How to live
24 Hours
How to Live on 24 Hours A Day - FULL AudioBook by Arnold Bennett - Self Improvement - Time Mgmt
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recording is by mark smith of
simpsonville south carolina how to live
on 24 hours a day by Arnold Bennett
preface this preface though placed at
the beginning as a previs must be should
be read at the end of the book I have
received a large amount of
correspondence concerning this small
work and many reviews of it some of them
nearly as long as the book itself have
been printed but scarcely any of the
comment has been adverse some people
have objected to a frivolity of tone but
as the tone is not in my opinion at all
frivolous this objection did not impress
me and had no way to reproach and put
forward I might almost have been
persuaded that the volume was flawless a
more serious stricture has however been
offered not in the press but by sundry
obviously sincere correspondents and I
must deal with it a reference to page 43
will show that I anticipated and feared
this disapprobation the sentence against
which protests have been made is as
follows quote in the majority of
instances he the typical man does not
precisely feel a passion for his
business at best he does not dislike it
he begins his business functions with
some reluctance as late as he can and he
ends them with joy as early as he can
and his engines while he is engaged in
his business are seldom at their full
horsepower
end quote I am assured in accents of
unmistakable sincerity that there are
many businessmen not merely those in
high positions or with fine prospects
but modest subordinates with no hope of
ever being much better off
who do enjoy their business functions
who do not shirk them who do not arrive
at their office as late as possible and
depart as early as possible who in a
word but the whole of their force into
their day's work and are genuinely
fatigued at the end thereof I am ready
to believe it I do believe it I know it
I always knew it both in London and in
the provinces it has been my lot to
spend long years in subordinate
situations of business and the fact did
not escape me
that a certain proportion of my peers
show what amounted to an honest passion
for their duties and that while engaged
in those duties they were really living
to the fullest extent of which they were
capable but I remained convinced that
these fortunate and happy individuals
happier perhaps than they guessed did
not and do not constitute a majority or
anything like a majority I remain
convinced that the majority of decent
average conscientious men of business
men with aspirations and ideals do not
as a rule
go home of a night genuinely tired I
remain convinced that they put not as
much but as little of themselves as they
conscientiously can into the earning of
a livelihood and that their vocation
bores rather than interest them
nevertheless I admit that the minority
is of sufficient importance to merit
attention and that I ought not to have
ignored it so completely as I did do the
whole difficulty of the hard-working
minority was put in a single colloquial
sentence by one of my correspondents he
wrote I am just as keen as anyone on
doing something to exceed my program but
allow me to tell you that when I get
home at 6:30 p.m. I am NOT anything like
so fresh as you seem to imagine now I
must point out that the case of the
minority who throw themselves with
passion
gusto into their daily business task is
infinitely less deplorable than the case
of the majority who go half-heartedly
and feebly through their official day
the former are less in need of advice
how to live at any rate during their
official day of say 8 hours they are
really alive their engines are giving
the full indicated horsepower the other
eight working hours of their day may be
badly organised or even frittered away
but it is less disastrous to waste eight
hours a day than 16 hours a day it is
better to have lived a bit than never to
have lived at all the real tragedy is
the tragedy of the man who is braced to
an effort neither in the office nor out
of it and to this man this book is
primarily addressed but says the other
and more fortunate man although my
ordinary program is bigger than his I
want to exceed my program - I am living
a bit I want to live more but I really
can't do another day's work on the top
of my official day the fact is I the
author ought to a foreseen that I should
appeal most strongly to those who
already had an interest in existence it
is always the man who has tasted life
who demands more of it and it is always
the man who never gets out of bed who is
the most difficult to rouse well you of
the minority let us assume that the
intensity of your daily money-getting
will not allow you to carry out quite
all the suggestions in the following
pages some of the suggestions may yet
stand i admit that you may not be able
to use the time spent on the journey
home at night but the suggestion for the
journey through the office in the
morning is as practicable for you as for
anybody and that weekly interval of 40
hours from Saturday to Monday is yours
just as much as the
man's though a slight accumulation of
fatigue may prevent you from employing
the whole of your horsepower upon it
there remains then the important portion
of the three or more evenings a week you
tell me flatly that you are too tired to
do anything outside your program at
night in reply to which I tell you
flatly that if your ordinary day's work
is thus exhausting then the balance of
your life is wrong and must be adjusted
a man's powers ought not to be
monopolized by his ordinary day's work
what then is to be done the obvious
thing to do is to circumvent your order
for your ordinary day's work by a ruse
employ your engines and something beyond
the program before and not after you
employ them on the programme itself
briefly get up earlier in the morning
you say you cannot you say it is
impossible for you to go earlier to bed
of a night to do so would upset the
entire household I do not think it is
quite impossible to go to bed earlier at
night I think that if you persist in
rising earlier and the consequences
insufficiency of sleep you will soon
find a way of going to bed earlier but
my impression is that the consequences
of rising earlier will not be an
insufficiency of sleep my impression
growing stronger every year is that
sleep is partly a matter of habit and of
slackness I am convinced that most
people sleep as long as they do because
they are at a loss for any other
diversion how much sleep do you think is
daily obtained by the powerful healthy
man who daily rattles up your street in
charge of Carter Patterson's van I have
consulted a doctor on this point he is a
doctor who for 24 years has had a large
general practice in a large flourishing
suburb of London
habited buy exactly such people as you
and me
he is a curt man and his answer was curt
most people sleep themselves stupid he
went on to give his opinion that nine
men out of ten would have better health
and more fun out of life if they spent
less time in bed other doctors have
confirmed this judgment which of course
does not apply to growing youths
rise an hour an hour and a half or even
two hours earlier and if you must retire
earlier when you can in the matter of
exceeding programs you will accomplish
as much in one morning hour as in two
evening hours but you may say I couldn't
begin without some food and servants
surely my dear sir in an age when an
excellent spirit-lamp
including a saucepan can be bought for
less than a shilling you are not going
to allow your highest welfare to depend
upon the precarious immediate
cooperation of a fellow creature
instruct the fellow creature whoever she
may be at night tell her to put a tray
in a suitable position overnight on that
tray two biscuits a cup and saucer a box
of matches and a spirit lamp on the lamp
the saucepan on the saucepan the lid but
turned the wrong way up on the reverse
lid the small tea pot containing a minut
quantity of tea leaves you will then
have to strike a match that is all in
three minutes the water boils and you
pour it into the teapot which is already
warm in three more minutes the tea is
infused you can begin your day while
drinking it these details may seem
trivial to the foolish but to the
thoughtful they will not seem trivial
the proper wise balancing of one's whole
life may depend upon the feasibility of
a cup of tea
an unusual hour signed Arnold Bennett
and a preface
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simpsonville south carolina how to live
on 24 hours a day by Arnold Bennett
chapter 1 the daily miracle yesyes one
of those men that don't know how to
manage good situation regular income
quite enough for luxuries as well as
needs not really extravagant and yet the
fellows always in difficulties somehow
he gets nothing out of his money
excellent flat half-empty always looks
as if he'd had the brokers in new suit
old hat magnificent necktie baggy
trousers ask you to dinner cut glass bad
mutton or Turkish coffee cracked cup he
can't understand it
explanation simply is that he fritters
his income away wish I had the half of
it I'd show him so we have most of us
criticized at one time or another in our
superior way we are nearly all
Chancellor's of the Exchequer it is the
pride of the moment newspapers are full
of articles explaining how to live on
such-and-such a sum and these articles
provoke a correspondent Susan violence
proves the interest they excite recently
in a daily organ a battle raged round
the question whether a woman can exist
nicely in the country on 85 pounds a
year I have seen an essay how to live on
eight shillings a week but I have never
seen an essay how to live on 24 hours a
day
yet it has been said that time is money
that proverb understates the case
time is a great deal more than money if
you have time you can obtain money and
usually but though you have the wealth
of a cloakroom attendant at the Carlton
Hotel
you cannot buy yourself a minute more
time than I have or the cat by the fire
has philosophers have explained that
space they have not explained time it is
the inexplicable raw material of
everything with it
all is possible without it nothing the
supply of time is truly a daily miracle
an affair genuinely astonishing when one
examines it you wake up in the morning
and lo your purse is magically filled
with 24 hours of the un-- manufactured
tissue of the universe of your life it
is yours it is the most precious of
possessions a highly singular commodity
showered upon you in a manner as
singular as the commodity itself for
remark no one can take it from you
it is unstealable and no one receives
either more or less than you receive
talk about an ideal democracy in the
realm of time there is no aristocracy of
wealth and no aristocracy of intellect
genius is never rewarded by even an
extra hour a day and there is no
punishment waste your infinitely
precious commodity as much as you will
and the supply will never be withheld
from you no mysterious power will say
this man is a fool if not a knave he
does not deserve time he shall be cut
off at the meter it is more certain than
consoles and payment of income is not
affected by Sunday's moreover you cannot
draw on the future impossible to get
into debt you can only waste the passing
moment you cannot waste tomorrow it is
kept for you you cannot waste the next
hour it is kept for
I said the affair was a miracle is it
not you have to live on this 24 hours of
daily time out of it you have to spin
health pleasure money content respect
and the evolution of your immortal soul
it's right use its most effective use is
a matter of the highest urgency and of
the most thrilling actuality all depends
on that your happiness the elusive prize
that you are all clutching for my
friends depends on that strange that the
newspapers so enterprising and
up-to-date as they are are not full of
how to live on a given income of time
instead of how to live on a given income
of money money is far commoner than time
when one reflects one perceives that
money is just about the communist thing
there is it encumbers the earth thing
gross heaps if one can't contrive to
live on a certain income of money one
earns a little more or steals it or
advertises for it one doesn't
necessarily a muddle one's life because
one can't quite manage on a thousand
pounds a year one braces the muscles and
mix it guineas and balances the budget
but if you cannot arrange that an income
of twenty four hours a day shall exactly
cover all proper items of expenditure
one does muddle one's life definitely
the supply of time though gloriously
regular is cruelly restricted which of
us lives on twenty-four hours a day and
when I say lives I do not mean exists
nor muddles through which of us is free
from that uneasy feeling that the great
spending departments of his daily life
are not managed as they ought to be
which of us is quite sure that his fine
suit is not surmounted by a shameful hat
or that in attending to the crockery he
has forgotten the quality of the food
which of us is not saying to himself
which of us has not been saying to
himself all his life
I shall alter that when I have a little
more time we never shall have any more
time we have and we have always had all
the time there is it is the realization
of this profound and neglected truth
which by the way I have not discovered
that has led me to the minut practical
examination of daily time expenditure
end of chapter
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recording is by mark smith of
simpsonville south carolina how to live
on 24 hours a day by Arnold Bennett
chapter 2 the desire to exceed ones
program but someone may remark with the
English disregard of everything except
the point what is he driving at with his
24 hours a day I have no difficulty and
living on 24 hours a day I do all that I
want to do and still find time to go in
for newspaper competitions surely it is
a simple affair knowing that one has
only 24 hours a day to content oneself
with 24 hours a day to you my dear sir I
present my excuses and apologies you are
precisely the man that I have been
wishing to meet for about forty years
will you kindly send me your name and
address and state your charge for
telling me how you do it instead of me
talking to you you ought to be talking
to me that you exist I am convinced and
that I have not yet encountered you is
my loss meanwhile until you appear I
will continue to chat with my companions
in distress that innumerable band of
souls who are haunted more or less
painfully by the feeling that the years
slip by and slip by and slip by and that
they have not yet been able to get their
lives into proper working order if we
analyse that feeling we shall perceive
it to be primarily one of uneasiness of
expectation of looking forward of
aspiration it is a source of constant
discomfort for it behaves like a
skeleton at the feast of all our
enjoyments we go to the theatre
and laugh but between the acts it raises
a skinny finger at us we rush violently
for the last train and while we are
cooling a long age on the platform
waiting for the last train it promenades
its bones up and down by our side and
inquires oh man what has thou done with
thy youth what art thou doing with Ina
age you may urge that this feeling of
continuous looking forward of aspiration
is part of life itself and inseparable
from life itself true but there are
degrees a man may desire to go to Mecca
his conscience tells him that he ought
to go to Mecca he fairs forth either by
the aid of cooks or unassisted he may
probably never reach Mecca he may drown
before he gets to Port Said he may
perish in gloriously on the coast of the
Red Sea
his desire may remain eternally
frustrate unfulfilled aspiration may
always trouble him but he will not be
tormented in the same way as the man who
desiring to reach Mecca and harried by
the desire to reach Mecca never leaves
Brixton it is something to have left
Brixton most of us have not left Brixton
we have not even taken a cab to lug Gate
Circus and inquired from Cooks the price
of a conducted tour in our excuse to
ourselves is that there are only 24
hours in the day if we further analyze
our vague uneasy aspiration we shall I
think see that it Springs from a fixed
idea that we ought to do something in
addition to those things which we are
loyally and morally obliged to do we are
obliged by various codes written and
unwritten to maintain ourselves and our
families if any in health and comfort to
pay our debts to save to increase our
prosperity by increasing our efficiency
a task sufficiently difficult a task
which very few of us achieve a task
often beyond our skill yet if we succeed
in it as we sometimes do we are not
satisfied the skeleton is still with us
and even when we realize that the task
is beyond our skill that our powers
cannot cope with it we feel that we
should be less discontented if we gave
to our powers already overtaxed
something still further to do and such
is indeed the fact the wish to
accomplish something outside their
formal program is common to all men who
in the course of evolution have risen
past a certain level until an effort is
made to satisfy that wish the sense of
uneasy waiting for something to start
which has not started will remain to
disturb the peace of the soul that wish
has been called by many names it is one
form of the universal desire for
knowledge and it is so strong that men
whose whole lives have been given to the
systematic acquirement of knowledge have
been driven by it to overstep the limits
of their program in search of still more
knowledge even Herbert Spencer in my
opinion the greatest mind that ever
lived was often forced by it into
agreeable little backwaters of inquiry I
imagine that in the majority of people
who are conscious of the wish to live
that is to say people who have
intellectual curiosity the aspiration to
exceed formal programmes takes a
literary shape they would like to embark
on a course of reading decidedly the
British people are becoming more and
more literary but I would point out that
literature by no means comprises the
whole field of knowledge and that the
disturbing thirst to improve oneself to
increase one's knowledge may well be
slaked quite apart from literature
with the various ways of slaking it I
shall deal later here I merely point out
to those who have no natural sympathy
with literature that literature is not
the only well and of chapter
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simpsonville south carolina how to live
in 24 hours a day by Arnold Bennett
chapter 3 precautions before beginning
now that I have succeeded if succeeded I
have in persuading you to admit to
yourself that you are constantly haunted
by a suppressed dissatisfaction with
your own arrangement of your daily life
and that the primal cause of that
inconvenient dissatisfaction is the
feeling that you are everyday leaving
undone something which you would like to
do and which indeed you are always
hoping to do when you have more time and
now that I have drawn your attention to
the glaring dazzling truth that you will
never have more time since you already
have all the time there is you expect me
to let you into some wonderful secret by
which you may at any rate approach the
ideal of a perfect arrangement of the
day and by which therefore that haunting
unpleasant daily disappointment of
things left undone will be got rid of I
have found no such wonderful secret nor
do I expect to find it nor do I expect
that anyone else will ever find it
it is undiscovered when you first began
to gather my drift perhaps there was a
resurrection of Hope in your breast
perhaps you said to yourself this man
will show me an easy unfit eating way of
doing what I have so long in vain wished
to do alas no the fact is that there is
no easy way no Royal Road the path to
Mecca is extremely hard and stony and
the worst of it is that you never quite
get there after all the most important
preliminary to the task of arranging
one's life so the
one may live fully and comfortably
within one's daily budget of 24 hours is
the calm realization of the extreme
difficulty of the task of the sacrifices
and the endless effort which it demands
I cannot to strongly insist on this if
you imagine that you will be able to
achieve your ideal by ingeniously
planning out a timetable with a pen on a
piece of paper you had better give up
hope at once if you are not prepared for
discouragements and dissolutions if you
will not be content with a small result
for a big effort then do not begin lie
down again and resume the uneasy doze
which you call your existence it is very
sad is it not very depressing and somber
and yet I think it is rather fine to
this necessity for the tense bracing of
the will before anything worth doing can
be done I rather like it myself I feel
it to be the chief thing that
differentiates me from the cat by the
fire well you say assume that I am
braced for the battle assume that I have
carefully weighed and comprehended your
ponderous remarks how do I begin dear
sir you simply begin there is no magic
method of beginning if a man's standing
on the edge of a swimming bath and
wanting to jump into the cold water
should ask you how do I begin to jump
you would merely reply just jump take
hold of your nerves and jump as I have
previously said the chief beauty about
the constant supply of time is that you
cannot waste it in advance the next year
the next day the next hour are lying
ready for you as perfect as unspoiled as
if you had never wasted or misapplied a
single moment in all your career which
fact is very gratifying and reassuring
you can turn over a new leaf every hour
if you choose therefore no object is
served and waiting till next week
or even until tomorrow you may fancy
that the water will be warmer next week
it won't it will be colder but before
you begin let me murmur a few words of
warning in your private ear let me
principally warn you against your own
ardour ardour in well-doing is a
misleading and a treacherous thing it
cries out loudly for employment you
can't satisfy it at first it wants more
and more it is eager to move mountains
and divert the course of rivers it isn't
content to let perspires
and then too often when it feels the
perspiration on its brow it worries all
of a sudden and dies without even
putting itself to the trouble of saying
I've had enough of this beware of
undertaking too much at the start be
content with quite a little allow for
accidents allow for human nature
especially your own a failure or so in
itself would not matter if it did not
incur a loss of self-esteem and of
self-confidence but just as nothing
succeeds like success
so nothing fails like failure most
people who are ruined are ruined by
attempting too much therefore and
setting out on the immense enterprise of
living fully and comfortably within the
narrow limits of 24 hours a day let us
avoid at any cost the risk of an early
failure I will not agree that in this
business at any rate a glorious failure
is better than a petty success I am all
for the petty success a glorious failure
leads to nothing
a petty success may lead to a success
that is not petty so let us begin to
examine the budget of the day's time you
say your day is already fold overflowing
how you actually spend in earning your
livelihood how much seven hours on the
average
an actual sleep 7 I will add 2 hours and
be generous and I will defy you to
account to me on the spur of the moment
for the other 8 hours and a chapter
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in 24 hours a day by Arnold Bennett
chapter 4 the cause of the troubles in
order to come to grips at once with a
question of time expenditure in all its
actuality I must choose an individual
case for examination I can only deal
with one case and that case cannot be
the average case because there is no
such case as the average case just as
there is no such man as the average man
every man and every man's case is
special but if I take the case of a
Londoner who works in an office whose
office hours are from 10:00 to 6:00 and
who spends 50 minutes morning and night
in travelling between his house door and
his office door I shall of God is near
to the averages facts permit there are
men who have to work longer for a living
but there are others who do not have to
work so long fortunately the financial
side of existence does not interest us
here for our present purpose the clerk
at a pound a week is exactly as well-off
as the millionaire in Carlton House
Terrace now the great and profound
mistake which my typical man makes in
regard to his day is a mistake of
general attitude a mistake which
vitiates and weakens two thirds of his
energies and interests in the majority
of instances he does not precisely feel
a passion for his business at best he
does not dislike it he begins his
business functions with reluctance as
late as he can and he ends them with joy
as early as he can and his engines while
he is engaged in his business are seldom
at their full horsepower I know that I
shall be accused by
angry readers of traduce in the city
worker but I am pretty thoroughly
acquainted with the city and I stick to
what I say yet in spite of all this he
persists in looking upon those hours
from 10:00 to 6:00 as the day to which
the ten hours preceding them and the six
hours following them are nothing but a
prologue and epilogue such an attitude
unconscious though it be
of course kills his interest in the odds
sixteen hours with the result that even
if he does not waste them he does not
count them he regards them simply as
margin this general attitude is utterly
illogical and unhealthy since it
formerly gives the central prominence to
a patch of time and a bunch of
activities which the man's one idea is
to get through and have done with if a
man makes two thirds of his existence
subservient to one third for which
admittedly he has no absolutely feverish
zest
how can he hope to live fully and
completely
he cannot if my typical man wishes to
live fully and completely he must in his
mind arrange a day within a day and this
inner day a Chinese box in a larger
Chinese box must begin at 6 p.m. and end
at 10 a.m. it is a day of 16 hours and
during all these 16 hours he has nothing
whatever to do but cultivate his body
and his soul and his fellow men during
those 16 hours he is free he is not a
wage earner he is not preoccupied with
monetary cares he is just as good as a
man with a private income this must be
his attitude and his attitude is
all-important his success in life much
more important than the amount of a
state upon which his executor z-- will
have to pay estate Duty depends on it
what you say that full energy given to
those 16 hours will lessen the
value of the business 8 not so on the
contrary it will assuredly increase the
value of the business 8 one of the chief
things which my typical man has to learn
is that the mental faculties are capable
of a continuous heart activity they do
not tire like an arm or a leg all they
want is change not rest except in sleep
I shall now examine the typical man's
current method of employing the 16 hours
that are entirely his beginning with his
uprising I will merely indicate things
which he does and which I think he ought
not to do postponing my suggestions for
planting the times when I shall have
cleared as a settler clear spaces in a
forest injustice to him I must say that
he wastes very little time before he
leaves the house in the morning at 9:10
in to many houses he gets up at 9:00
breakfast between 97 and 9 nine and a
half and then bolts but immediately he
bangs the front door his mental
faculties which are tireless become idle
he walks to the station in a condition
of mental coma arrived there he usually
has to wait for the train on hundreds of
suburban stations every morning you see
men calmly strolling up and down
platforms while railway companies
unblushing Lee robbed them of time which
is more than money hundreds of thousands
of hours are thus lost every day simply
because my typical man thinks so little
of time that it has never occurred to
him to take quite easy precautions
against the risk of its loss he has a
solid coin of time to spend every day
call it a sovereign he must get changed
for it and in getting change he is
content to lose heavily supposing that
in selling him a ticket
the company said we will change your
sovereign but we shall charge you three
halfpence for doing so
what would my typical man exclaim yet
that is the equivalent of what the
company does when it robs him of five
minutes twice a day you say I am dealing
with minutiae I am and later on I will
justify myself now will you kindly buy
your paper and step on to the Train end
of chapter
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simpsonville south carolina how to live
on 24 hours a day by Arnold Bennett
chapter five tennis and the immortal
soul you get into the morning train with
your newspaper and you calmly and
majestically give yourself up to your
newspaper you do not hurry you know you
have at least half an hour of security
in front of you as your glance lingers
idly at the advertisements of shipping
and of songs on the outer pages your air
is the air of a leisured man wealthy in
time of a man from some planet where
there are a hundred and twenty
four-hours-a-day instead of 24 I am an
impassioned reader of newspapers I read
five English and two French dailies and
the news agents alone know how many
weeklies regularly I am obliged to
mention this personal fact lest I should
be accused of a prejudiced against
newspapers when I say that I object to
the reading of newspapers in the morning
train
newspapers are produced with rapidity to
be read with rapidity there is no place
in my daily program for newspapers I
read them as I may in odd moments but I
do read them the idea of devoting to
them 30 or 40 consecutive minutes of
wonderful solitude for nowhere can one
more perfectly immerse oneself in
oneself than in a compartment full of
silent withdrawn smoking mails is to me
repugnant I cannot possibly allow you to
scatter priceless pearls of time with
such oriental lavishness you were not
the Shah of time let me respectfully
remind you that you have no more time
than
have no newspaper reading in trains I
have already put by about three-quarters
of an hour for use now you reach your
office and I abandon you there till six
o'clock I am aware that you have
nominally an hour often in reality an
hour and a half in the midst of the day
less than half of which time is given to
eating but I will leave you all that to
spend as you choose you may read your
newspapers then I meet you again as you
emerge from your office you are pale and
tired at any rate
your wife says you are pale and you give
her to understand that you are tired
during the journey home you have been
gradually working up the tired feeling
the tired feeling hangs heavy over the
mighty suburbs of London like a virtuous
and melancholy cloud particularly in
winter you don't eat immediately on your
arrival home but in about an hour or so
you feel as if you could sit up and take
a little nourishment and you do then you
smoke seriously you see friends you
Potter you play cards you flirt with a
book you note that old age is creeping
on you take a stroll you caress the
piano
by Jove a quarter past eleven you then
devote quite 40 minutes to thinking
about going to bed and it is conceivable
that you are acquainted with a genuinely
good whisky at last you go to bed
exhausted by the day's work six hours
probably more have gone since you left
the office gone like a dream gone like
magic unaccountably gone that is a fair
sample case but you say it's all very
well for you to talk a man is tired a
man must see his friends he can't always
be on the stretch just so but when you
arrange to go to the theatre
especially with a pretty woman what
happens you rush to the suburbs you
spare no toil to make yourself glorious
and fine raiment you rush back to town
in another train you keep yourself on
the stretch for four hours if not five
you take her home you take yourself home
you don't spend three quarters of an
hour in thinking about going to bed you
go friends and fatigue have equally been
forgotten and the evening has seemed so
exquisitely long or perhaps too short
and do you remember that time when you
were persuaded to sing in the course of
the amateur operatic society and slaved
two hours every other night for three
months can you deny that when you have
something definite to look forward to at
Eventide something that is to employ all
your energy the thought of that
something gives a glow and a more
intense vitality to the whole day what I
suggest is that at six o'clock you look
facts in the face and admit that you are
not tired because you are not you know
and that you arrange your evening so
that it is not cut in the middle by a
meal by so doing you will have a clear
expanse of at least three hours I do not
suggest that you should employ three
hours every night of your life and using
up your mental energy but I do suggest
that you might for commencement employ
an hour and a half every other evening
in some important and consecutive
cultivation of the mind you will still
be left with three evenings for friends
bridge tennis domestic scenes odd
reading pipes gardening pottering and
prize competitions you will still have
the terrific wealth of 45 hours between
2 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. Monday if
you persevere you will soon want to pass
4 evenings and perhaps 5 in some
sustained endeavour to be genuinely
alive
and you will fall out of that habit of
muttering to yourself at 11:15 p.m. time
to be thinking about going to bed
the man who begins to go to bed 40
minutes before he opens his bedroom door
is bored that is to say he is not living
but remember at the start those 90
nocturnal minutes thrice a week must be
the most important minutes in the 10,080
they must be sacred quite as sacred as a
dramatic rehearsal or a tennis match
instead of saying sorry I can't see you
all jump but I have to run off to the
Tennis Club you must say but I have to
work this I admit his intensely
difficult to say tennis is so much more
urgent than the immortal soul end of
chapter
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chapter 6 remember human nature
I have incidentally mentioned the vast
expanse of 45 hours between leaving
business at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday and
returning to business at 10:00 a.m. on
Monday and here I must touch on the
point whether the week should consist of
six days or of seven for many years in
fact until I was approaching 40 my own
week consisted of seven days I was
constantly being informed by older and
wiser people that more work more genuine
living could be got out of six days than
out of seven and it is certainly true
that now with one day and seven in which
I follow no program and make no effort
save what the Caprice of the moment
dictates I appreciate intensely the
moral value of a weekly rest
nevertheless had I my life to arrange
over again I would do again as I have
done only those who have lived at the
full stretch seven days a week for a
long time can appreciate the full beauty
of a regular recurring idleness
moreover I am aging and it is a question
of age in cases of abounding youth and
exceptional energy and desire for effort
I should say unhesitatingly keep going
day in day out but in the average case I
should say confine your formal program
super program I mean to six days a week
if you find yourself wishing to extend
it extend it but only in proportion to
your wish
and count the extra time as a windfall
not as regular income so that you can
return to a six day program without the
sensation of being poorer of being a
backslider let us now see where we stand
so far we have marked for saving out of
the waste of days half an hour at least
on six morning's a week and one hour and
a half on three evenings a week total
seven hours and a half a week I propose
to be content with that seven hours and
a half of the present what you cry you
pretend to show us how to live and you
only deal with seven hours and a half
out of a hundred and sixty-eight are you
going to perform a miracle with your
seven hours and a half well not to mince
the matter I am if you will kindly let
me let is to say I am going to ask you
to attempt an experience which while
perfectly natural and explicable has all
the air of a miracle my contention is
that the full use of those seven and
one-half hours will quicken the whole
life of the week and zest to it and
increase the interest which you feel in
even the most banal occupations you
practice physical exercises for a mere
ten minutes morning and evening and yet
you are not astonished when your
physical health and strength are
beneficially affected every hour of the
day and your whole physical outlook
changed why should you be astonished
that an average of over an hour a day
given to the mind should permanently and
completely enliven the whole activity of
the mind more time might assuredly be
given to the cultivation of oneself and
in proportion as the time was longer the
results would be greater but I prefer to
begin with what looks like a trifling
effort it is not really a trifling
effort as those will discover who have
yet to assay it to clear even seven
hours and a half
the jungle is passably difficult for
some sacrifice has to be made one may
have spent ones time badly but one did
spend it one did do something with it
however ill-advised that something may
have been to do something else means a
change of habits and habits are the very
Dickens to change further any change
even a change for the better is always
accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts
if you imagine that you will be able to
devote seven hours and a half a week to
serious continuous effort and still live
your old life you are mistaken
I repeat that some sacrifice and an
immense deal of volition will be
necessary and it is because I know the
difficulty it is because I know the
almost disastrous effect of failure in
such an enterprise that I earnestly
advise a very humble beginning you must
safeguard your self-respect self-respect
is at the root of all purposefulness and
a failure in an enterprise deliberately
planned deals a desperate wound at one
self-respect hence I iterate and
reiterate start quietly unostentatiously
when you have conscientiously given
seven hours and a half a week to the
cultivation of your vitality for three
months then you may begin to sing louder
and tell yourself what wondrous things
you are capable of doing before coming
to the method of using the indicated
hours I have one final suggestion to
make that is as regards the evenings to
allow much more than an hour and a half
in which to do the work of an hour and a
half
remember the chance of accidents
remember human nature and give yourself
say from 9:00 to 11:30 for your task of
90 minutes
end of chapter
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chapter 7 controlling the mind people
say one can't help one's thoughts but
one can the control of the thinking
machine is perfectly possible and since
nothing whatever happens to us outside
our own brain since nothing hurts us or
gives us pleasure except within the
brain the supreme importance of being
able to control what goes on in that
mysterious brain is patent this idea is
one of the oldest platitudes but it is a
platitude whose profound truth and
urgency most people live and die without
realizing people complain of the lack of
power to concentrate not wedding that
they may acquire the power if they
choose and without the power to
concentrate that is to say without the
power to dictate to the brain its task
and to ensure obedience true life is
impossible mind control is the first
element of a full existence
hence it seems to me the first business
of the day should be to put the mind
through its paces
you look after your body inside and out
you run grave danger in hacking hairs
off your skin you employ a whole army of
individuals from the milkman to the pig
killer to enable you to bribe your
stomach into decent behavior why not
devote a little attention to the far
more delicate machinery of the mind
especially as you will require no
extraneous aid it is for this portion of
the art and craft of living that I have
reserved the time
from the moment of quitting your door to
the moment of arriving at your office
what I am to cultivate my mind in this
street on the platform in the train and
in the crowded street again precisely
nothing simpler no tools required not
even a book nevertheless the affair is
not easy when you leave your house
concentrate your mind on a subject no
matter what to begin with you will not
have gone 10 yards before your mind has
skipped away under your very eyes and is
lurking around the corner with another
subject bring it back by the scruff of
the neck ere you have reached the
station you will have brought it back
about 40 times do not despair continue
keep it up you will succeed you cannot
by any chance fail if you persevere it
is idle to pretend that your mind is
incapable of concentration do you not
remember that morning when you received
a disquieting letter which demanded a
very carefully worded answer how you
kept your mind steadily on the subject
of the answer without a seconds
intermission until you reached your
office whereupon you instantly sat down
and wrote the answer that was a case in
which you were aroused by circumstances
to such a degree of vitality that you
were able to dominate your mind like a
tyrant you would have no trifling you
insisted that its work should be done
and its work was done by the regular
practice of concentration as to which
there is no secret save the secret of
perseverance you can tyrannize over your
mind which is not the highest part of
you every hour of the day and in no
matter what place the exercise is a very
convenient one if you got into your
morning train with a pair of dumbbells
for your muscles or an encyclopaedia in
ten volumes for your learning
you would probably excite
mark but as you walk in the street or
sit in the corner of the compartment
behind a pipe or strap hang on the
subterranean who is to know that you
were engaged in the most important of
daily acts what asinine boor can laugh
at you I do not care what you
concentrate on so long as you
concentrate it is the mere disciplining
of the thinking machine that counts but
still you may as well kill two birds
with one stone and concentrate on
something useful I suggest it is only a
suggestion a little chapter of marcus
aurelius or epictetus do not I beg shy
at their names for myself I know nothing
more actual more bursting with playing
common sense applicable to the daily
life of plain persons like you and me
who hate airs pose and nonsense then
marcus aurelius or epictetus read a
chapter and so short they are the
chapters in the evening and concentrated
on it the next morning you will see yes
my friend it is useless for you to try
to disguise the fact I can hear your
brain like a telephone at my ear you are
saying to yourself this fellow was doing
pretty well up to his seventh chapter he
had begun to interest me faintly but
what he says about thinking and trains
and concentration and so on is not for
me it may be well enough for some folks
but it isn't in my line it is for you I
passionately repeat it is for you indeed
you are the ferryman I am aiming at
throw away the suggestion and you throw
away the most precious suggestion that
was ever offered to you it is not my
suggestion it is the suggestion of the
most sensible practical hard-headed men
who have walked the earth I only give it
to you at secondhand
try it get your mind in hand and see how
the process cures half the evils of life
especially worry that miserable
avoidable shameful disease worry end of
chapter
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simpsonville south carolina how to live
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chapter 8 the reflective mood the
exercise of concentrating the mind to
which at least half an hour a day should
be given is a mere preliminary like
scales on the piano having acquired
power over that most unruly member of
ones complex organism one as naturally
to put it to the yoke useless to possess
an obedient mind unless one profits to
the furthest possible degree by its
obedience a prolonged primary course of
study is indicated now as to what this
course of studies should be cannot be
any question there never has been any
question all the sensible people of all
ages are agreed upon it and it is not
literature nor is it any other art nor
is it history nor is it any science it
is the study of one's self man know
thyself these words are so hackneyed
that verily I blush to write them yet
they must be written before they need to
be written I take back my blush being
ashamed of it man know thyself I say it
out loud
the phrase is one of those phrases with
which everyone is familiar of which
everyone acknowledges the value and
which only the most sagacious put into
practice I don't know why I am entirely
convinced that what is more than
anything else lacking in the life of the
averaged well intentioned man of today
is the reflective mood we do not reflect
I mean that we do not reflect upon
genuinely important thing
upon the problem of our happiness upon
the main direction in which we are going
upon what life is giving to us upon the
share which reason has or has not in
determining our actions and upon the
relation between our principles and our
conduct and yet you are in search of
happiness are you not have you
discovered it the chances are that you
have not the chances are that you have
already come to believe that happiness
is unattainable but men have attained it
and they have attained it by realizing
that happiness does not spring from the
procuring of physical or mental pleasure
but from the development of reason and
the adjustment of conduct to principles
I suppose that you will not have the
audacity to deny this and if you admit
it and still devote no part of your day
to the deliberate consideration of your
reason principles and conduct you admit
also that while striving for a certain
thing you are regularly leaving undone
the one act which is necessary to the
attainment of that thing now shall I
blush or will you do not fear that I
mean to thrust certain principles upon
your attention I care not in this place
what your principles are your principles
may induce you to believe in the
righteousness of burglary I don't mind
all I urge is that a life in which
conduct is not fairly well accord with
principles is a silly life and the
conduct can only be made to accord with
principles by means of daily examination
reflection and resolution what leads to
the permanent sorrowful nosov burglars
is that their principles are contrary to
burglary if they genuinely believed in
the moral excellence of burglary penal
servitude would simply mean so many
happy years for them all martyrs are
happy because their conduct and their
principles agree
as for reason which makes conduct and is
not unconnected with the making of
principles it plays a far smaller part
in our lives than we fancy we are
supposed to be reasonable but we are
much more instinctive than reasonable
and the less we reflect the less
treasonable
we shall be the next time you get
crossed with the waiter because your
steak is overcooked asked reason to step
into the Cabinet Room of your mind and
consult her she will probably tell you
that the waiter did not cook the steak
and had no control over the cooking of
the steak and that even if he alone was
to blame you accomplished nothing
goodbye getting cross you merely lost
your dignity looked the fool in the eyes
of sensible men and soured the waiter
while producing no effect whatever on
the steak the result of this
consultation with reason for which she
makes no charge will be that when once
more your steak is overcooked you will
treat the waiter as a fellow creature
remain quite calm in a kindly spirit and
politely insist on having a fresh
mistake the gain will be obvious and
solid in the formation or modification
of principles and the practice of
conduct much help can be derived from
printed books issued at sixpence each
and upwards I mentioned in my last
chapter Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus
surgeon even more widely known works
will occur at once to the memory I may
also mention Pascal la Briere and
Emerson for myself you do not catch me
traveling without my Marcus Aurelius
yes books are valuable but not reading
of books will take the place with daily
candid honest examination of what one
has recently done and what one is about
to do of a steady looking at oneself in
the face
disconcerting though the sight may be
when shall this important business be
accomplished the solitude of the evening
journey home appears to me to be
suitable for it a reflective mood
naturally follows the exertion of having
earned the day's living of course if
instead of attending to an elementary
and profoundly important duty you prefer
to read the paper which you might just
as well read while waiting for your
dinner I have nothing to say but attend
to it at some time of the day you must I
now come to the evening hours end of
chapter
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chapter 9 interest in the arts many
people pursue a regular and
uninterrupted course of idleness in the
evenings because they think that there
is no alternative to idleness but the
study of literature and they do not
happen to have a taste for literature
this is a great mistake of course it is
impossible or at any rate very difficult
properly to study anything whatever
without the aid of printed books but if
you desire to understand the deeper
depths of bridge or a boat sailing you
would not be deterred by your lack of
interest in literature from reading the
best books on bridge or boat sailing we
must therefore distinguish between
literature and books treating of
subjects not literary I shall come to
literature in due course
let me now remark to those who have
never read Meredith and who are capable
of being unmoved by a discussion as to
whether mr. Steven Phillips is or is not
a true poet that they are perfectly
within their rights it is not a crime
not to love literature it is not a sign
of imbecility the mandarins of
literature will order out to instant
execution the unfortunate individual who
does not comprehend say the influence of
Wordsworth on Tennyson but that is only
their impudence where would they be
I wonder if requested to explain the
influences that went to make
Tchaikovsky's pathetic symphony there
are enormous fields of knowledge quite
outside literature which will yield
magnificent results to cultivators for
example since I have just mentioned the
most popular piece of high-class
music in England today I am reminded
that the promenade concerts begin in
August you go to them you smoke your
cigar or cigarette and I regret to say
that you strike your matches during the
soft bars of the Lohengrin overture and
you enjoy the music but you say you
cannot play the piano or the fiddle or
even the banjo that you know nothing of
music what does that matter that you
have a genuine taste for music is proved
by the fact that in order to fill his
Hall with you and your peers the
conductor is obliged to provide programs
from which bad music is almost entirely
excluded a change from the old Covent
Garden days now surely your inability to
perform the Maiden's prayer on a piano
need not prevent you from making
yourself familiar with the construction
of the orchestra to which you listen a
couple of nights a week during a couple
of months as things are you probably
think of the orchestra as a
heterogeneous mass of instruments
producing a confused agreeable mass of
sound you do not listen for details
because you have never trained your ears
to listen to details if you were asked
to name the instruments which play the
great theme at the beginning of the C
minor symphony you could not name them
for your life's sake yet you admire the
C minor symphony it is thrilled you it
will thrill you again you have even
talked about it in an expensive mood to
that lady you know whom I mean and all
you can positively state about the C
minor symphony is that Beethoven
composed it and that it is a jolly fine
thing now if you have read say mr. Craig
Beals how to listen to music which can
be got at any booksellers for less than
the price of a stall at the Alhambra and
which contains photographs of all the
orchestral instruments and plans of the
arrangement of orchestras you would next
go to a promenade concert
with an astonishing intensification of
interest in it instead of a confused
mass the orchestra would appear to you
as what it is a marvelously balanced
organism whose various groups of members
each have a different and an
indispensable function you would spy out
the instruments and listen for their
respective sounds you would know the
Gulf that separates a French horn from
an English horn and you would perceive
why a player of the hood boy gets higher
wages than a fiddler though the fiddle
is the more difficult instrument you
would live at a prominent concert
whereas previously you have merely
existed there in a state of bait if
Acoma like a baby gazing at a bright
object the foundations of a genuine
systematic knowledge of music might be
laid you might specialize your inquiries
either on a particular form of music
such as the symphony or on the works of
a particular composer at the end of a
year of 48 weeks of three brief evenings
each combined with a study of programs
and attendances at concerts chosen out
of your increasing knowledge you would
really know something about music even
though you were as far off as ever from
jangling the maidens prayer on the piano
but I hate music you say my dear sir I
respect you what applies to music
applies to the other arts I might
mention mr. Claremont Wits how to look
at pictures or mr. Russell sturgess's
how to judge architecture as beginnings
mere beginnings of systematic vitalizing
knowledge in other arts the materials
for whose study abound in London I hate
all the arts you say my dear sir I
respect you more and more I will deal
with your case next before coming to
literature
end of chapter
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chapter 10 nothing in life is humdrum
art is a great thing but it is not the
greatest the most important of all
perceptions is the continual perception
of cause and effect in other words the
perception of the continuous development
of the universe in still other words the
perception of the course of evolution
when one is thoroughly got imbued into
one's head the leading truth that
nothing happens without a cause one
grows not only large minded but large
hearted it is hard to have one's watch
stolen but one reflects that the thief
of the watch became a thief from causes
of heredity and environment which are as
interesting as they are scientifically
comprehensible and one buys another
watch if not with joy at any rate with a
philosophy that makes bitterness
impossible one loses in the study of
cause-and-effect that absurd air which
so many people have of being always
shocked and pained by the curiousness of
life such people live amid human nature
as if human nature were a foreign
country full of awful foreign customs
but having reached maturity one ought
surely to be ashamed of being a stranger
in a strange land
the study of cause and effect while it
lessens the painfulness of life adds to
life's picturesqueness the man to whom
evolution is but a name looks at the sea
as a grandiose monotonous spectacle
which again witness in August for three
shillings third-class return the man who
is imbued with the idea of development
of continuous cause and effect perceives
in the sea an element which in the day
before yesterday of geology was vapor
which yesterday was boiling and which
tomorrow will inevitably be ice he
perceives that a liquid is merely
something on its way to be solid and he
is penetrated by a sense of the
tremendous changeful picturesqueness of
life
nothing will afford a more durable
satisfaction than the constantly
cultivated appreciation of this this is
the end of all science cause-and-effect
are to be found everywhere rents went up
in Shepherds Bush it was painful and
shocking that rents should go up in
Shepherds Bush but to a certain point we
are all scientific students of
cause-and-effect and there was not a
clerk lunching at a Lyons restaurant who
did not scientifically put two and two
together and see in the once twopenny
tube the cause of an excessive demand
for wigwams in Shepherds Bush and in the
excessive demand for wigwams the cause
of the increase in the price of wigwams
simple you say disdainfully everything
the whole complex movement of the
universe is as simple as that when you
can sufficiently put two and two
together and my dear sir perhaps you
happen to be an estate agents clerk and
you hate the arts and you want to foster
your immortal soul and you can't be
interested in your business because it's
so humdrum nothing is humdrum the
tremendous changeful picturesqueness of
life is marvelously shown in an estate
agents office what there was a block of
traffic in Oxford Street to avoid the
block people actually began to travel
under the sellers and drains and the
result was a rise of rents in Shepherds
Bush and you say that isn't picturesque
suppose you were to study in this spirit
the property question in London for an
hour and a half every other evening
would it not give zest to your business
and transform your whole life you would
arrive at more difficult problems and
you would be able to tell us why as the
natural result of cause and effect the
longest straight street in London is
about a yard and a half and length while
the longest absolutely straight straight
in Paris extends for miles I think you
will admit that in an estate agents
Clerk I have not chosen an example that
specially favors my theories you are a
bank clerk and you have not read that
breathless romance disguised as a
scientific study
Walter beg Hots Lombard Street ah my
dear sir if you have begun with that and
followed it up for 90 minutes every
other evening how enthralling your
business would be to you and how much
more clearly you would understand human
nature you are penned in town but you
love excursions in the country and the
observation of wildlife certainly a hard
enlarging diversion why don't you walk
out of your house door in your slippers
to the nearest gas lamp of a night with
a butterfly net and observe the wildlife
of common and rare moths that is beating
about it and coordinate the knowledge
thus obtained and build a superstructure
on it and at last get to know something
about something you need not be devoted
to the arts not to literature in order
to live fully the whole field of daily
habit and scene is waiting to satisfy
that curiosity which means life and the
satisfaction of which means an
understanding heart I promised to deal
with your case
oh man who hates art and literature and
I have dealt with it I now come to the
case of the person happily very common
who does like reading end of chapter
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chapter eleven serious reading novels
are excluded from serious reading so
that the man who bent on self
improvement has been deciding to devote
ninety minutes three times a week to a
complete study of the works of Charles
Dickens would be well-advised to alter
his plans the reason is not that novels
are not serious some of the great
literature the world is in the form of
prose fiction the reason is that bad
novels ought not to be read and the good
novels never demand any appreciable
mental application on the part of the
reader it is only the bad parts of
Meredith's novels that are difficult a
good novel rushes you forward like a
skiff down a stream and you arrive at
the end perhaps breathless but
unexhausted the best novels involve the
least strain now in the cultivation of
the mind one of the most important
factors is precisely the feeling of
strain of difficulty of a task which one
part of you is anxious to achieve and
another part of you is anxious to shirk
and that feeling cannot be God in facing
a novel you do not set your teeth in
order to read Anna Karenina therefore
though you should read novels you should
not read them in those 19 minutes
imaginative poetry produces a far
greater mental strain than novels it
produces probably the severus strain of
any form of literature it is the highest
form of literature it yields the highest
form of pleasure and teaches the highest
form of wisdom
in a word there is nothing to compare
with it
I say this with sad consciousness of the
fact that the majority of people do not
read poetry I am persuaded that many
excellent persons if they were
confronted with the alternatives of
reading Paradise Lost and going round
Trafalgar Square at noonday on their
knees in sackcloth would choose the
ordeal of public ridicule still I will
never cease advising my friends and
enemies to read poetry before anything
if poetry is what is called a sealed
book to you begin by reading Hazlitt's
famous essay on the nature of poetry in
general it is the best thing of its kind
in English and no one who has read it
can possibly be under the
misapprehension that poetry is a
medieval torture or a mad elephant or a
gun that will go off by itself and kill
at 40 paces indeed it is difficult to
imagine the mental state of the man who
after reading Hazlitt's essay is not
urgently desirous of reading some poetry
before his next meal if the essay so
inspires you I would suggest that you
make a commencement with purely
narrative poetry there is an infinitely
finer English novel written by a woman
than anything by George Eliot or the
Bronte's or even Jane Austen which
perhaps you have not read its title is
Aurora Lee and its author EB Browning it
happens to be written in verse and to
contain a considerable amount of
genuinely fine poetry decide to read
that book through even if you die for it
forget that it is fine poetry read it
simply for the story and the social
ideas and when you have done ask
yourself honestly whether you still
dislike poetry I have known more than
one person to whom Aurora Lee has been
the means of proving that in assuming
they hated poetry they were entirely
mistaken
of course if after hazlit and such an
experiment made in the light of hazlit
you are finally assured that there is
something in you which is antagonistic
to poetry you must be content with
history or philosophy
I shall regret it yet not inconsolably
the decline in fall is not to be named
in the same day with Paradise Lost but
it is a vastly pretty thing and herbert
spencer's first principles simply laughs
at the claims of poetry and refuses to
be accepted as aught but the most
majestic product of any human mind I do
not suggest that either of these works
is suitable for a tyro in mental strains
but I see no reason why any man of
average intelligence should not after a
year of continuous reading be fit to
assault the supreme masterpieces of
history or philosophy the great
convenience of masterpieces is that they
are so astonishingly lucid I suggest no
particular work as a start the attempt
would be futile in the space of my
command but I have two general
suggestions of a certain importance the
first is to define the direction and
scope of your efforts choose a limited
period or a limited subject or a single
author say to yourself I will know
something about the French Revolution or
the rise of Railways or the works of
John Keats and during a given period to
be settled beforehand confine yourself
to your choice there is much pleasure to
be derived from being a specialist the
second suggestion is to think as well as
to read I know people who read and read
and for all the good it does them they
might just as well cut bread-and-butter
they take to reading as better man take
to drink they fly through the Shires of
literature on a motor car there is sole
object being motion
they will tell you how many books they
have read in a year unless you give at
least 45 minutes to careful fatiguing
reflection it is an awful bore at first
upon what you are reading you're 90
minutes of a night are chiefly wasted
this means that your pace will be slow
never mind forget the goal think only of
the surrounding country and after a
period perhaps when you least expect it
you will suddenly find yourself in a
lovely town on a hill and a chapter
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simpsonville south carolina how to live
on 24 hours a day by Arnold Bennett
chapter 12 dangers to avoid I cannot
terminate these hints often I fear too
didactic and abrupt upon the full use of
one's time to the great end of living as
distinguished from vegetating without
briefly referring to certain dangers
which lie in wait for the sincere
aspirant towards life the first is the
terrible danger of becoming that most
odious and least supportable of persons
a prig now a prig is a pert fellow who
gives himself airs of superior wisdom a
prig is a pompous fool who has gone out
for a ceremonial walk and without
knowing it has lost an important part of
his attire namely his sense of humor a
prig is a tedious individual who having
made a discovery is so impressed by his
discovery that he is capable of being
gravely displeased because the entire
world is not also impressed by it
unconsciously to become a prig is an
easy and a fatal thing hence when one
sets forth on the enterprise of using
all one's time it is just as well to
remember that one's own time and not
other people's time is the material with
which one has to deal that the earth
rolled on pretty comfortably before one
began to balance a budget of the hours
and that it will continue to roll on
pretty comfortably whether or not one
succeeds in one's new role of Chancellor
of the Exchequer of time
it is as well not to chatter too much
about what one is doing and not to
betray a to pain sadness at the
spectacle of a whole world deliberately
wasting so many hours out of every day
and therefore never really living it
will be found ultimately that in taking
care of ones itself one has quite all
one can do another danger is the danger
of being tied to a program like a slave
to a chariot once program must not be
allowed to run away with one it must be
respected but it must not be worshipped
as a fetish a program of daily employ is
not a religion this seems obvious yet I
know men whose lives are a burden to
themselves and a distressing burden to
their relatives and friends simply
because they have failed to appreciate
the obvious oh no I have heard the
martyred wife exclaim Arthur always
takes the dog out for exercise at 8 o
clock and he always begins to read at a
quarter to nine so it's quite out of the
question that we should etc etc and the
note of absolute finality and that
plaintive voice reveals the unsuspected
and ridiculous
tragedy of a career on the other hand a
program is a program and unless it is
treated with deference it ceases to be
anything but a poor joke to treat once
program with exactly the right amount of
deference to live with not too much and
not too little elasticity is scarcely
the simple affair it may appear to the
inexperienced and still another danger
is the danger of developing a policy of
rush of being gradually more and more
obsessed by what one has to do next in
this way one may come to exist as in a
prison and one's life may cease to be
one's own
one may take the dog out for a walk at 8
o'clock and meditate the whole time on
the fact that one must begin to read at
a quarter to nine and that one must not
be late and the occasional deliberate
breaking of one's program will not help
to mend matters
the evil Springs not from persisting
without elasticity and what one has
attempted but from originally attempting
too much from filling ones program till
it runs over the only cure is to
reconstitute the program and to attempt
less but the appetite for knowledge
grows by what it feeds on and there are
men who come to like us constant
breathless hurry of endeavor of them it
may be said that a constant breathless
hurry is better than an eternal doze in
any case if the programme exhibits a
tendency to be oppressive and yet one
wishes not to modify it an excellent
palliative is to pass with exaggerated
deliberation from one portion of it to
another for example to spend five
minutes in perfect mental acquiescence
between chaining up the st. Bernard and
opening the book in other words to waste
five minutes with the entire
consciousness of wasting them the last
and chiefest danger which I would
indicate is one to which I have already
referred the risk of a failure at the
commencement of the enterprise I must
insist on it a failure at the
commencement may easily kill outright
the new-born impulse towards a complete
vitality and therefore every precaution
should be observed to avoid it the
impulse must not be overtaxed let the
pace of the first lap be absurdly slow
but let it be as regular as possible and
having once decided to achieve a certain
task achieve it at all costs of tedium
and distaste
the gain and self-confidence of having
accomplished a tiresome labor is immense
finally in choosing the first
occupations of those evening hours be
guided by nothing whatever but your
taste and natural inclination it is a
fine thing to be a walking encyclopedia
of philosophy but if you happen to have
no liking for philosophy and to have a
like for the natural history of street
cries much better Lee philosophy alone
and take to street cries
end of chapter end of book thank you for
listening
you
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