are three sorts of
+success. Success A is the accidental sort. It is due to the thing we
+call chance, and to nothing else. We are all of us still very
+superstitious, and the caprices of chance have a singular effect upon
+us. Suppose that I go to Monte Carlo and announce to a friend my firm
+conviction that red will turn up next time, and I back red for the
+maximum and red does turn up; my friend, in spite of his intellect,
+will vaguely attribute to me a mysterious power. Yet chance alone
+would be responsible. If I did that six times running all the players
+at the table would be interested in me. If I did it a dozen times all
+the players in the Casino would regard me with awe. Yet chance alone
+would be responsible. If I did it eighteen times my name would be in
+every newspaper in Europe. Yet chance alone would be responsible. I
+should be, in that department of human activity, an extremely
+successful man, and the vast majority of people would instinctively
+credit me with gifts that I do not possess.
+
+If such phenomena of superstition can occur in an affair where the
+agency of chance is open and avowed, how much more probable is it that
+people should refuse to be satisfied with the explanation of "sheer
+accident" in affairs where it is to the interest of the principal
+actors to conceal the role played by chance! Nevertheless, there can
+be no doubt in the minds of persons who have viewed success at close
+quarters that a proportion of it is due solely and utterly to chance.
+Successful men flourish to-day, and have flourished in the past, who
+have no quality whatever to differentiate them from the multitude. Red
+has turned up for them a sufficient number of times, and the universal
+superstitious instinct not to believe in chance has accordingly
+surrounded them with a halo. It is merely ridiculous to say, as some
+do say, that success is never due to chance alone. Because nearly
+everybody is personally acquainted with reasonable proof, on a great
+or a small scale, to the contrary.
+
+The second sort of success, B, is that made by men who, while not
+gifted with first-class talents, have, beyond doubt, the talent to
+succeed. I should describe these men by saying that, though they
+deserve something, they do not deserve the dazzling reward known as
+success. They strike us as overpaid. We meet them in all professions
+and trades, and we do not really respect them. They excite our
+curiosity, and perhaps our envy. They may rise very high indeed, but
+they must always be unpleasantly conscious of a serious reservation in
+our attitude towards them. And if they could read their obituary
+notices they would assuredly discern therein a certain chilliness,
+however kindly we acted up to our great national motto of _De mortuis
+nil nist bunkum_. It is this class of success which puzzles the social
+student. How comes it that men without any other talent possess a
+mysterious and indefinable talent to succeed? Well, it seems to me
+that such men always display certain characteristics. And the chief of
+these characteristics is the continual, insatiable _wish_ to succeed.
+They are preoccupied with the idea of succeeding. We others are not so
+preoccupied. We dream of success at intervals, but we have not the
+passion for success. We don't lie awake at nights pondering upon it.
+
+The second characteristic of these men springs naturally from the
+first. They are always on the look-out. This does not mean that they
+are industrious. I stated in a previous article my belief that as a
+rule successful men are not particularly industrious. A man on a raft
+with his shirt for a signal cannot be termed industrious, but he will
+keep his eyes open for a sail on the horizon. If he simply lies down
+and goes to sleep he may miss the chance of his life, in a very
+special sense. The man with the talent to succeed is the man on the
+raft who never goes to sleep. His indefatigable orb sweeps the main
+from sunset to sunset. Having sighted a sail, he gets up on his hind
+legs and waves that shirt in so determined a manner that the ship is
+bound to see him and take him off. Occasionally he plunges into the
+sea, risking sharks and other perils. If he doesn't "get there," we
+hear nothing of him. If he does, some person will ultimately multiply
+by ten the number of sharks that he braved: that person is called a
+biographer.
+
+Let me drop the metaphor. Another characteristic of these men is that
+they seem to have the exact contrary of what is known as common sense.
+They will become enamoured of some enterprise which infallibly
+impresses the average common-sense person as a mad and hopeless
+enterprise. The average common-sense person will demolish the hopes of
+that enterprise by incontrovertible argument. He will point out that
+it is foolish on the face of it, that it has never been attempted
+before, and that it responds to no need of humanity. He will say to
+himself: "This fellow with his precious enterprise has a twist in his
+brain. He can't reply to my arguments, and yet he obstinately persists
+in going on." And the man destined to success does go on. Perhaps the
+enterprise fails; it often fails; and then the average common-sense
+person expends much breath in "I told you so's." But the man continues
+to be on the look-out. His thirst is unassuaged; his taste for
+enterprises foredoomed to failure is incurable. And one day some
+enterprise foredoomed to failure develops into a success. We all hear
+of it. We all open our mouths and gape. Of the failures we have heard
+nothing. Once the man has achieved success, the thing becomes a habit
+with him. The difference between a success and a failure is often so
+slight that a reputation for succeeding will ensure success, and a
+reputation for failing will ensure failure. Chance plays an important
+part in such careers, but not a paramount part. One can only say that
+it is more useful to have luck at the beginning than later on. These
+"men of success" generally have pliable temperaments. They are not
+frequently un-moral, but they regard a conscience as a good servant
+and a bad master. They live in an atmosphere of compromise.
+
+There remains class C of success--the class of sheer high merit. I am
+not a pessimist, nor am I an optimist. I try to arrive at the truth,
+and I should say that in putting success C at ten per cent. of the sum
+total of all successes, I am being generous to class C. Not that I
+believe that vast quantities of merit go unappreciated. My reason for
+giving to Class C only a modest share is the fact that there is so
+little sheer high merit. And does it not stand to reason that high
+merit must be very exceptional? This sort of success needs no
+explanation, no accounting for. It is the justification of our
+singular belief in the principle of the triumph of justice, and it is
+among natural phenomena perhaps the only justification that can be
+advanced for that belief. And certainly when we behold the spectacle
+of genuine distinguished merit gaining, without undue delay and
+without the sacrifice of dignity or of conscience, the applause of the
+kind-hearted but obtuse and insensible majority of the human race, we
+have fair reason to hug ourselves.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE PETTY ARTIFICIALITIES
+
+
+The phrase "petty artificialities," employed by one of the
+correspondents in the great Simple Life argument, has stuck in my
+mind, although I gave it a plain intimation that it was no longer
+wanted there. Perhaps it sheds more light than I had at first imagined
+on the mental state of the persons who use it when they wish to
+arraign the conditions of "modern life." A vituperative epithet is
+capable of making a big show. "Artificialities" is a sufficiently
+scornful word, but when you add "petty" you somehow give the quietus
+to the pretensions of modern life. Modern life had better hide its
+diminished head, after that. Modern life is settled and done for--in
+the opinion of those who have thrown the dart. Only it isn't done for,
+really, you know. "Petty," after all, means nothing in that connexion.
+Are there, then, artificialities which are not "petty," which are
+noble, large, and grand? "Petty" means merely that the users of the
+word are just a little cross and out of temper. What they think they
+object to is artificialities of any kind, and so to get rid of their
+spleen they refer to "petty" artificialities. The device is a common
+one, and as brilliant as it is futile. Rude adjectives are like blank
+cartridge. They impress a vain people, including the birds of the air,
+but they do no execution.
+
+At the same time, let me admit that I deeply sympathize with the
+irritated users of the impolite phrase "petty artificialities." For it
+does at any rate show a "divine discontent"; it does prove a high
+dissatisfaction with conditions which at best are not the final
+expression of the eternal purpose. It does make for a sort of crude
+and churlish righteousness. I well know that feeling which induces one
+to spit out savagely the phrase "petty artificialities of modern
+life." One has it usually either on getting up or on going to bed.
+What a petty artificial business it is, getting up, even for a male!
+Shaving! Why shave? And then going to a drawer and choosing a necktie.
+Fancy an immortal soul, fancy a fragment of the eternal and
+indestructible energy, which exists from everlasting to everlasting,
+deliberately expending its activity on the choice of a necktie! Why a
+necktie? Then one goes downstairs and exchanges banal phrases with
+other immortals. And one can't start breakfast immediately, because
+some sleepy mortal is late.
+
+Why babble? Why wait? Why not say straight out: "Go to the deuce, all
+of you! Here it's nearly ten o'clock, and me anxious to begin living
+the higher life at once instead of fiddling around in petty
+artificialities. Shut up, every one of you. Give me my bacon
+instantly, and let me gobble it down quick and be off. I'm sick of
+your ceremonies!" This would at any rate not be artificial. It would
+save time. And if a similar policy were strictly applied through the
+day, one could retire to a well-earned repose in the full assurance
+that the day had been simplified. The time for living the higher life,
+the time for pushing forward those vast schemes of self-improvement
+which we all cherish, would decidedly have been increased. One would
+not have that maddening feeling, which one so frequently does have
+when the shades of night are falling fast, that the day had been
+"frittered away." And yet--and yet--I gravely doubt whether this
+wholesale massacre of those poor petty artificialities would bring us
+appreciably nearer the millennium.
+
+For there is one thing, and a thing of fundamental importance, which
+the revolutionists against petty artificialities always fail to
+appreciate, and that is the necessity and the value of convention. I
+cannot in a paragraph deal effectively with this most difficult and
+complex question. I can only point the reader to analogous phenomena
+in the arts. All the arts are a conventionalization, an ordering of
+nature. Even in a garden you put the plants in rows, and you
+subordinate the well-being of one to the general well-being. The sole
+difference between a garden and the wild woods is a petty
+artificiality. In writing a sonnet you actually cramp the profoundest
+emotional conceptions into a length and a number of lines and a
+jingling of like sounds arbitrarily fixed beforehand! Wordsworth's
+"The world is too much with us" is a solid, horrid mass of petty
+artificiality. Why couldn't the fellow say what he meant and have
+done with it, instead of making "powers" rhyme with "ours," and
+worrying himself to use exactly a hundred and forty syllables? As for
+music, the amount of time that must have been devoted to petty
+artificiality in the construction of an affair like Bach's Chaconne is
+simply staggering. Then look at pictures, absurdly confined in frames,
+with their ingenious contrasts of light and shade and mass against
+mass. Nothing but petty artificiality! In other words, nothing but
+"form"--"form" which is the basis of all beauty, whether material or
+otherwise.
+
+Now, what form is in art, conventions (petty artificialities) are in
+life. Just as you can have too much form in art, so you can have too
+much convention in life. But no art that is not planned in form is
+worth consideration, and no life that is not planned in convention can
+ever be satisfactory. Convention is not the essence of life, but it is
+the protecting garment and preservative of life, and it is also one
+very valuable means by which life can express itself. It is largely
+symbolic; and symbols, while being expressive, are also great
+time-savers. The despisers of petty artificialities should think of
+this. Take the striking instance of that pettiest artificiality,
+leaving cards. Well, searchers after the real, what would you
+substitute for it? If you dropped it and substituted nothing, the
+result would tend towards a loosening of the bonds of society, and it
+would tend towards the diminution of the number of your friends. And
+if you dropped it and tried to substitute something less artificial
+and more real, you would accomplish no more than you accomplish with
+cards, you would inconvenience everybody, and waste a good deal of
+your own time. I cannot too strongly insist that the basis of
+convention is a symbolism, primarily meant to display a regard for the
+feelings of other people. If you do not display a regard for the
+feelings of other people, you may as well go and live on herbs in the
+desert. And if you are to display such a regard you cannot do it more
+expeditiously, at a smaller outlay of time and brains, than by
+adopting the code of convention now generally practised. It comes to
+this--that you cannot have all the advantages of living in the desert
+while you are living in a society. It would be delightful for you if
+you could, but you can't.
+
+There are two further reasons for the continuance of conventionality.
+And one is the mysterious but indisputable fact that the full beauty
+of an activity is never brought out until it is subjected to
+discipline and strict ordering and nice balancing. A life without
+petty artificiality would be the life of a tiger in the forest. A
+beautiful life, perhaps, a life of "burning bright," but not reaching
+the highest ideal of beauty! Laws and rules, forms and ceremonies are
+good in themselves, from a merely aesthetic point of view, apart from
+their social value and necessity.
+
+And the other reason is that one cannot always be at the full strain
+of "self-improvement," and "evolutionary progress," and generally
+beating the big drum. Human nature will not stand it. There is, if we
+will only be patient, ample time for the "artificial" as well as for
+the "real." Those persons who think that there isn't, ought to return
+to school and learn arithmetic. Supposing that all "petty
+artificialities" were suddenly swept away, and we were able to show
+our regard and consideration for our fellow creatures by the swift
+processes of thought alone, we should find ourselves with a terrible
+lot of time hanging heavy on our hands. We can no more spend all our
+waking hours in consciously striving towards higher things than we can
+dine exclusively off jam. What frightful prigs we should become if we
+had nothing to do but cultivate our noblest faculties! I beg the
+despisers of artificiality to reflect upon these observations, however
+incomplete these observations may be, and to consider whether they
+would be quite content if they got what they are crying out for.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE SECRET OF CONTENT
+
+
+I have said lightly a propos of the conclusion arrived at by several
+correspondents and by myself that the cry for the simple life was
+merely a new form of the old cry for happiness, that I would explain
+what it was that made life worth living for me. The word has gone
+forth, and I must endeavour to redeem my promise. But I do so with
+qualms and with diffidence. First, there is the natural instinct
+against speaking of that which is in the core of one's mind. Second,
+there is the fear, nearly amounting to certainty, of being
+misunderstood or not comprehended at all. And third, there is the
+absurd insufficiency of space. However!... For me, spiritual content
+(I will not use the word "happiness," which implies too much) springs
+essentially from no mental or physical facts. It springs from the
+spiritual fact that there is something higher in man than the mind,
+and that that something can control the mind. Call that something the
+soul, or what you will. My sense of security amid the collisions of
+existence lies in the firm consciousness that just as my body is the
+servant of my mind, so is my mind the servant of _me_. An unruly
+servant, but a servant--and possibly getting less unruly every day!
+Often have I said to that restive brain: "Now, O mind, sole means of
+communication between the divine _me_ and all external phenomena, you
+are not a free agent; you are a subordinate; you are nothing but a
+piece of machinery; and obey me you _shall_."
+
+The mind can only be conquered by regular meditation, by deciding
+beforehand what direction its activity ought to take, and insisting
+that its activity takes that direction; also by never leaving it idle,
+undirected, masterless, to play at random like a child in the streets
+after dark. This is extremely difficult, but it can be done, and it is
+marvellously well worth doing. The fault of the epoch is the absence
+of meditativeness. A sagacious man will strive to correct in himself
+the faults of his epoch. In some deep ways the twelfth century had
+advantages over the twentieth. It practised meditation. The twentieth
+does Sandow exercises. Meditation (I speak only for myself) is the
+least dispensable of the day's doings. What do I force my mind to
+meditate upon? Upon various things, but chiefly upon one.
+
+Namely, that Force, Energy, Life--the Incomprehensible has many
+names--is indestructible, and that, in the last analysis, there is
+only one single, unique Force, Energy, Life. Science is gradually
+reducing all elements to one element. Science is making it
+increasingly difficult to conceive matter apart from spirit.
+Everything lives. Even my razor gets "tired." And the fatigue of my
+razor is no more nor less explicable than my fatigue after a passage
+of arms with my mind. The Force in it, and in me, has been
+transformed, not lost. All Force is the same force. Science just now
+has a tendency to call it electricity; but I am indifferent to such
+baptisms. The same Force pervades my razor, my cow in my field, and
+the central _me_ which dominates my mind: the same force in different
+stages of evolution. And that Force persists forever. In such paths
+do I compel my mind to walk daily. Daily it has to recognize that the
+mysterious Ego controlling it is a part of that divine Force which
+exists from everlasting to everlasting, and which, in its ultimate
+atoms, nothing can harm. By such a course of training, even the mind,
+the coarse, practical mind, at last perceives that worldly accidents
+don't count.
+
+"But," you will exclaim, "this is nothing but the immortality of the
+soul over again!" Well, in a slightly more abstract form, it is. (I
+never said I had discovered anything new.) I do not permit myself to
+be dogmatic about the persistence of personality, or even of
+individuality after death. But, in basing my physical and mental life
+on the assumption that there is something in me which is
+indestructible and essentially changeless, I go no further than
+science points. Yes, if it gives you pleasure, let us call it the
+immortality of the soul. If I miss my train, or my tailor disgraces
+himself, or I lose that earthly manifestation of Force that happens to
+be dearest to me, I say to my mind: "Mind, concentrate your powers
+upon the full realization of the fact that I, your master, am immortal
+and beyond the reach of accidents." And my mind, knowing by this time
+that I am a hard master, obediently does so. Am I, a portion of the
+Infinite Force that existed billions of years ago, and which will
+exist billions of years hence, going to allow myself to be worried by
+any terrestrial physical or mental event? I am not. As for the
+vicissitudes of my body, that servant of my servant, it had better
+keep its place, and not make too much fuss. Not that any fuss
+occurring in either of these outward envelopes of the eternal _me_
+could really disturb me. The eternal is calm; it has the best reason
+for being so.
+
+So you say to yourselves: "Here is a man in a penny weekly paper
+advocating daily meditation upon the immortality of the soul as a cure
+for discontent and unhappiness! A strange phenomenon!" That it should
+be strange is an indictment of the epoch. My only reply to you is
+this: Try it. Of course, I freely grant that such meditation, while it
+"casts out fear," slowly kills desire and makes for a certain high
+indifference; and that the extinguishing of desire, with an
+accompanying indifference, be it high or low, is bad for youth. But I
+am not a youth, and to-day I am writing for those who have tasted
+disillusion: which youth has not. Yet I would not have you believe
+that I scorn the brief joys of this world. My attitude towards them
+would fain be that of Socrates, as stated by the incomparable Marcus
+Aurelius: "He knew how to lack, and how to enjoy, those things in the
+lack whereof most men show themselves weak; and in the fruition,
+intemperate."
+
+Besides commanding my mind to dwell upon the indestructibly and final
+omnipotence of the Force which is me, I command it to dwell upon the
+logical consequence of that _unity_ of force which science is now
+beginning to teach. The same essential force that is _me_ is also
+_you_. Says the Indian proverb: "I met a hundred men on the road to
+Delhi, and they were all my brothers." Yes, and they were all my twin
+brothers, if I may so express it, and a thousand times closer to me
+even than the common conception of twin brothers. We are all of us the
+same in essence; what separates us is merely differences in our
+respective stages of evolution. Constant reflection upon this fact
+must produce that universal sympathy which alone can produce a
+positive content. It must do away with such ridiculous feelings as
+blame, irritation, anger, resentment. It must establish in the mind an
+all-embracing tolerance. Until a man can look upon the drunkard in his
+drunkenness, and upon the wife-beater in his brutality, with pure and
+calm compassion; until his heart goes out instinctively to every other
+manifestation of the unique Force; until he is surcharged with an
+eager and unconquerable benevolence towards everything that lives;
+until he has utterly abandoned the presumptuous practice of judging
+and condemning--he will never attain real content. "Ah!" you exclaim
+again, "he has nothing newer to tell us than that 'the greatest of
+these is charity'!" I have not. It may strike you as excessively
+funny, but I have discovered nothing newer than that. I merely remind
+you of it. Thus it is, twins on the road to Delhi, by continual
+meditation upon the indestructibility of Force, that I try to
+cultivate calm, and by continual meditation upon the oneness of Force
+that I try to cultivate charity, being fully convinced that in
+calmness and in charity lies the secret of a placid if not ecstatic
+happiness. It is often said that no thinking person can be happy in
+this world. My view is that the more a man thinks the more happy he is
+likely to be. I have spoken. I am overwhelmingly aware that I have
+spoken crudely, abruptly, inadequately, confusedly.
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+THE NOVELS OF ARNOLD BENNETT
+
+
+WHOM GOD HATH JOINED:
+
+                                             Price $1.20 Net
+
+WHOM GOD HATH JOINED is a dramatic presentation of the working of the
+English divorce laws. Their injustice to woman has long been
+acknowledged; Arnold Bennett proves them almost as unjust to man.
+
+The novel is a stern morality, with laughter interspersed. It
+possesses the sincerity and vitality which come of a careful study of
+the problem.
+
+It contains passages of the most brilliant motive analysis which have
+been written in recent years. It presents a vivid world of actual
+personages.
+
+
+THE GLIMPSE:
+
+_The Adventures of a Soul._                  Price $1.20 Net
+
+The story is told of a man who passed over to the Other Side and
+remained there long enough to gain a glimpse--only to return again.
+
+Written with the careful realism which distinguishes all Arnold
+Bennett's work, it is curious to note the fine use that he makes of
+his realistic genius in the handling of a visionary situation.
+
+
+A MAN FROM THE NORTH:
+
+                                             Price $1.20 Net
+
+The story of a young man from the Five Towns, who comes up London to
+seek his fortune. He is grossly ignorant of life and naively curious
+about love. This is the history of his adventures towards love and of
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+
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+these pages--and the magic power of youth to wrap about the
+commonplace the cloak of romance.
+
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY, Publishers
+
+
+
+
+ARNOLD BENNETT: PLAYS
+
+
+CUPID AND COMMON-SENSE:
+
+_A Play in Four Acts, with a Preface on the Crisis in the Theatre._
+
+                                             Price $1.00 Net
+
+"Cupid and Common-Sense" reads well, and reads as if it would prove
+still more effective and enjoyable when acted.--_The Scotsman._
+
+
+WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS: A Play.
+
+                                             Price $1.00 Net
+
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+Bennett in another phase.
+
+
+POLITE FARCES: Three Plays.
+
+                                             Price $1.00 Net
+
+The three farces which comprise this book deal with possible domestic
+and refined crises of everyday life.
+
+
+THE HONEYMOON:
+
+_A Comedy in Three Acts._                    Price $1.00 Net
+
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+make a play that is full of sparkle and genuine charm.
+
+
+THE GREAT ADVENTURE:
+
+_A Play of Fancy in Four Acts._              Price $1.00 Net
+
+The play based on Mr. Bennett's successful novel, "Buried Alive." As
+the novel stands out among humorous fiction so THE GREAT ADVENTURE
+stands out among modern comedies.
+
+
+ARNOLD BENNETT AND EDWARD KNOBLAUCH
+
+MILESTONES:
+
+_A Play in Three Acts._                      Price $1.00 Net
+
+This is the play which has created a sensation because of its boldness
+and novelty. It passes, in rapid survey, three generations--the
+milestones of the last half century. A big New York success.
+
+
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY, Publishers
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
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+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Typographical errors corrected in text:                   |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Page 110: artificialties replaced with artificialities    |
+    | Page 114: prevades replaced with pervades                 |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
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+       *       *       *       *       *
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+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mental Efficiency, by Arnold Bennett
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