Mf I ntviwi'iHouuiDMiimmMnwiKninini 
 
 MENTAL 
 EFFICIENCY 
 
 OLD BENNETT 
 
 w« « im fBm ii t i m<Mi Mi m iiif<t mnwi i VM< ii'i / i M i Slyt n tV il M 'ffl 
 

 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT 
 FUND GIVEN IN 189I BY 
 
 HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE 
 
VI-] t uuc 
 
 OCT 2 3 m\ 
 
 Nov 17 '47 
 
 
 I Unlveralty Library 
 BF632 .B47 1911 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 029 112 187 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 9240291 1 21 87 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 NOVELS 
 A MAN FROM THE NORTH 
 ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS 
 LEONORA A GREAT MAN 
 
 SACRED AND PROFANE I,OVE 
 WHOM GOD HATH JOINED 
 BURIED AilVE 
 
 THE OI<D WIVES' TAI,E THE GWMPSE 
 
 HELEN WITH THE HIGH HAND 
 CLAYHANGER 
 HILDA LESSWAYS 
 THESE TWAIN 
 
 THE CARD THE REGENT 
 
 THE PRICE OF LOVE 
 THE PRETTY LADY 
 ROLL CALL THE LIONS SHARE 
 
 FANTASIAS 
 THE GRAND BABYLON HOTEL 
 THE GATES OF WRATH 
 TERESA OF WATLING STREET 
 THE LOOT OF CITIES 
 HUGO THE GHOST 
 
 THE CITY OF PLEASURE 
 
 SHORT STORIES 
 TALES OF THE FIVE TOWNS 
 THE GRIM SMILE OF THE FIVE TOWNS 
 THE MATADOR OF THE FIVE TOWNS 
 
 BELLES-LB TTRBS 
 
 JOURNALISM FOR WOMEN 
 
 FAME AND FICTION 
 
 HOW TO BECOME AN AUTHOR 
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT AN AUTHOR 
 
 JHE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
 •how TO LIVE ON TWENTY-FOUR HOURS A DAY 
 
 XTCe, HUMAN MACHINE 
 XITERARY TASTE 
 ^OSE UNITED STATES 
 XIBERTY MARRIED LIFE 
 
 FRIENDSHIP AND HAPPINESS 
 'SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 BOOKS AND PERSONS 
 
 OVER THERE PARIS NIGHTS 
 
 THE AUTHOR'S CRAFT 
 .OUR WOMEN 
 ^OG OF THE VELSA 
 
 DRAMA 
 POLITE FARCES 
 CUPID AND COMMONSENSE 
 WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS 
 THE HONEYMOON 
 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 
 milestones (em collaboration with eowahd 
 
 Knoblauch) 
 JUDITH SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE 
 
 (in collaboration with edbn phillpotts) 
 THE SINEWS OF WAR : A ROMANCE 
 THE STATUE: A Romance 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 
 
 AND OTHER HINTS TO MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 BV 
 
 ARNOLD BENNETT 
 
 AUTHOR OF "HOW TO LIVB ON 34 HOURS A DAY' 
 "TKB OLD wives' TALE " ETC. 
 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
 LIMITED ^ LONDON ^ 
 
 X 
 
 
A, 
 
 KA^^'i^l^ 
 
 ffvated in Great Bmain by Batell^ Watson & Vineyy lA^ 
 Lonttm and AfUtburp 
 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I 
 
 Mental Efficiency 
 the appeal . 
 the replies . 
 
 THE CURE 
 
 MENTAL CALISTHENICS 
 
 10 
 17 
 
 24 
 
 II 
 Expressing One's Individuality , 85 
 
 III 
 
 Breaking with the Past . 
 
 45 
 
 IV 
 
 Settling Down in Life 
 
 . as 
 
vi CONTENTS 
 
 V 
 
 Marriage ...... 67 
 
 the duty of it . . . .67 
 
 the adventure of it . . .74 
 the two ways of it . . .81 
 
 VI 
 
 Books ....... 91 
 
 the physical side ... 91 
 
 the philosophy of book-buying . 98 
 
 VII 
 Success ..... 
 candid remarks . 
 the successful and the unsuccess 
 
 FUL .... 
 
 THE INWARDNESS OF SUCCESS . 
 
 107 
 107 
 115 
 
 122 
 
 VIII 
 The Petty Artificialities . .183 
 
 IX 
 
 The Secret of Content . . . 145 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 
 
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 in- 
 numerable illustrated announcements of 
 " physical-culture specialists," who guar- 
 antee 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 
 
4 MENTAL EFFICIENCY 
 
 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 re- 
 member 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 accord- 
 ing to the fifteen diagrams of a large chart 
 (believed to be the magna charta of phy- 
 sical 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 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY b 
 
 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 ap- 
 paratus 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. 
 
6 MENTAL EFFICIENCY 
 
 others out of shape, etc. A man of 
 sedentary occupation goes for a very long 
 walk on Easter Monday, and in the even- 
 ing 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 re- 
 medial 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, maga- 
 zines, 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 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 7 
 
 will tranquilly accept the stattts quo with 
 out 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 indubit- 
 ably 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 every- 
 where, and especially among people who 
 are near the half-way house of life. They 
 perceive the existence of immense quanti- 
 ties of knowledge, not the smallest particle 
 of which they will ever make their own. 
 They stroll forth from their orderly dwell- 
 ings 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 
 
8 MENTAL EFFICIENCY 
 
 most overwhelming of all theories 1 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 I 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 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 9 
 
 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. 
 
10 MENTAL EFFICIENCY 
 
 divides itself into two parts, the cultiva- 
 tion 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 in- 
 terested themselves in the question wiU 
 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 REPLrES 
 
 The correspondence which I have re- 
 ceived 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 conscious- 
 ness of being mentally less than efficient. 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 11 
 
 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 crani- 
 ums " — ^that desiderated course of treat- 
 ment has not apparently been devised 
 by anybody. The Sandow of the brain 
 has not yet loomed up above the horizon. 
 On the other hand, thete appears to be 
 a general expectancy that I personally 
 am going to play the role of the Sandow 
 of the brain. Vain thought 1 
 
 I have been very much interested in 
 the letters, some of which, as a statement 
 of the matter in questionj are admirable. 
 It is perhaps not surprising that the best 
 of them come from women — for (genius 
 apart) woman is usually more touchingly 
 
12 MENTAL EFFICIENCY 
 
 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 hypnotized into mental effi- 
 ciency. After advocating the establish- 
 ment 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 
 
MENTAli EFFICIENCY 18 
 
 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. Concentra- 
 tion 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 in- 
 ability to concentrate is one of the chief 
 
14 MENTAL EFFICIENCY 
 
 symptoms of the mental machine being 
 out of condition. " Esperance's " sug- 
 gested 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 ciu-e, 
 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 pre- 
 liminary mental calisthenics. As Ibsen's 
 puppet said : " People don't do these 
 things." Why do they not ? The an- 
 swer 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 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 15 
 
 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 am- 
 bitions 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 
 
16 MENTAL EFFICIENCY 
 
 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 in- 
 genious 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 svu*e 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 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 17 
 
 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 pro- 
 gramme out of my own bitter and ridi- 
 culous 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 optim- 
 ism 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 coij- 
 
18 MENTAL EFFICIENCY 
 
 tagion 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 diffi- 
 culty 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 in- 
 tellectually 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 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 19 
 
 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 I The question of mental eflficiency 
 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 prob- 
 
20 MENTAL EFFICIENCY 
 
 ably no stronger now than it was afore- 
 time. 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 ac- 
 quaintance. 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 exer- 
 cises — ^you would be ashamed not to be, 
 in these physical days — and so you would 
 never attempt a hurdle race or an unin- 
 terrupted 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 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 21 
 
 any programme. Simply content your- 
 self with a preliminary canter, a ridi- 
 culously 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 hav- 
 ing 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 
 
22 MENTAL EFFICIENCY 
 
 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 I 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. W^hen 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 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 28 
 
 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 opera- 
 tions. 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 wither- 
 ing mind 1 " I thought. " Cricket, and foot- 
 ball, and boating, and golf, and tennis have 
 their ' seasons,' but not thou 1 " These 
 considerations are general and prefatory. 
 Now I must come to detail. 
 
24 MENTAJi EFFICIENCY 
 
 MENTAL CALISTHENICS 
 
 I bave 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, exer- 
 cises 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 instru- 
 ment 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 
 
MENTAL EFFICiENCt 25 
 
 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.j 
 Twenty lines a week for six months : 
 what a " cure " for debility 1 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 im-tt 
 portant preliminary to self-developmenu 
 is the faculty of c oncen trating at wi ll. 
 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 I No more I 
 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 prejudice 
 in favour of the exercise of writing. In- 
 deed, 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 
 
26 MENTAL EFFICIENCY 
 
 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 
 IVIr. 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 leftjying^bout 
 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 in- 
 terest. A diar^ relates that one had 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 27 
 
 lobster mayonnaise for dinner and rose 
 the next morning with a headache, doubt- 
 less attributable to mental strain. A 
 
 journal relates that Mrs. , whom one 
 
 took in to 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 ad- 
 ventures in Colorado, etc. A diary is 
 
 "AllI, 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 be- 
 ginning 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 
 
28 MENTAL EFFICIENCY 
 
 of passages which have made an in- 
 dividual 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 connection I cannot 
 do better than quote an admirable letter 
 which I have received from a corre- 
 spondent who wishes to be known only 
 as " An Oxford Lecturer." The italics 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 29 
 
 (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 he 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 de- 
 velopment are barred to him. Mental 
 efficiency can be gained by constant 
 practice in meditation — i.e., by concen- 
 trating 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 corre- 
 spondent says, and am obliged to him 
 
80 MENTAL EFFICIENCY 
 
 for having so ably stated the case. But 
 I regard such a practice of meditation as 
 he indicates as being rather an " ad- 
 vanced " 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 clear- 
 ness, 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 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 81 
 
 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-develop- 
 ment 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 
 
82 MENTAL EFFICIENCY 
 
 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 yvlaa j, interests you . Lots of finely- 
 organized, mentally-efiicient 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 -develop- 
 ment. With this hint I conclude. 
 
EXPRESSING ONE'S 
 INDIVIDUALITY 
 
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 un- 
 necessary 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 
 
 36 
 
86 EXPRESSING INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 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 fftranger, and 
 has not that stranger piqued your curi- 
 osity ? And if it is thus with precise 
 external details of form, colour, and 
 
EXPRESSING INDIVIDUALITY 87 
 
 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 im- 
 pression that he will ultimately give. 
 The real impress is, in the end, given un- 
 consciously, not consciously ; and further, 
 it is received unconsciously, not con- 
 sciously. It depends partly on both per- 
 sons. And it is immutably fixed before- 
 hand. There can be no final deception. 
 
88 EXPRESSING INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 Take the extreme case, that of the mother 
 and her son. One hears that the son hood- 
 winks 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 1 " What I " 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 I " 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. 
 
EXPRESSING INDIVIDUALITY 89 
 
 Think of your best friends — are you ob- 
 livious 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 reserva- 
 tions 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^hings 
 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 
 
40 EXPRESSING INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 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 
 yoiirself 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 re- 
 miniscence of Stevenson's phrase " funda- 
 mental decency." And it is the final test 
 by which one j udges 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 
 
EXPRESSING INDIVIDUALITY 41 
 
 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 lo 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 cotu-sc, 
 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 auda- 
 city to blame them. We think of them 
 as though they had nothing to do but go 
 
42 EXPRESSING INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 into a shop and buy kindliness. I hear 
 you say that kindUness 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 absent- 
 mindedness I have strayed into the pulpit. 
 I descend. 
 
BREAKING WITH THE PAST 
 
Ill 
 
 BREAKING WITH THE PAST 
 
 Ok that dark morning we woke up, and 
 i4: instantly occurred to us — or at any 
 rate to those of us who have preserved 
 some of our illusions and our naiveti — 
 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 1 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 
 
 46 
 
46 BREAKING WITH THE PAST 
 
 that smile and that pretence. The in- 
 dividual who scoffs at New Year's Resolu- 
 tions 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 morn- 
 ing animated by that special feeling of 
 gay and strenuous vivacity which Resolu- 
 tions 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 per- 
 haps, 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 
 
BREAKING WITH THE PAST 47 
 
 in the iuture, 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 
 
48 BREAKING WITH THE PAST 
 
 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. JWhat one has donej_one has 
 d[qne, 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 " in- 
 dulge " 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; 
 
BREAKING WITH THE PAST 49 
 
 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 1 Or we have always 
 done so-and-so, therefore we must always 
 do it — as if that was logic 1 This disposi- 
 tion 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 ob- 
 jected to his form of hat (not that I would 
 
50 BREAKING WITH THE PAST 
 
 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." How- 
 ever, 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 im- 
 possible it is." This is a parable. And 
 I will not insult your intelligence by 
 applying it. 
 
 The faculty tnat 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 experi- 
 ence, and that yesterdky 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 
 
BREAKING WITH THE PAST 61 
 
 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 genu- 
 ine 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 gi'eat importance." 
 (The wisdom is Johnson's, but I flatter 
 myself on the italics.) 
 
SETTLING DOWN IN LIFE 
 
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 
 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 
 
 66 
 
66 SETTLING DOWN IN LIFE 
 
 it, bravely but not unflinchingly. And 
 then afterwards the fact of my age re- 
 mained 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 move- 
 ments 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 genera- 
 tion younger than mine that smokes cigars 
 and falls in love. Astounding 1 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 swim- 
 ming-bath. Incredible ! Simply in- 
 credible ! . . . 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 : 
 iWhat have I got out of it? What 
 
SETTLING DOWN IN LIFE 57 
 
 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. In- 
 numerable 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 1 1 Do you 
 suppose that I can recall the wisdom that 
 I happen already to have read ? Not 1 1 
 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 philosophei* 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 wh^t Plato thought ? Nothing. And 
 
58 SETTLING DOWN IN LIFE 
 
 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 
 
SETTLING DOWN IN LIFE 59 
 
 come to the funeral and remark : " Dear 
 me 1 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 furni- 
 ture, and I shall never have that system 
 of ventilation. If I had known earlier, 
 I would have at least got a few inex- 
 pensive 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 
 5 
 
60 SETTLING DOWN IN LIFE 
 
 Alhambra Theatre or Exeter Hall of a 
 Sunday night — preferably the Alhambra, 
 because more people would come to my 
 entertainment — ^and I would ^nvite 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), com- 
 panions 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 am- 
 bition t Each is excellently tonic, like 
 
SETTLING DOWN IN LIFE 61 
 
 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 in- 
 stinct has simply got the other by the 
 throat and is throttling it. Prepare to 
 live by all means, but for Heaven's 
 sake do n ot forget to l ive. 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 I Hopes are never realized ; 
 for in the act of realization they become 
 something else. Ambitions may be at- 
 tained, but ambitions attained are rather 
 like burnt coal, ninety per cent, of the, 
 
62 SETTLING DOWN IN LIFE 
 
 heat generated has gone up the chimney- 
 instead of into the room. Nevertheless, 
 indulge in hopes and ambitions, which, 
 though deceiving, are agreeable decep- 
 tions ; 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 straggling 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. 
 
SETTLING DOWN IN LIFE 68 
 
 But, once started, I would not be dis- 
 couraged. 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 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. 
 
MARRIAGE 
 
V 
 
 RIARRIAGE 
 
 THE DUTY OF IT 
 
 Every now and then it becomes necessary 
 to deal laithfuUy 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 apolo- 
 gized, he will have forgotten the correc- 
 tion in a few months, and will break out 
 
 67 
 
68 MARRIAGE 
 
 again into renewed lamentation. He has 
 told us that we are physically deteri- 
 orating, 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 re- 
 semble starved 'bus-drivers twisted out 
 of shape by lightning. 
 
 But the piSce 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 
 
MARRIAGE 69 
 
 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 1 No longer are produced 
 the glorious *' quiverfuls " of old times I 
 Our fathers married at twenty ; we 
 marry at thirty-five. Why ? Because a 
 gross and enervating luxury has over- 
 taken us. What will become of England 
 if this continues ? There will be no 
 England ! Hence we must look to it 1 
 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 himdred 
 
TO MARRIAGE 
 
 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 Cyclo- 
 paedia 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 
 
MARRIAGE 71 
 
 " 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 
 
72 MARRIAGE 
 
 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 any- 
 thing else, and it never will be anything 
 else. How could it be otherwise ? If 
 a man goes against inclination and con- 
 venience in a matter where inclination 
 is " of the essence of the contract," he 
 merely presents the state with a dis- 
 contented citizen (if not two) in exchange 
 for a contented one I 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 oi 
 doing one's duty to the state I 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 ? 
 
MARRIAGE 78 
 
 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 1 
 
 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 clue. And al- 
 though 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 Bet high above legislation. 
 
T4 MARRIAGE 
 
 *' movements," crusades, and preaching, 
 one is the marrying age' and the other 
 is the birth-rate. For \ there the suprenpe 
 instinct comes along and stamps ruth- 
 lessly 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 
 
MARRIAGE 75 
 
 to be a person of extremely powerful 
 will, he will not wejgh 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 every- 
 body, 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 un- 
 scathed by Aphrodite, he will reflect 
 that that peculiar feeling of romantic 
 expectation with which he gets up every 
 morning would cease to exist after mar- 
 riage — and it is a highly agreeable feeling 1 
 In its stead, in moments of depression, 
 he would have the feeling of having done 
 
76 MARRIAGE 
 
 something irremediable, of having defi- 
 nitely 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 theo- 
 retical 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 grey hair, and, however young 
 he may be, the anticipation of old age will 
 come to him. A solitary old age I A 
 senility dependent for its social and 
 
MARRIAGE 77 
 
 domestic requirements on condescending 
 nephews and nieces, or even more distant 
 relations ! Awful ! Unthinkable 1 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 door- 
 step 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 sup- 
 pose he doesn't have any children 1 Sup- 
 pose, there being children, they die — what 
 anguish ! Suppose merely that they are 
 seriously ill and recover — what an ageing 
 experience ! Suppose they prove a disap- 
 pointment — what endless regret ! Sup- 
 pose they " turn out badly " (children 
 do) — what shame I Suppose he finally 
 
78 MARRIAGE 
 
 becomes dependent upon the grudging 
 kindness of an ungrateful child — what a 
 supreme humiliation 1 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 them- 
 selves. Personally, I should estimate that 
 in not one per cent, even of romantic 
 marriages are the husband and wife capa- 
 able of passion for each other after three 
 years. So brief is the violence of love 1 
 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 per- 
 centages 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. 
 
MARRIAGE 79 
 
 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 
 
80 MARRIAGE 
 
 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 mar- 
 riage. 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 pillow-cases ; 
 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, vivacious, querulous, irrational 
 organism in brilliant fur and feathers ? " 
 And when they moved away the most 
 
MARRIAGE 81 
 
 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 — com- 
 panionship whose mysterious interesting- 
 ness nothing can stale. A man may hate 
 his wife so that she can't thread a needle 
 without annoying himj but when he dies, 
 or she dies, he will say : " Well, / 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. Oiu: 
 instinctive wish is that they shall marry, 
 
82 MARRIAGE 
 
 if the matter can anyhow be arranged. 
 We frankly recognize 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 neigh- 
 bours. 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 
 
MARRIAGE 88 
 
 nature; but he is apt to argue that the 
 whole progress of civilization has been the 
 result of an effort to get away from nature. 
 " What I Leave the most important re- 
 lation 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 I 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. Yovu: system is. 
 
84 MARRIAGE 
 
 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 ref upe of a scoundrel, accord- 
 ing to Doctor Johnson, I have no in- 
 tention 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 Uiarriages 
 (it being, of course, understood that 
 dowries ought to be far more plentiful 
 than they are in England). If a French- 
 
MARRIAGE 85 
 
 man 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 outstand- 
 ing 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 ador- 
 able 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 retiu-n. One may view the two ways 
 
86 MARRIAGE 
 
 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 mar- 
 riage 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. WTiich is 
 right ? No one will ever be able to de- 
 cide. But neither the one system nor 
 the other will apply itself well to all or 
 nearly all cases. There have been thou- 
 sands 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 
 
MARRIAGE 87 
 
 tliere, would have turned out excellently. 
 Tiie prevalence of dowries in England 
 would not render the English system per- 
 fect (for it must be remembered that 
 money is only one of several ingredients in 
 the French marriage), but it would con- 
 siderably 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 imagin- 
 ing 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 
 
88 MARRIAGE 
 
 than none at all. Naturally, in England, 
 he cauldn'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 ? 
 
BOOKS 
 
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 com- 
 7 w 
 
92 BOOKS 
 
 prehend 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, Ma- 
 caulay'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 himdred volumes 
 of that inestimable and incomparable 
 series, " The Temple Classics," besides 
 
BOOKS 98 
 
 several hundred assorted volumes of 
 Various other series. And when I heard 
 of the new " Everyman's Library," pro- 
 jected 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 recogni- 
 tion. 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 
 
94 BOOKS 
 
 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 con- 
 scription 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 appearance 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 
 
BOOKS 05 
 
 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 ex- 
 ceedingly 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 sensa- 
 tions not so charming as I should get 
 
96 BOOKS 
 
 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. Toyn- 
 bee'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 pub- 
 lisher. Not so does the genuine bookman 
 form his library. The genuine bookman 
 begins by having specific desires. Hi^ 
 
BOOKS 97 
 
 study of authorities gives him a demand, 
 and the Remand 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 pro- 
 vide 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 de- 
 cidedly 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 disadvan- 
 tages. They cannot form the backbone 
 of a " proper " library. They make, 
 iioweyer, admirable embroidery to a 
 
98 BOOKS 
 
 library. My own would look rather plain 
 if it was stripped of them. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BOOK-BUYINQ 
 
 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, Words- 
 worth, an encyclopaedia, Shakespeare, 
 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 beef- 
 steak and chip potatoes ofi 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, iust 
 
BOOKS 99 
 
 lately, I summoned energy and caused 
 fifteen hundred volumes to be trans- 
 ported to me ; and I arranged them on 
 shelves ; and I re-arranged them on 
 shelvesj 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 per- 
 fectly 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 I 
 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, 
 
100 BOOKS 
 
 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 I " 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 extra- 
 ordinary experience. And I am still 
 walking up and down in front of my 
 books and enjoying them without reading 
 them. 
 
BOOKS 101 
 
 I wish to argue that a great deal of 
 cant is talked (and written) about 
 reading. Papers such as the Athe- 
 nceum, 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 
 
102 BOOKS 
 
 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 other- 
 wise be. This is not fancy, but fact. 
 
 Taking Berkeley simply as an instance, 
 I will utilize 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 litera- 
 ture 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 un- 
 manageable, even by those robust pro- 
 fessional readers who can " grapple with 
 whole libraries." And I am not a pro- 
 fessional reader. I am a writer, just as 
 I might be a hotel-keeper, a solicitor, a 
 doctor, a grocer, or an earthenware manu- 
 
BOOKS 108 
 
 facturer. I read in my scdnty 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 1 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 singu- 
 lar 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 
 
104 BOOKS 
 
 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 propor- 
 tion of what one buys. And further, 
 instinct counts. The man who spends 
 half a crown on Stubbs's " Early Planta- 
 genets " 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 Plan- 
 tagenets " years before he bestirs himself 
 to read it. 
 
SUCCESS 
 
VII 
 SUCCESS 
 
 CANDID REMARKS 
 
 There are times when the whole free 
 and enlightened Press of the United 
 Kingdom seems to become strangely in- 
 terested 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 1 
 What the million readers thought of the 
 Doctor's stirring and strenuous sentences 
 I will not imagine ; but I know what I 
 8 107 
 
108 SUCCESS 
 
 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 
 
SUCCESS 109 
 
 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 disin- 
 genuous. For the basis of their argument 
 is thet 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 per- 
 fect 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 : 
 
110 SUCCESS 
 
 (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) Distinc- 
 tion 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 1 Only a small minority 
 6f 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 
 
SUCCESS 111 
 
 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, com- 
 pared 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 in- 
 stinctive 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 accus- 
 
112 SUCCESS 
 
 tomed ; 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 des- 
 tined 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. 
 
SUCCESS 118 
 
 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 im- 
 mense 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 nos- 
 trils 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 
 
114 SUCCESS 
 
 business men stand for the town's com- 
 mercial 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 oki, 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 some one replies to your 
 inquiry : " That's So-and-so, one of life's 
 failures, poor fellow I " 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 
 
SUCCESS 115 
 
 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 thank- 
 fulness that they do not. The popular 
 delusion is that success is attained by what 
 I may call the " Benjamin FrankUn " 
 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, how- 
 
116 SUCCESS 
 
 ever, contemplate an immediate visit to 
 the United States, and I shall venture to 
 assert that Benjamin Franklin's Auto- 
 biography is a detestable book and a 
 misleading book. I can recall only two 
 other volumes which I would more wil- 
 lingly 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 conceiv- 
 able 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 with- 
 out 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 
 
SUCCESS 117 
 
 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. 
 
118 SUCCESS 
 
 (2) A desire that others should profit by 
 his mistakes. He never made any mis- 
 takes. 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 dread- 
 ful virtuous sagacity often hindered his 
 success. 
 
 No one is a worse guide to success than 
 your typical successful man. He seldom 
 luiderstands the reasons of his own suc- 
 cess ; 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 sin- 
 cere. 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 
 
SUCCESS 119 
 
 article or interview is struck, and good-bye 
 to genuine truth 1 There recently ap- 
 peared in a daily paper an autobiographic- 
 didactic article by one of the world's 
 richest men which was the most " inade- 
 quate " article of. the sort that I have ever 
 come across. Successful men forget so 
 much of their lives I 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 compara- 
 tively idle. As for frugality, it is practically 
 unknown among the successful classes : 
 this statement applies witli particular 
 
120 SUCCESS 
 
 force to financiers. As for intelligence, 
 I have over and over again been startled 
 by the lack of intelligence in successfvil 
 men. They are, indeed, capable of stupi- 
 dities 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 I Great success never depends on 
 the practice of the humbler virtues, though 
 it may occasionally depend on the prac- 
 tice 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. 
 
SUCCESS 121 
 
 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 
 
122 SUCCESS 
 
 well, but he is simply being paradoxical 
 for his own diversion." I would that 
 I could persuade you of my intense 
 seriousness I 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 
 
SUCCESS 128 
 
 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 ray 
 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 
 9 
 
124 SUCCESS 
 
 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 sur- 
 rounded them with a halo. It is merely 
 ridiculous to say, as some do say, that 
 success is never due to chance alone. Be- 
 cause 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 
 
SUCCESS 125 
 
 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, how- 
 ever kindly we acted up to our great 
 national motto of De mortuis nil nisi 
 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 character- 
 istics. And the chief of these characteris- 
 tics is the continual, insatiable wish to 
 
126 SUCCESS 
 
 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 par- 
 ticularly 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 sunrise 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 hira 
 
SUCCESS 127 
 
 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 com- 
 mon-sense person will demolish the 
 hopes of that enterprise by incontro- 
 vertible 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 human- 
 ity. 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 
 
128 SUCCESS 
 
 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 in 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 afl 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 impor- 
 tant part in such careers, but not a para- 
 mount 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 ^ conscience as a good servant 
 
SUCCESS 129 
 
 and a bad master. They live in an atmo- 
 sphere 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 distin- 
 guished merit gaining, without undue 
 delay and without the sacrifice of dignity 
 
ISO SUCCESS 
 
 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. 
 
THE PETTY ARTIFICIALITIES 
 
VIII 
 THE PETTY ARTIFICIALITIES 
 
 The phrase " petty artificialities," em- 
 ployed 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 con- 
 ditions 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 preten- 
 sions 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 
 
 133 
 
184 THE PETTY ARTIFICIALITIES 
 
 thrown the dart. Only it isn't done 
 for, really, you know. " Petty," after 
 all, means nothing in that connection. 
 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 con- 
 ditions which at best are not the final 
 expression of the eternal purpose. It 
 does make for a sort of crude and churlish 
 
THE PETTY ARTIFICIALITIES 135 
 
 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 I Why shave ? 
 And then going to a drawer and choosing 
 a necktie. Fancy an immortal soul, 
 fancy a fragment of the eternal and in- 
 destructible 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. 
 
186 THE PETTY ARTIFICIALITIES 
 
 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. 
 
THE PETTY ARTIFICIALITIES X37 
 
 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 differ- 
 ence between a garden and the wild 
 woods is a petty artificiality. In writing 
 a sonnet you actually cramp the pro- 
 foundest 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 
 
138 THE PETTY ARTIFICIALITIES 
 
 staggering. Then look at pictures, ab- 
 surdly confined in frames, with their 
 ingenious contrasts of light and shade 
 and mass against mass. Nothing but 
 petty artificiality I 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 pro- 
 tecting garment and preservative of life, 
 and it is also one very valuable means 
 by which life can express itself. It is 
 largely symbolic; and symbqls, while 
 being expressive, are also great time- 
 savers. The despisers of petty artifici- 
 alities should think of this. Take the 
 striking instance of that pettiest arti- 
 
THE PETTY ARTIFICIALITIES 139 
 
 ficiality, leaving cards. Well, searchers 
 after the real, what would you substitute 
 for it ? If you dropped it and sub- 
 stituted 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 sub- 
 stitute 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 con- 
 vention 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 ex- 
 peditiously, 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 
 
 10 
 
140 THE PETTY ARTIFICIALITIES 
 
 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 artifici- 
 ality 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 
 
THE PETTY ARTIFICIALITIES 141 
 
 as for the " real." Those persons who 
 think that there isn't, ought to return 
 to school and learn aritlimetic. Sup- 
 posing 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 1 I beg 
 the despisers of artificiality to reflect 
 upon these observations, however in- 
 complete these observations may be, and 
 to consider whether they would be quite 
 content if they got what they are crying 
 out for. 
 
THE SECRET OF CONTENT 
 
IX 
 
 THE SECRET OF CONTENT 
 
 I HAVE said lightly k propos of the con- 
 clusion arrived at by several correspon- 
 dents 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," 
 us 
 
146 THE SECRET OF CONTENT 
 
 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 I 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 before- 
 hand what direction its activity ought 
 to take, and insisting that its activity 
 takes that direction; also by never 
 
THE SECRET OF CONTENT 147 
 
 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; 
 
148 THE SECRET OF CONTENT 
 
 Everything lives. Even my razor gets 
 " tired." And the fatigue of my razor 
 is no more or 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 for ever. 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 
 
THE SECRET OF CONTENT 149 
 
 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 manifesta- 
 tion of Force that happens to be dearest 
 to me, I say to my mind : " Mind, con- 
 centrate your powers upon the full real- 
 ization 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, obe- 
 diently 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 
 
150 THE SECRET OF CONTENT 
 
 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 
 imhappiness ! A strange phenomenon I " 
 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 accom- 
 panying 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 
 
THE SECRET OF CONTENT 151 
 
 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 indestructible and final omni- 
 potence of the Force which is me, I 
 command it to dwell upon the logical 
 consequences 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 
 
152 THE SECRET OF CONTENT 
 
 this fact must produce that universal 
 sympathy which alone can produce a 
 positive content. It must do away with 
 such ridiculous feelings as blame, irrita- 
 tion, anger, resentment. It must estab- 
 lish 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 benevo- 
 lence towards everything that lives ; until 
 he has utterly abandoned the presump- 
 tuous practice of judging and condemning 
 — he will never attain real content. 
 " Ah 1 " you exclaim again, " he has 
 nothing newer to tell us than that 'the 
 greatest of these is charity ' 1 " 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 
 
THE SECRET OP CONTENT 158 
 
 cultivate calm, and by continual medita- 
 tion 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 GNO 
 
 PrtmM tu Gtett Britain by BtuU, Wttson & Vinty, Li., 
 Lendm tni Ayltsburr.