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Cornell University Library 
 BJ1581.B47 S4 • 
 
 Self and self-management ,i,,,SssaYS about 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 029 202 094 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 NOVELS 
 
 A MAN FROM THE NORTH. ROLL CALL. 
 
 ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS. 
 
 LEONORA. A GREAT MAN. 
 
 SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE. 
 
 WHOM GOD HATH JOINED. THE LION'S SHARE. 
 
 BURIED ALIVE. THE OLD WIVES' TALE. 
 
 THE GLIMPSE. THE PRETTY LADY. 
 
 HELEN WITH THE HIGH HAND. 
 
 CLAYHANGER. HILDA LESSWAYS. 
 
 THESE TWAIN. THE CARD. 
 
 THE REGENT. THE PRICE OF LOVE. 
 
 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 LETTRES 
 
 JOURNALISM FOR WOMEN. FAME AND FICTION. 
 HOW TO BECOME AN AUTHOR. OVER THERE. 
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT AN AUTHOR. PARIS NIGHTS. 
 THE REASONABLE LIFE. BOOKS AND PERSONS. 
 
 HOW TO LIVE ON TWENTY-FOUR HOURS A DAY. 
 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT. OUR WOMEN. 
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE. LITERARY TASTE. 
 
 THOSE UNITED STATES. LIBERTY. 
 
 MARRIED LIFE. FRIENDSHIP AND HAPPINESS. 
 
 THE AUTHOR'S CRAFT. LOG OF THE VELSA. 
 
 DRAMA 
 
 POLITE FARCES. CUPID AND COMMONSENSE. 
 
 WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS. JUDITH. 
 
 THE HONEYMOON. THE GREAT ADVENTURE. 
 
 MILESTONES. SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE. 
 
 (in collaboration with EDWARD KNOBLAUCH). 
 (in COLLABORATION WITH KDEN PHILLPOITS) 
 
 THE SINEWS OF WAR : A Romancb. 
 THE STATUTE : A Romance. 
 
SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
SELF AND 
 SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 ESSAYS ABOUT EXISTING 
 
 BY 
 
 ARNOLD BENNETT 
 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
 
 LIMITED LONDON 
 
3 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 RUNNING AWAY FROM LIFE . . 3 
 
 SOME AXIOMS ABOUT WAR-WORK . 25 
 
 THE DIARY HABIT .... 45 
 A DANGEROUS LECTURE TO A YOUNG 
 
 WOMAN 65 
 
 THE COMPLETE FUSSER ... 85 
 THE MEANING OF FROCKS . . .103 
 
RUNNING AWAY FROM LIFE 
 
RUNNING AWAY FROM LIFE 
 
 I WILL take the extreme case of the social 
 butterfly, because it has the great advan- 
 tage of simplicity. This favourite variety of 
 the lepidopteral insects is always spoken of 
 as female. But as the variety persists from 
 generation to generation obviously it cannot 
 be of one sex only. And, as a fact, there are 
 indubitably male social butterflies, though 
 the differences between the male and the 
 female may be slight. I shall, however, 
 confine myself to the case of the female social 
 butterfly — ^again for the sake of simplicity. 
 
 This beautiful creature combines the habits 
 of the butterfly with the habits of the moth. 
 For whereas the moth flies only by night and 
 
4 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 the butterfly flies only by day, the social 
 butterfly flies both by day and by night. She 
 is universally despised and condemned, and 
 almost universally envied : one of the 
 strangest among the many strange facts of 
 natural history. She lives with a single pur- 
 pose — to be for ever in the movement — ^not 
 any particular movement, but the movement, 
 which is a grand combined tendency compris- 
 ing all lesser tendencies. For the social 
 butterfly the constituents of the movement 
 are chiefly men, theatres, restaurants, dances, 
 noise, and hurry. The minor constituents 
 may and do frequently change, but the major 
 constituents have not changed for a consider- 
 able number of years. The minor consti- 
 tuents of the movement are usually * serious,' 
 and hence in a minor way the social butterfly 
 is serious. If books happen to be of the 
 movement, she will learn the names of books 
 and authors, and in urgent crises will even 
 
RUNNING AWAY FROM LIFE S 
 
 read. If music, she will learn to distinguish 
 from all other sounds the sounds which are 
 of the movement, the sounds at which she 
 must shut her eyes in ecstasy and sigh. If 
 social reform, she will at once be ready to 
 reform everybody and everything except 
 herself and her existence. If charity or 
 mercifulness, she will be charitable or merciful 
 according to the latest devices and in the 
 latest frocks. Yes, and if war happens to 
 be of the movement, she will be serious about 
 the war. 
 
 You observe how sarcastic I am about the 
 social butterfly. It is necessary to be so. 
 The social butterfly never has since the 
 earliest times been mentioned in print with- 
 out sarcasm or pity, and she never will be. 
 She is greatly to be pitied. What is her aim ? 
 Her aim, like the aim of most people except 
 the very poor (whose aim is simply to keep 
 alive), is happiness. But the unfortunate 
 
6 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 creature, as you and I can so clearly see, has 
 confused happiness with pleasure. She runs 
 day and night after pleasure — that is to say, 
 after distraction ; eating, drinking, posing, 
 seeing, being seen, laughing, jostling, and the 
 singular delight of continual imitation. She 
 is only alive in public, and the whole of her 
 days and nights are spent in being in public, 
 or in preparing to be in public, or in recover- 
 ing from the effects of being in public. 
 Habit drives her on from one excitement to 
 another. She flies eternally from something 
 mysterious and sinister which is eternally 
 overtaking her. You and I know that she 
 is never happy — she is only intoxicated or 
 narcotised by a drug that she calls pleasure. 
 And her youth is going ; her figure is going ; 
 her complexion is practically gone. She is 
 laying up naught for the future save dis- 
 appointment, dissatisfaction, disillusion, and 
 no doubt rheumatism. And all this in- 
 
RUNNING AWAY FROM LIF£ 7 
 
 ordinate, incredible folly springs from a 
 wrong and childish interpretation of the true 
 significance of happiness. 
 
 II 
 
 How much wiser, you say, and indeed we 
 all say, is that other young woman who has 
 chosen the part of content. She has come 
 to terms with the universe. She is not for 
 ever gadding about in search of something 
 which she has not got, and which not one 
 person in a hundred round about her has got. 
 She has said : ' The universe is stronger than 
 I am. I will accommodate myself to the 
 universe.' 
 
 And she acts accordingly. She makes the 
 best of her lot. She treats her body in a 
 sane manner, and she treats her mind in a 
 sane manner. She has perceived the futility 
 of what is known as pleasure in circles where 
 they play bridge and organise charity ffetes 
 
8 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 on the Field of the Cloth of Gold. She has 
 frankly admitted that youth is fleeting, and 
 that part of it must be spent in making pre- 
 parations against the rigours of old age. 
 She seeks her pleasure in literature and the 
 arts because such pleasure strengthens instead 
 of weakening the mind, and never palls. 
 She is prudent. She is aware that there can 
 be no happiness where duty has been left 
 undone, and that loving-kindness is a main 
 source of felicity. Hence she is attentive to 
 duty, and she practises the altruism which is 
 at once the cause and the result of loving- 
 kindness. She deliberately cultivates cheer- 
 fulness and resignation ; she discourages 
 discontent as gardeners discourage a weed. 
 She has duly noted that the kingdom of 
 heaven is ' within you,' not near the band at 
 the expensive restaurant, nor in the trying-on 
 room of the fashionable dressmaker's next 
 door to the expensive restaurant, nor in the 
 
RUNNING AWAY FROM LIFE 9 
 
 salons of the well-advertised great. Her life 
 is reflected in her face, which is a much better 
 face than the face of the social butterfly. 
 Whatever may occur — within reason — she is 
 armed against destiny, married or single. 
 
 Ill 
 
 What can there be in common between 
 these two types ? Well, the point I am 
 coming to is that they may have one tragic 
 similarity which vitiates their lives equally, or 
 almost equally. One may be vastly more 
 admirable than the other, and in many 
 matters vastly more sensible. And yet they 
 may both have made the same stupendous 
 mistake : the misinterpretation of the signi- 
 ficance of the word happiness. Towards 
 the close of existence, and even throughout 
 existence, the second, in spite of all her pre- 
 cautions, may suffer the secret and hidden 
 pangs of unhappiness just as acutely as the 
 
10 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 first ; and her career may in the end present 
 itself to her as just as much a sham. 
 
 And for the same reason. The social 
 butterfly was running after something absurd, 
 and the other woman knew that it was absurd 
 and left it alone. But the root of the matter 
 was more profound. The social butterfly's 
 chief error was not that she was running 
 after something, but that she was running 
 away from something — something which I 
 have described as mysterious and sinister. 
 And the other woman also may be — and as a 
 fact frequently is — running away from just 
 that mysterious and sinister something. And 
 that something is neither more nor less than 
 life itself in its every essence. Both may be 
 afraid of life and may have to pay an equal 
 price for their cowardice. Both may have 
 refused to listen to the voice within them, 
 and will suffer equally for the wilful shutting 
 of the ear. 
 
RUNNING AWAY FROM LIFE ii 
 
 (It is true that the other woman may just 
 possibly have a true vocation for a career of 
 resignation and altruism, and the spreading 
 of a sort of content in a thin layer over the 
 entire length of existence. If so, well and 
 good. But it is also true that the social 
 butterfly may have a true vocation for being 
 a social butterfly, and the thick squandering 
 of a sort of pleasure on the earlier part of 
 existence, to the deprivation of the latter 
 part. Then neither the one nor the other 
 will have been guilty of the cowardice of 
 running away from life.) 
 
 My point is that you may take refuge in 
 good works or you may take refuge in bad 
 works, but that the supreme offence against 
 life lies in taking refuge from it, and that if 
 you commit this offence you will miss the 
 only authentic happiness — which springs no 
 more from content and resignation than it 
 springs from mere pleasure. It is indis- 
 
12 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 putable that the conscience can be, and is 
 constantly narcotised as much by relatively 
 good deeds as by relatively bad deeds. 
 Nevertheless, to dope the conscience is always 
 a crime, and is always punished by the 
 ultimate waking up of the conscience. 
 
 IV 
 
 To take refuge from life is to refuse it. 
 Life generally offers due scope for the leading 
 instinct in a man or a woman ; and sometimes 
 it offers the scope at a very low price, at no 
 price at all. 
 
 For example, a young man may have a 
 very marked instinct for engineering, and his 
 father may be a celebrated and wealthy 
 engineer who is only too anxious that the son 
 should follow the same profession. Life has 
 offered the scope and charged nothing for it. 
 
 But, on the other hand, a man may have a 
 very marked instinct for authorship, and his 
 
RUNNING AWAY FROM LIFE 13 
 
 father may be a celebrated and wealthy 
 engineer who, being convinced that literature 
 is an absurd and despicable profession, has 
 determined that his son shall not be an 
 author but an engineer. ' Become an en- 
 gineer,' says the father, ' and I will give you 
 unique help, and you are a made man. 
 Become an author, and you get nothing what- 
 ever from me except opposition.' 
 
 Life, however, which has provided the in- 
 stinct for literature, has also provided the 
 scope for its fulfilment. The scope for young 
 authors is vaster to-day on two continents 
 than ever it was. But the price which in this 
 case life quotes is very high. The young 
 man hesitates. The price quoted includes 
 comfort, parental approval, domestic peace, 
 money, luxury, and perhaps also a comfort- 
 able and not unsatisfactory marriage. It 
 includes practically all the ingredients of the 
 mixture commonly known as happiness. Of 
 
14 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 course, by following literature the young 
 man may recover all and more than all the 
 price paid. But also he may nat. The 
 chances are about a hundred to one that he 
 will not. He is risking nearly everything in 
 order to buy a ticket in a lottery. 
 
 Let us say that, being a prudent and 
 obedient young fellow, he declines to beggar 
 himself for a ticket in a lottery. His instinct 
 towards literature has not developed very 
 far ; he sacrifices it and becomes the engineer. 
 By industry and goodwill and native brains 
 he becomes a very fair engineer, the prop of 
 the firm, the aid, and in due course the 
 successor, of his father. He treats his 
 work-people well. He marries a delightful 
 girl, and he even treats her well. He 
 has delightful children. He is a terrific 
 worldly success, and a model to his fellow- 
 creatures. That man's attention to duty, 
 his altruism, his real kindness, are the theme 
 
RUNNING AWAY FROM LIFE 15 
 
 of conversation among all his friends. He 
 treats his conscience with the most extra- 
 ordinary respect. 
 
 And yet, if his instinct towards Hterature 
 was genuine, he is not fundamentally happy, 
 and when he chances to meet an author, or to 
 read about authors (even about their suicides 
 of despair), or to be deeply impressed by a 
 book, he is acutely aware that he has com- 
 mitted the sin of taking refuge from life ; he 
 knows that the extraordinary respect which 
 he pays to his conscience is at bottom a 
 doping of that organ ; he perceives that the 
 smooth path is in fact the rough path, and 
 that the rough path, which he dared not face, 
 might have been, with all its asperities, th. 
 smooth one. His existence is a vast secret and 
 poisonous regret ; and there is nothing what- 
 ever to be done ; there is no antidote for the 
 poison ; the dope is a drug — and insufficient 
 at that. 
 
i6 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 V 
 
 Women, even in these latter days when 
 reason is supposed to have got human nature 
 by the neck, have far greater opportunities 
 and temptations than men to run away from 
 life. Indeed, many of them are taught and 
 encouraged to do so. The practice of the 
 three ancient cardinal female virtues — shut- 
 ting your eyes, stopping your ears, and burying 
 your head in the sand — is very carefully in- 
 culcated ; and then, of course, people turn 
 round on young women and upbraid them 
 because they are afraid of existence ! And, 
 though things are changing, they have not 
 yet definitely changed. I would not blame a 
 whole sex — no matter which — for anything 
 whatever. But to state a fact is not to 
 blame. The fact is that women, when they 
 get a chance, do show a tendency to shirk 
 life. Large numbers of them come to grips 
 
RUNNING AWAY FROM LIFE 17 
 
 with life simply because they are compelled 
 to do so. A woman whose material existence 
 is well assured will not as a rule go out into 
 the world. Further, she will not marry as 
 willingly as the woman who needs a home 
 and cannot see the prospect of it except 
 through marriage. By which I mean to 
 imply that with women the achievement of 
 marriage is due less to the instinct to mate 
 than to an economic instinct. Men are 
 wicked animals and "know not righteousness, 
 but it may be said of them generally that with 
 them the achievement of marriage is due to 
 the instinct to mate. 
 
 Examining the cases of certain women who 
 put off marrying, I have been forced to the 
 conclusion that their only reason for hesitating 
 to marry is that men are not perfect, and 
 that to marry an imperfect man involves risk. 
 It does, but the reason is not valid. Risk 
 is the very essence of life, and the total absence 
 
 B 
 
i8 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 of danger is equal to death. I do not say 
 that to follow an unsatisfactory vocation 
 and to fail in it is better than to follow no 
 vocation. But I am inclined to say that any 
 marriage is better than no marriage — for 
 both sexes. And I think that the most tragic 
 spectacle on earth is an old woman metaphori- 
 cally wrapped in cotton-wool who at some 
 period of her career has refused life because of 
 the peril of inconvenience and unhappiness. 
 Both men and women can run away from 
 life in ways far more subtle and less drastic 
 than those which I have named. For the sake 
 of clearness I have confined myself to rather 
 crude and obvious examples of flight. There 
 are probably few of us who are not conscious 
 of having declined at least some minor chal- 
 lenge of existence. And there are still fewer 
 of us who can charge ourselves with having 
 been consistently too bold in our desire to 
 get the full savour of existence. 
 
RUNNING AWAY FROM LIFE 19 
 
 VI 
 
 E^ch individual must define happiness for 
 himself or herself. For my part, I rule out 
 practically all the dictionary definitions. In 
 most dictionaries you will find that the 
 principal meaning attached to the word is 
 ' good fortune ' or ' prosperity.' Which is 
 notoriously absurd. Then come such de- 
 finitions as ' a state of well-being character- 
 ised by relative permanence, by dominantly 
 agreeable emotion . . . and by a natural 
 desire for its continuation.' This last is from 
 Webster, and it is very clever. Yet I will 
 have none of it, unless I am allowed to 
 define the word ' well-being ' in my own 
 way. 
 
 For me, an individual cannot be in a state 
 of well-being if any of his faculties are per- 
 manently idle through any fault of his own. 
 The full utilisation of all the faculties seems 
 
20 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 to me to be the foundation of well-being. 
 But I doubt if a full utilisation of all the 
 faculties necessarily involves the idea of good 
 fortune, or prosperity, or tranquillity, or 
 contentedness with one's lot, or even a 
 ' dominantly agreeable emotion ' ; very often 
 it rather involves the contrary. 
 
 In my view happiness includes chiefly the 
 idea of ' satisfaction after full honest effort.' 
 Everybody is guilty of mistakes and of serious 
 mistakes, and the contemplation of these 
 mistakes must darken, be it ever so little, the 
 last years of existence. But it need not be 
 fatal to a general satisfaction. Men and 
 women may in the end be forced to admit : 
 ' I made a fool of myself,' and still be fairly 
 happy. But no one can possibly be satisfied, 
 and therefore no one can in my sense be happy, 
 who feels that in some paramount affair he has 
 failed to take up the challenge of life. For 
 a voice within him, which none else can hear, 
 
RUNNING AWAY FROM LIFE 21 
 
 but which he cannot choke, will constantly 
 be murmuring : 
 
 ' You lacked courage. You hadn't the 
 pluck. You ran away.' 
 
 And it is happier to be unhappy in the 
 ordinary sense all one's life than to have to 
 listen at the end to that dreadful interior 
 verdict. 
 
SOME AXIOMS ABOUT 
 WAR-WORK 
 
SOME AXIOMS ABOUT WAR-WORK 
 
 This essay concerns men, but it concerns 
 women more. 
 
 When citizens begin to learn, through 
 newspapers and general rumour, that volun- 
 tary war-work is afoot, and that volunteers 
 are badly wanted, and that there is work for 
 all who love their country, then those who 
 love their country are at once sharply divided 
 into two classes — the people to whom the 
 work comes, and the people who have to go 
 out to seek the work. The former are the 
 people of prominent social position ; the 
 latter are the remainder of the population. 
 The prominent persons will see work rolling 
 up to their front doors in quantities huge 
 
 86 
 
26 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 enough to overthrow the entire house. The 
 remainder will look out of the window and 
 see nothing at all unusual in the street. 
 They are then apt to say : ' This is very odd. 
 There is much work to do. I am ready to 
 do my share. Why doesn't somebody come 
 along and ask me to do it ? ' And they 
 feel rather hurt at the neglect, and finally 
 they sigh : ' Well, if no one gives me 
 anything to do, of course I can't do any- 
 thing.' 
 
 Such an attitude would be quite reasonable 
 if society was like a telephone-exchange, and 
 anybody could get precisely the person he or 
 she was after by paying a girl a pound or two 
 a week to stick plugs into holes. But society 
 not being like a telephone-exchange, the 
 attitude is unreasonable. Patriots cannot 
 expect the organisers of war-work to run up 
 and down streets knocking at doors and. 
 crying : ' Come ! You are the very woman 
 
SOME AXIOMS ABOUT WAR-WORK 27 
 
 I need ! ' However much urgent war-work 
 is waiting to be done, nine-tenths of the in- 
 dividuals who are anxious to do it will have 
 to put themselves to a certain amount of 
 trouble in order to discover the work, per- 
 haps to a great deal of trouble. Having 
 located the work, they may even have almost 
 to beg for the privilege of doing it. Again, 
 they are rather hurt. They demand, why 
 should they go on their knees ? They are not 
 asking a favour. 
 
 A woman will say : 
 
 ' I went and offered my services. And he 
 looked at me as if I was a doubtful character, 
 and you never heard such a cross-examina- 
 tion as I had to go through ! It was most 
 humiliating.' 
 
 True ! True ! But could she reasonably 
 expect the cross-examiner to see into the inside 
 of her head ? The first use and the last use 
 of the gift of speech is to ask questions. 
 
28 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 Moreover, respected madam, it is quite 
 probable that the cross-examiner was not a 
 bit suspicious, and that his manner was 
 simply due to dumbfoundedness, to mere in- 
 ability to believe that so ideal a person as 
 yourself had, so to speak, fallen from heaven 
 straight into his net. And further, respected 
 madam, are not you yourself suspicious ? If 
 the cross-examiner had come to you, instead of 
 you going to him, might not your first thought 
 have been : ' What advantage is he trying 
 to gain by coming to me ? I shall say No ! ' 
 If it is true that people who ask for work 
 are stared at, it is equally true that people 
 who are asked to work also stare — a little 
 haughtily. And when the latter graciously 
 promise assistance, they often say to them- 
 selves : ' I shall do as little as I can, because 
 I 'm not going to be taken advantage of.' 
 And they almost invariably end by doing 
 more than they can, and by insisting on being 
 
SOME AXIOMS ABOUT WAR-WORK 29 
 
 taken advantage of. Human nature is mean, 
 but it is also noble. 
 
 Axiom : The preliminary trouble and 
 weariness and annoyance incidental to getting 
 the work are themselves a necessary and 
 inevitable part of war- work, just as much 
 as bandaging the brows of heroes. 
 
 II 
 
 Life is a continual passage from one illusion 
 to another. No sooner has the eager volun- 
 teer found out that the desire to help is apt 
 to be treated as evidence of a criminal dis- 
 position, and that war-work is as shy as deer 
 in the depths of a forest — no sooner has he or 
 she discovered these things than yet another 
 discovery destroys yet another illusion. The 
 war-work when brought to bay and caught 
 is not the right kind of war-work. You — 
 for I may as well admit that I am talking 
 direct to the eager volunteer — you had ex- 
 
30 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 pected something else. This war-work that 
 presents itself is either beneath your powers, 
 or it is beyond your powers ; or it is unsuited 
 to your individuality or to your social station 
 or to your health or to your hands or feet. 
 You can scarcely say what you had expected, 
 but at any rate ... I will tell you what you 
 had expected. You had expected the ideal — 
 work that showed you at your best, pictur- 
 esque work, interesting work, work free from 
 monotony, work of which you could see the 
 immediate beautiful results, work which 
 taxed you without overtaxing you, really 
 important work without the moral risks 
 attaching to real responsibility. Such was the 
 work you had expected, and the chances are 
 ten to one that the work you have actually 
 got is dull, monotonous, apparently futile ; 
 any fool could do it, though it is exhausting 
 and inconvenient. Or, on the other hand, it 
 is, while dull and monotonous, too exacting 
 
SOME AXIOMS ABOUT WAR-WORK 31 
 
 for a well-intentioned mediocre brain like 
 yours (you don't actually mean that, but 
 you try to be modest) — in short it is not 
 suitable work. 
 
 Axiom : There is not enough suitable 
 work to go round, nor the thousandth part 
 of what would be enough. Unsuitableness 
 is a characteristic of nearly all war-work. 
 Lowering your great powers down, or forcing 
 your little powers up, to the level of the 
 work offered — this, too, is part of war-work. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Again, you have to get away from the 
 illusion that you can live a new life and still 
 keep on living the old life. Everybody, as 
 has somewhere been stated, possesses twenty- 
 four hours in each day. Everybody occupies 
 every one of his twenty-four hours. You do, 
 though you may think you don't. If you do 
 not occupy them in labour then you occupy 
 
32 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 them in idleness ; if not in usefulness, then 
 in futility. Now idleness and futility are 
 much more difficult to expel from hours which 
 they have appropriated than labour and use- 
 fulness are difficult to expel. But if war- 
 work is brought in, something will have to be 
 expelled. Habits of labour and usefulness 
 are sometimes hard enough to change ; habits 
 of idleness and futility are still harder. If 
 you were previously spending your after- 
 noons in giving and accepting elaborate 
 afternoon teas, you will have more trouble in 
 devoting your afternoons to war-work than 
 if you had been spending them, for example, 
 in the pursuit of knowledge. It is child's 
 play to abandon the pursuit of knowledge ; 
 no moral stamina is required ; but to give up 
 the exciting sociabilities of afternoon tea is a 
 tremendous feat. So much so, that if you 
 are a votary of this indigestive practice, you 
 will infallibly endeavour to persuade yourself 
 
SOME AXIOMS ABOUT WAR-WORK 33 
 
 at first : ' I can manage the two — war-work 
 and afternoon teas as well. I can fit them in.' 
 
 You cannot fit them in — at any rate success- 
 fully. The essence of war-work is that it 
 may not be fitted in. If it does not mean 
 sacrifice, it means naught. Sacrifice is giving 
 something for nothing. You cannot give 
 something and yet stick to it. Certain 
 persons are apt to buy an article to give 
 away, and then are so pleased with the 
 article that they decide to keep it for them- 
 selves. They thus obtain for a period the 
 sensation of benevolence without any ultimate 
 corresponding sacrifice. This is the nearest 
 approach, that I know of, to giving something 
 and yet sticking to it ; but it has no relation 
 whatever to war-work. 
 
 Axiom : If a tea-cup is full you cannot 
 pour anything into it until you have poured 
 something out. 
 
34 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 IV 
 
 The next, and the next to the last, illusion 
 to go is a masterpiece of simple-mindedness, 
 and yet nearly all who take up war-work are 
 found at first to be under its sway. It is the 
 illusion that war-work, being a fine and noble 
 thing, ought to change people's natures and 
 dispositions, in such a manner as to produce 
 the maximum of co-operating effort with the 
 minimum of friction. 
 
 Now the very heart of all war-work is the 
 grand and awe-inspiring institution of the 
 Committee. If you are engaged on war- 
 work you are bound to sit on a Committee ; 
 or, in default of a Committee, a Sub-Com- 
 mittee (which usually has more real power 
 than the bumptious and unwieldy body that 
 overlords it). And, if you are on neither a 
 Committee nor a Sub-Committee, then you 
 are bound sooner or later to be called up 
 
SOME AXIOMS ABOUT WAR-WORK 35 
 
 before a Committee or a Sub-Committee, 
 and to be in a position to give the Committee 
 or Sub-Committee a piece of your mind. 
 Thus your legitimate ambition will somehow 
 be satisfied. 
 
 But let us suppose that you are at once 
 elected to a Committee. Well, among the 
 members of the Committee are three persons 
 you know— Miss X, Mr. Y, and Mrs. Z. 
 Miss X used to be a mannish and reckless and 
 cheeky young maid. Mr. Y used to be an 
 interfering and narrow-minded old maid. 
 Mrs. Z used to be nothing in particular. 
 You enter the Committee-room, and you see 
 these three, together with a few others who 
 have not a very promising air. (Probably 
 no sight is more depressing than the cordon of 
 faces round a Committee-room table.) You, 
 however, are not downcast. You feel in 
 yourself the uplifting power of a great ideal. 
 You are determined to make the best of your- 
 
36 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 self and of everybody. And you are con- 
 vinced that everybody is determined to do 
 the same. But in less than five minutes 
 Miss X, despite her obvious lack of experience, 
 is offering the most absurd proposals ; she 
 has put her elbows on the table ; and she is 
 calmly teaching all her grandmothers to suck 
 eggs. Mr. Y is objecting to the ruling of the 
 Chairman, and obstinately arguing against 
 a resolution that has been carried, and indeed 
 implying that the Committee ought not to do 
 anything at all. As for Mrs. Z she has 
 scarcely opened her mouth ; when the Chair- 
 man asked her for her opinion she blushed 
 and said she rather agreed, and she voted both 
 for and against the first resolution. 
 
 ' Is it conceivable,' you exclaim in your soul, 
 ' is it conceivable that these individuals can 
 behave so in such a supreme crisis of the 
 nation's history, at a moment when the 
 nation has need of every citizen's loyal 
 
SOME AXIOMS ABOUT WAR-WORK 37 
 
 goodwill, of every — ? ' etc. etc. ' No ! They 
 cannot have realised that we are at war ! ' 
 
 And sundry other members of the Com- 
 mittee are not much better than the ignoble 
 three. Indeed, your faith in Committees is 
 practically destroyed. You say to yourself, 
 with your blunt, vigorous common sense : 
 ' If only the Committee would adjourn and 
 leave the whole matter to me, I am sure I 
 could manage it much better than they are 
 doing.' You consider that a Committee is 
 a device for wasting time and for flattering 
 the conceit of opinionated fools. . . . Then 
 Mr. Y becomes absolutely impossible. You 
 feel that you are prepared to stand a lot, but 
 that there is a limit and that Mr. Y has gone 
 beyond it. You are ready to work, and to 
 work hard, but you cannot be expected to 
 work with people who are impossible. You 
 decide to send in your resignation to the 
 Chairman at once. 
 
38 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 I hope you will not send it in. For at 
 least half the Committee are thinking just as 
 you are thinking. And one or two of them 
 are thinking these things, not apropos of 
 Miss X, Mr. Y, or Mrs. Z, but apropos of you ! 
 And if you are startled at the spectacle of 
 people persisting in being j«st themselves in 
 war-work, then the fault is yours, and you 
 should be gently ashamed. You ought to 
 have known that people are never more them- 
 selves than in a great crisis, especially when 
 the crisis is prolonged. You ought to be 
 thankful that the Committee has unsealed 
 your eyes to so fundamental a truth. You 
 have realised that we are at war, — ^you 
 ought also to realise that it takes all sorts 
 to make a world, even a world at war. 
 You ought to imagine what would happen 
 if every member of the Committee, like 
 you, resigned because Mr. Y was impos- 
 sible, and thus left the impossible Mr. 
 
SOME AXIOMS ABOUT WAR-WORK 39 
 
 Y in possession of the table and the 
 secretary. 
 
 Axiom : The most valorous and morally 
 valuable war-work is the work of working 
 with impossible people. 
 
 And may I warn you that you will later on, 
 if you succeed as a war-worker, encounter 
 more terrible phenomena than Mr. Y, who 
 at the worst can always be out-voted ? You 
 will encounter, for example, the famous and 
 fashionable lady who, justifiably relying on 
 human nature's profound and incurable snob- 
 bishness, will give all the hard work to you and 
 those like you, while appropriating all the 
 glory and advertisement for herself. And, 
 more terrible even than the famous and 
 fashionable lady, you will run up against the 
 OfiScial Mind. The Official Mind is the 
 worst of all obstacles to getting things done. 
 And the gravest danger of the war-worker, 
 particularly if he attains high rank on Com- 
 
Missing Page 
 
Missing Page 
 
THE DIARY HABIT 
 
THE DIARY HABIT 
 
 Let us consider, first, a strange quality of the 
 written word. 
 
 The spoken word is bad enough. Such 
 things as misfortunes, blunders, sins, and 
 apprehensions become more serious when 
 they have been described even in conversation. 
 A woman who secretly fears cancer will fear 
 it much more once she has mentioned her fear 
 to another person. The spoken word has 
 somehow given reality to her fear. But the 
 written word is far more formidable than the 
 spoken word. It is said that the ignorant 
 and the uncultured have a superstitious dread 
 of writing. The dread is not superstitious ; 
 it is based on a mysterious and intimidating 
 
46 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 phenomenon which nearly anybody can test 
 for himself. The fact is that almost all 
 people are afraid of writing — I mean true, 
 honest writing. Vast numbers of people hate 
 and loathe it, as though it were a high ex- 
 plosive that might suddenly go off and blow 
 them to pieces. (That is one reason why 
 realistic novels never have a very large sale.) 
 But the difference between one man's dread 
 of writing and another man's dread of writing 
 is merely a difference of degree, not of kind. 
 And if any among you asserts that he has no 
 fear of the written word, merely because it is 
 written, let him try the following experiment. 
 Take — O exceptional individual ! — take 
 some concealed and blameworthy action or 
 series of thoughts of your own. I do not 
 mean necessarily murder or embezzlement ; 
 not everybody has committed murder or 
 embezzlement, or even desires to do so ; I 
 mean some matter — any matter — of which 
 
THE DIARY HABIT 47 
 
 you are so ashamed, or about which you are 
 so nervous, that you have never mentioned 
 it to a soul. All of us — even you — have such 
 matters hidden beneath waistcoat or corsage. 
 Write down that matter ; put it in black and 
 white. The chances are that you won't ; the 
 chances are that you will find some excuse 
 for not writing it down. 
 
 You may say : 
 
 ' Ah ! But suppose some one happened 
 to see it ! ' 
 
 To which I would reply : 
 
 ' Write it and lock it up in your safe.' 
 
 To which you may rejoin : 
 
 ' Ah ! But I might lose the key of the 
 safe and some one might find it and open the 
 safe. Also I might die suddenly.' 
 
 To which I would retort : 
 
 ' If you are dead you needn't mind dis- 
 covery,' 
 
 To which you might respond : 
 
48 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 ' How do you know that if I was dead I 
 needn't mind discovery ? ' 
 
 Well, I will yield you that point, and still 
 prove to you that your objection to the 
 written word does not spring from the fear 
 of giving yourself away. The experiment 
 shall be performed under strict conditions. 
 
 Empty your house of all its inhabitants 
 save yourself. Lock the front-door and the 
 back-door. Go upstairs to your own room. 
 Lock the door of your own room. Pile fur- 
 niture before the door, so that you cannot 
 possibly be surprised. Light a fire. Place 
 the writing-table near the fire. Arrange it 
 so that at the slightest alarm of discovery 
 you can with a single movement thrust your 
 writing into the fire. Then begin to write 
 down that of which you are ashamed. You 
 are absolutely safe. Nevertheless you will 
 hesitate to write. And you will not have 
 got very far in your narration before you 
 
THE DIARY HABIT 49 
 
 find yourself writing down something that is 
 not quite so unpleasant as the truth, or before 
 you find yourself omitting some detail which 
 ought not to be omitted. You will have great 
 difficulty in forcing yourself to be utterly 
 frank on paper. You may fail in being 
 utterly frank ; you probably will so fail ; 
 most people do. When you have finished 
 and hold the document in your hand, you 
 will start guiltily if the newly moved furniture 
 creaks in front of the door. You will read 
 through the document with discomfort and 
 constraint. And you will stick it in the fire 
 and Watch it burn with a very clear feeling of 
 relief. 
 
 Why all these strange sensations ? You 
 could not have been caught in the act. More- 
 over, there was nothing on the paper of which 
 you were not fully aware, and which you had 
 not fully realised. Nobody can write down 
 that which he does not know and realise. 
 
 D 
 
50 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 Quite possibly the whole matter had been 
 thoroughly familiar to you, a commonplace 
 of your brain, for weeks, months, years. 
 Quite possibly you had recalled every detail 
 of it hundreds of times, and it had never 
 caused you any grave inconvenience. But, in- 
 stantly it is written down it becomes acutely, 
 intolerably disturbing — ^so much so that you 
 cannot rest until the written word is destroyed. 
 You are precisely the same man as you were 
 before beginning to write ; naught is altered ; 
 you have committed no new crime. But 
 you have a new shame. I repeat, why ? 
 The only immediate answer is that the 
 honest written word possesses a mysterious 
 and intimidating power. This power has to 
 do with the sense of sight. You see some- 
 thing. You do not see your action or your 
 thoughts as it might be on the cinema screen 
 — happily ! — but you do see something in 
 regard to the matter. 
 
THE DIARY HABIT 5 1 
 
 II 
 
 The above considerations are offered to 
 that enormous class of people, springing up 
 afresh every year, who say to themselves : 
 ' I will keep a diary and it shall be abso- 
 lutely true.' You may keep a diary, but 
 beyond question it will not be absolutely 
 true. You will be lucky, or you must be 
 rather gifted, if it is not studded with un- 
 truths. You protest that you have a well- 
 earned reputation for veracity. I would 
 not doubt it. When I say ' untruths ' I 
 do not mean, for instance, that if the day 
 was beautifully fine you would write in your 
 diary : ' A very wet day to-day ; went for 
 a walk and got soaked through.' I am 
 convinced that you would be above such 
 lying perversions. But also I am convinced 
 that if a husband and wife, both as veracious 
 and conscientious as yourself, had a quarrel 
 
52 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 and described the history of the quarrel 
 each in a private diary, the two accounts 
 would by no means coincide, and the whole 
 truth would be in neither of them. Some 
 people start a diary as casually as they 
 start golf, stamps, or a new digestive cure. 
 Whereas to start a diary ought to be a solemn 
 and notable act, done with a due appreciation 
 of the difficulties thereby initiated. The very 
 essence of a diary is truth — a diary of untruth 
 would be pointless — and to attain truth is the 
 hardest thing on earth. To attain partial 
 truth is not a bit easy, and even to avoid 
 falsehood is decidedly a feat. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Having discouraged, I now wish to en- 
 courage. Many who want to keep diaries 
 and who ought to keep diaries do not, because 
 they are too diffident. They say : ' My life 
 is not interesting enough.' I ask : ' Interest- 
 
THE DIARY HABIT 53 
 
 ing to whom ? To the world in general or 
 to themselves?' It is necessary only that 
 a life should be interesting to the person who 
 lives that life. If you have a desire to keep 
 a diary, it follows that your existence is 
 interesting to you. Otherwise obviously you 
 would not wish to make a record of it. The 
 greatest diarists did not lead very palpitating 
 lives. Ninety-five per cent, of Pepys's Diary 
 deals with tiny daily happenings of the most 
 banal sort — such happenings as we all go 
 through. If Pepys re-read his entries the 
 day after he wrote them, he must have found 
 them somewhat tedious. Certainly he had 
 not the slightest notion that he was writing 
 one of the great outstanding books of English 
 literature. 
 
 But diaries are the opposite of novels, in 
 that time increases instead of decreasing their 
 interest. After a reasonable period every 
 sentence in a diary blossoms into interest, 
 
54 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 and the diarist simply cannot be dull — any- 
 more than a great wit such as Sidney Smith 
 could be unfunny. If Sidney Smith asked 
 Helen to pass him the salt, the entire table 
 roared with laughter because it was inex- 
 plicably so funny. If the diarist writes in 
 his diary, ' I asked Helen to pass me the salt,' 
 within three years he will find the sentence 
 inexplicably interesting to himself. In thirty 
 years his family will be inexplicably interested 
 to read that on a certain day he asked Helen 
 to pass him the salt. In three hundred years 
 a whole nation will be reading with inex- 
 plicable and passionate interest that centuries 
 earlier he asked Helen to pass him the salt, 
 and critics will embroider theories upon both 
 Helen and the salt and will even earn a living 
 by producing new annotated editions of Helen 
 and the salt. And if the diary turns up after 
 three thousand years, the entire world will 
 hum with the inexplicable thrilling fact that 
 
THE DIARY HABIT 55 
 
 he asked Helen to pass him the salt ; which 
 fact will be cabled round the globe as a piece 
 of latest news ; and immediately afterwards 
 there will be cabled round the globe the views 
 of expert scholars of all nationalities on the 
 problem whether, when he had asked Helen 
 to pass him the salt, Helen did actually pass 
 him the salt, or not. Timid prospective 
 diarists in need of encouragement should 
 keep this great principle in mind. 
 
 You will say : 
 
 ' But what do I care about posterity ? 
 I would not keep a diary for the sake of 
 posterity.' 
 
 Possibly not, but some people would. 
 Some people, if they thought their diaries 
 would be read three hundred years hence, or 
 even a hundred years hence, would begin 
 diaries to-morrow and persevere with them 
 to the day of death. Some people of course 
 are peculiar. And I admit that I am of your 
 
56 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 opinion. The thought of posterity leaves 
 me stone cold. 
 
 There is only one valid reason for begin- 
 ning a diary — namely, that you find pleasure 
 in beginning it ; and only one valid reason 
 for continuing a diary — namely, that you 
 find pleasure in continuing it. You may 
 find profit in doing so, but that is not the 
 main point — though it is a point. You will 
 most positively experience pleasure in read- 
 ing it after a long interval ; but that is not 
 the main point either — though it is an im- 
 portant point. A diary should find its 
 sufficient justification in the writing of it. 
 If the act of writing is not its own reward, 
 then let the diary remain for ever unwritten. 
 
 IV 
 
 But beware of that word ' writing.' Just 
 as some persons are nervous when entering 
 a drawing-room (or even a restaurant !), so 
 
THE DIARY HABIT 57 
 
 some persons are nervous when taking up a 
 pen. AH persons, as I have tried to show, 
 are nervous about the psychological effects 
 of the written word, but some persons — 
 indeed many — are additionally nervous about 
 the mere business of writing the word. They 
 begin to hanker, with awe, after a mysterious 
 ideal known as ' correct style.' They are 
 actually under the delusion that writing is 
 essentially different from talking — a secret 
 trade process ! — and they are not aware that 
 he who says or thinks interesting things can 
 write interesting things, and that he who can 
 make himself understood in speech can make 
 himself understood in writing — if he goes the 
 right way to work ! 
 
 I have known people, especially the young, 
 who could discourse on themselves in the most 
 attractive manner for hours, and yet who 
 simply could not discover in their heads 
 sufficient material for a short letter. They 
 
58 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 would bemoan : ' I can't think of anything 
 to say.' It was true. And, of course, they 
 could not think of anything to say, the 
 reason being that they were trying to think 
 of something to write, and very wrongly 
 assuming that writing is necessarily different 
 from saying ! Writing may be different from 
 saying, but it need not be different, and for 
 the diarist it should not be different. And, 
 above all, it should not be superficially 
 different. The inexperienced, when they use 
 ink, have a pestilent notion that saying has to 
 be translated or transmogrified into writing. 
 They conceive an idea in spoken words, and 
 then they subconsciously or consciously ask 
 themselves : ' I should say it like that — but 
 how ought I to write it ? ' They alter the 
 forms of their sentences. They worry about 
 grammar and phrase-construction and even 
 spelling. As for gramnmr and spelling, 
 in the greatest age of English litera- 
 
THE DIARY HABIT 59 
 
 ture neither subject was understood, and 
 no writer could be trusted either in spell- 
 ing or in grammar. To this day very few 
 writers of genius are to be trusted either 
 in spelling or in grammar. As for phrase- 
 construction, the phrase that comes to your 
 tongue is more likely to be well constructed 
 than the phrase which you bring forcibly 
 into being at the point of your pen. If you 
 know enough grammar to talk comprehen- 
 sibly, you know enough to write compre- 
 hensibly, and you need not trouble about 
 anything else ; in fact, you ought not to do 
 so, and you must not. Formality in a diary 
 is a mistake. Write as you think, as you 
 speak, and it may be given to you to produce 
 literature. But if while you are writing you re- 
 member that there is such a thing as literature, 
 you will assuredly never produce literature. 
 
 This does not mean that you are entitled to 
 write anyhow, without thought and without 
 
6o SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 effort. Not a bit. Good diaries are not 
 achieved thus. Although you may and 
 should ignore the preoccupations of what 
 I will call, sarcastically, ' literary composition,' 
 you must have always before you the ideal 
 of effectively getting your thought on to the 
 paper. You would, sooner or later, say your 
 thought effectively, but in writing it down 
 some travail is needed to imagine what the 
 perhaps unstudied spoken words would be. 
 And also, the memory must be fully and 
 honestly exercised to recall the scene or the 
 incident described. By carelessness you run 
 the risk of ' leaving out the interesting part.' 
 By being conscientious you ensure that the 
 maximum of interest is attained. 
 
 Lastly, it is necessary to conquer the human 
 objection to hard labour of any sort. It is 
 not a paradox to assert that man often 
 dislikes the work which he likes. For my- 
 self, every day anew, I hate to start work. 
 
THE DIARY HABIT 6i 
 
 You may end your day with the full know- 
 ledge that you have had experiences that 
 day worthy to go into the diary, which ex- 
 periences remain in your mind obstinately. 
 And yet you hate to open the diary, and even 
 when you have opened it you hate to put 
 your back into the business of writing. You 
 are tempted to write without reflection, with- 
 out order, and too briefly. To resist the 
 temptation to be slack and casual and second- 
 rate involves constant effort. Diary-keeping 
 should be a pastime, but properly done it is 
 also a task — like many other pastimes. I 
 have kept a diary for over twenty-one years, 
 and I know a little about it. I know more 
 than a little about the remorse — alas, futile ! 
 — which follows negligence. In diary-keep- 
 ing negligence cannot be repaired. That 
 which is gone is gone beyond return. 
 
A DANGEROUS LECTURE 
 TO A YOUNG WOMAN 
 
Missing Page 
 
Missing Page 
 
66 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 She frowned— just a little frown in the 
 middle of her forehead. She was very well- 
 dressed (which is not a fault), and she had 
 a pleasant, sympathetic, serious face. She 
 said : 
 
 ' I 've often wanted to tell you ; in fact, I 
 thought I ought to tell you about all those 
 little books of yours about life and improving 
 oneself, and being efficient and not wasting 
 time, and so on, and so on. They 're very 
 nice to read, but they 've never done me any 
 good — practically.' She smiled. 
 
 (No ; it was not to be the usual amiable 
 chatter !) 
 
 ' I 'm sorry,' I said. * But, of course, books 
 don't act by themselves. You can't expect 
 them to be of much practical good until you 
 begin to put them into practice.' 
 
 * But that 's just the point,' she answered. 
 * I can't begin to put them into practice. I 
 can't resolve, and I can't concentrate, and 
 
A DANGEROUS LECTURE 67 
 
 I can't clench my teeth and make up my 
 mind. And if I do make a sort of start, it 's 
 a failure after the first day. And this goes 
 on year after year. No use blaming me — 
 I can't help myself. I want awfully — but I 
 can't.' 
 
 ' But what do you want ? ' 
 
 ' I want to make the best of myself. I want 
 to stop wasting time and to perfect my 
 " human machine." I want to succeed in 
 life. I want to live properly and bring out 
 all my faculties. Only, you see, I haven't 
 got any resolution, I simply have not got 
 it in me. You tell me to make up my mind, 
 steel myself, resolve, stick to it, and so forth. 
 Well, I just can't. And yet I do want to. 
 You 've never dealt with my case — and, 
 what 's more, I don't think you can deal with 
 it. I hope you '11 pardon all this bluntness. 
 But I thought that, as a student of human 
 nature, you might be interested.' 
 
68 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 I stood silent for a moment. She bowed 
 with much charm and fled away. I gazed 
 everywhere. But she was lost in the huge 
 room. I could not very well run in pursuit 
 of her — these things are not done in literary 
 circles. She had vanished. And I knew 
 naught of her. She might be young girl, 
 young wife, young mother, anything — ^but I 
 knew naught of her except that she had a sym- 
 pathetic, rather sad face, and that she had 
 left an arrow quivering in my side. 
 
 II 
 
 A few hours later, however, I spoke to the 
 young creature as follows : 
 
 ' It seems to me that you may have been 
 running your delightful head up against an 
 impossible proposition. Perhaps you have 
 been hoping to create energy in yourself. 
 Now, you cannot create energy, either in 
 yourself or elsewhere. Nobody can. You 
 
A DANGEROUS LECTURE 69 
 
 can only set energy free, loosen it, transform 
 it, direct it. 
 
 ' You may take a ton of coal and warm a 
 house with it. The heat-energy of the coal 
 is transformed, set free, and directed to a 
 certain purpose. But if you try to warm the 
 house by means of open coal fires in old- 
 fashioned fire-grates, you will warm the 
 chimneys and some of the air above the 
 chimneys — and yet the rooms of the house 
 will not be appreciably warmer than they 
 were when you began. On the other hand, 
 you may take a ton of exactly the same kind 
 of coal and by means of a steam-heating 
 system in the cellar warm the rooms of the 
 house to such an extent that you have to 
 wear your summer clothes in the depth of 
 winter. The steam-heating system, however, 
 has not increased the heat-energy of the coal ; 
 it has merely set free, utilised, and directed 
 the heat-energy of the coal in a common- 
 
70 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 sense — that is to say, a scientific — manner. 
 No amount of common sense and ingenuity 
 will get as much heat-energy out of half a 
 ton as out of a ton of coal. You may devise 
 the most marvellous steam-heating system 
 that exists on this side of the grave, but if 
 there is no fuel in the furnace, or if there is in 
 the furnace a quantity of coal inadequate to 
 the size of the house, the house will never be 
 comfortable except for polar bears and lovers. 
 The available coal is the prime factor. 
 
 ' Well, an individual is born with a certain 
 amount of energy — and no more. Just as you 
 cannot pour five quarts out of a gallon (as a 
 rule, you cannot pour even four quarts), so 
 you cannot extract from that individual more 
 energy than there is in him. And, what is 
 more important, you cannot put additional 
 quantities of energy into him. You may 
 sometimes seem to be putting energy into 
 him, but you are not ; you are simply setting 
 
A DANGEROUS LECTURE 71 
 
 his original energy free, applying a match to 
 the coal or fanning the fire. An individual 
 is an island on whose rocky shores no ship 
 can ever land that most mysterious com- 
 modity — energy. You may transfuse blood, 
 but not the inexplicable force that makes the 
 heart beat and defies circumstance. 
 
 ' Some individuals appear to lack energy, 
 when, as a fact, they are full of energy which 
 is merely dormant, waiting for the match, or 
 waiting for direction. Other individuals ap- 
 pear to lack energy, and, in fact, do lack 
 energy. And you cannot supply their need 
 any more than you can stop their hair from 
 growing. 
 
 ' No, young lady ; it is useless to interrupt 
 me by asking me to define what I mean by 
 the word " energy." To define some words 
 is to cripple them. You know well enough 
 what I mean by energy. I mean the most 
 fundamental thing in you. 
 
72 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 ' Being a reasonable woman, you admit this 
 — ^and then go on to demand, first, how you 
 can be quite sure whether you have been born 
 with a large or medium or a small quantity 
 of energy, and, second, how you can be quite 
 sure that you have not lots of energy lying 
 dormant within you. You cannot be quite 
 sure of anything. This is not a perfect world. 
 
 ' But, as regards the second part of your 
 question, you can be reasonably sure after 
 a certain number of years — I will not sug- 
 gest how many — that energy is not lying 
 dormant within you, awaiting the match. 
 It is impossible for anybody indefinitely to 
 continue to wander in a world full of lighted 
 matches without one day encountering the 
 particular match that will set fire to his fuel. 
 And beware of that match, for sometimes 
 the result of the contact is an explosion which 
 shatters everything in the vicinity. If you 
 have dormant energy, one day it will wake 
 
A DANGEROUS LECTURE 7i 
 
 up and worry you, and you will know it is 
 there. 
 
 ' As regards the first part of your question, 
 the usual index of the amount of energy pos- 
 sessed by an individual is the intensity of the 
 desires of that individual. It is desire that 
 uses energy. Strong desires generally betoken 
 much energy, and they are definite desires. 
 Without desires, energy is rendered futile. 
 Nobody will consume energy in action unless 
 he desires to perform the action, either for 
 itself or as a means to a desired end. 
 
 ' But now you complain that I am once 
 more avoiding your case. You assert that 
 you have desires without the corresponding 
 energy or corresponding will to put them 
 into execution. I doubt it. I do not admit 
 it. You must not confuse vague, general 
 aspirations with desire. A real desire is de- 
 finite, concrete. If you have a real desire, 
 you know what you want. You cannot 
 
74 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 merely want — you are bound to want some- 
 thing. 
 
 ' Further, to want something only at in- 
 tervals, when the mind is otherwise un- 
 occupied, is no proof of a real desire ; it 
 amounts to nothing more than a sweet, 
 sad diversion, a spiritual pastime, a simple 
 and pleasant way of making yourself believe 
 that you are a serious person. The desire 
 which indicates great energy is always there, 
 worrying. It is an obsession ; it is a nuis- 
 ance ; it is a whip and a scorpion ; it has no 
 mercy. 
 
 ' And individuals having immense energy 
 have commonly been actuated by a single 
 paramount desire, which monopolises and 
 canalise^ all their force. The pity is that 
 these individuals have become the special 
 symbols of success. When they have achieved 
 their single paramount desire, they are said 
 to have " got on," to have succeeded. And 
 
A DANGEROUS LECTURE 75 
 
 every one points an admiring finger at them 
 and cries, " This is success in life ! " And the 
 majority of books about success in life deal 
 with this particular brand of success, and 
 assume that it is the only brand of success 
 worth a bilberry, and exhort all people to 
 imitate the notorious exemplars of the art of 
 " getting on " and in that narrow sense. 
 Which is absurd. 
 
 ' And now, perhaps, we both feel that I 
 am at last approaching your case. 
 
 ' But I do not wish to be personal. Let 
 us take the case of Mr. Flack, who died last 
 week, unknown. His discerning friends said 
 of him : "He had a wonderful financial gift. 
 If he 'd concentrated on it, he might have 
 rivalled Harriman. But he wouldn't concen- 
 trate either on that or on anything else. He 
 was interested in too many different subjects 
 — books, pictures, music, travel, physical 
 science, love, economics — in fact, everything 
 
;6 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 interested him, and he was always interested 
 in something. He was too all-round. He 
 frittered his energy away, and wasted enor- 
 mous quantities of time. And so he never 
 succeeded." 
 
 * Such was the verdict of some of Flack's 
 admirers. But it occurs to me that Flack 
 may have succeeded after all. Certainly he 
 did not succeed in being a financial mag- 
 nate. But he succeeded in being interested 
 in a large number of things, and therefore in 
 having a wide mind. He succeeded in being 
 always interested. And he succeeded in not 
 being lop-sided, which men of one supreme 
 desire as a rule are. (Men who are successful 
 in the narrow sense generally pay a fearful 
 price for their success.) His friends regret 
 that he wasted his time, but really, if he 
 accomplished all that he admittedly did 
 accomplish, he couldn't have wasted a very 
 great deal of time. 
 
A DANGEROUS LECTURE 7; 
 
 ' Quite possibly the late Mr. Flack used to 
 wake up in the night and curse himself 
 because he could not concentrate, and be- 
 cause he could n€)t stick to one thing, and 
 because he wasted his time, and because, 
 with all his gifts, he did not materially 
 progress, and because he made no impres- 
 sion on the great public. Quite possibly, in 
 moments of gloom, he had regrets about the 
 dissipation of his energy. But he could 
 not honestly have regarded himself as a 
 failure. 
 
 ' I should like to know why it is necessarily 
 more righteous to confine one's energy to a 
 single direction than to let it spread out in 
 various directions. It is not more righteous. 
 If a man has one imperious desire, his right- 
 eousness is to satisfy it fully. But if a man 
 has many mild, equal desires, his righteousness 
 is to satisfy all of them as reasonably well as 
 circumstances permit. And I see no reason 
 
78 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 why one should be deemed more successful 
 than the other. 
 
 ' Yes, young woman ; I know what your 
 excellent modesty is going to say. It is 
 going to say that the late Mr. Flack did show 
 energy, though he " frittered it away," and 
 that you do not show energy. Now, I do 
 not want to defend you against yourself (for 
 possibly you enjoy denouncing yourself and 
 proving that you are worthless). Neverthe- 
 less, I would point out that energy is often 
 used in ways quite unsuspected. Energy is 
 a very various thing. Some people use 
 energy in arranging time-tables and sticking 
 to them, and in clenching their teeth and 
 making terrific resolves and executing them, 
 and in never wasting a moment, and in climb- 
 ing — climbing. And this is all very laudable. 
 But energy can be used in other ways — 
 in contemplation, in self-understanding, in 
 understanding other people, in pleasing other 
 
A DANGEROUS LECTURE 79 
 
 people, in appreciating the world, in lessening 
 the friction of life. 
 
 ' I have personally come across persons 
 — especially women — who were idle, who 
 were mentally inefficient, who made no 
 material contribution to the enterprise of 
 remaining alive, but whose mere manner of 
 existence was such that I would say to them 
 in my heart, " It is enough for me that you 
 exist." 
 
 ' We have all of us come across such 
 persons. And the world would be a mark- 
 edly inferior sort of place if they did not 
 exist exactly as they are. 
 
 ' You, dear young woman, may or may 
 not be one of these. I cannot decide. But, 
 anyhow, if you are not one of the hard- 
 striving, resolute, persevering, teeth-clenching, 
 totally efficient, one-ideaed, ambitious species, 
 you need not despair. 
 
 ' Imagine what the world would be like if 
 
8o SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 we were all ruthlessly set on " succeeding " ! 
 It would be like a scene of carnage. And 
 it is conceivable that you are, in fact, much 
 more efficient than you think, and that you 
 are wasting much less time than you think, 
 and that you are employing much more 
 energy than you think. You complained 
 that you lacked resolution, which means that 
 you lacked one steady desire. But perhaps 
 your steady desire and resolution are so in- 
 stinctive, so profoundly a part of you, that 
 they function without being noticed. And 
 if you do indeed lack one steady desire and 
 the energy firmly to resolve — well, yoa just 
 do. And you will have to be content with 
 your lot. Why envy others ? An over- 
 mastering desire and its accompanying energy 
 are not necessarily to be envied. 
 
 ' A dangerous doctrine, you say. You 
 say that I am leaving the door open to 
 sloth and slackness and other evils. You 
 
A DANGEROUS LECTURE 8i 
 
 say that I am finding an excuse for every 
 unserious person under the sun. Perhaps 
 so ; but what I have said is true, and I will 
 not be afraid of the truth because it happens 
 to be dangerous. Moreover, every person 
 ought to know in his heart whether or not 
 he is conducting his existence satisfactorily. 
 But he must interrogate his conscience fairly. 
 It is not fair, either to one's conscience or to 
 oneself, to listen to it always, for example, in 
 the desolating dark hour before the dawn, 
 and never to listen to it, for example, after 
 one has had a good meal or a good slice of 
 any sort of honest pleasure. 
 
 ' And, lastly, I have mentioned envy. 
 We are apt to mistake mere envy of the 
 successful for an individual desire to suc- 
 ceed. Yet an envious realisation of all the 
 advantages (and none of the disadvantages) 
 of success is scarcely the same thing as a 
 genuine instinct for " getting on " — is it ? ' 
 F 
 
82 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 III 
 
 This long speech which I made to the 
 young, dissatisfied creature might have been 
 extremely effective if I could have made it 
 to her face. I ought, however, to mention 
 that I did not make it to her face. I have 
 been reporting a harangue which I delivered 
 in the sleepless middle of the night to her 
 imagined image. It is easier to be effective 
 in reply when the argumentative opponent 
 is not present. 
 
THE COMPLETE FUSSER 
 
THE COMPLETE FUSSER 
 
 Frequenters of lunatic asylums are familiar 
 with the person who, being convinced that he 
 is a poached egg, continually demands to be 
 put on hot toast, and is continually unhappy 
 because nobody will put him on hot toast. 
 This man is quite harmless ; he is merely a 
 bore by reason of a ridiculous delusion about 
 the fulfilment of his true destiny being bound 
 up with hot toast ; in character he is one of 
 the most amiable individuals that ever lived, 
 amiable even to the point of offering himself 
 for consumption to those of his fellow- 
 patients who are hungry, and who happen 
 to fancy a poached egg with their tea. Never- 
 theless, on the score of his undeniable delusion 
 
 8S 
 
86 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 he is segregated from ordinary society, and 
 indeed imprisoned for life. Such may be the 
 consequence of a delusion. 
 
 But not all deluded people are treated 
 alike. A lady went for the week-end to stay 
 in a country cottage. Now, this lady was 
 accustomed to smoke a cigarette in her bath 
 of a morning. 
 
 Let there be no mistake. She was a per- 
 fectly respectable lady. In former days re- 
 spectable ladies neither smoked cigarettes nor 
 took baths. The one habit was nearly as 
 disreputable as the other. In the present 
 epoch they do both with impunity, and 
 though possibly a section of the public may 
 consider that while for a woman to smoke a 
 cigarette is quite nice, and for a woman to 
 have a bath is quite nice, to smoke a cigarette 
 in a bath is not quite nice for a woman, that 
 section of the public is in a very small minority 
 and should therefore be howled down. 
 
THE COMPLETE FUSSER 87 
 
 Anyhow the lady in question was every- 
 thing that a lady ought to be. She was in 
 fact a well-known social worker and writ«r on 
 social subjects. On the Sunday morning a 
 terrible rumour was propagated throughout 
 the country cottage. The lady did not smoke 
 merely a cigarette in her bath — she smoked 
 a special brand of cigarette in her bath. And 
 she had forgotten to bring a due supply of the 
 special brand, and her cigarette-case had 
 been emptied on the previous night. It 
 became known that she was in a fearful 
 state, and would not be comforted. The 
 brand was Egyptian. At first none but 
 the brand would do for her, but after a 
 period of agony she announced that she 
 was ready to smoke any Egyptian or 
 Turkish cigarette. The cottage, however, 
 was neither Egyptian nor Turkish, but a 
 Virginian cottage. She could not be induced 
 to try a Virginian cigarette, and the cottage 
 
88 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 was miles from anywhere, and the day was 
 the Sabbath. 
 
 She came downstairs miserable, unnerved, 
 futile, a nuisance to herself and to her hosts. 
 She could not discuss important social matters, 
 which she had come on purpose to discuss. 
 She could do naught except sympathise with 
 herself, and this she did on a tremendous 
 scale. In the afternoon a visitor called who 
 possessed Egyptian cigarettes. The lady 
 got one, and at the first puff was instantly 
 restored to her normal condition. The hot 
 toast had been brought to the poached egg. 
 
 The lady, I maintain, was suffering from 
 a delusion at least as outrageous as the 
 poached egg delusion, the delusion that her 
 body and brain could not function properly 
 — ^in other words that her destiny could not 
 be fulfilled — unless she took into her mouth at 
 a certain time a particular variety of gaseous 
 fluid scarcely distinguishable from a thousand 
 
THE COMPLETE FUSSER 8g 
 
 other similar varieties of gaseous fluid. Her 
 physical perceptions were not at all delicate. 
 Like most women, for example, she could not 
 tell the difference between tea stewed and tea 
 properly infused. If a Virginian cigarette 
 had been falsely marked in an Egyptian 
 manner she would have smoked it with gusto. 
 And if she had been smoking in the dark 
 she could not have told whether her cigarette 
 was in or out — ^unless she inhaled. 
 
 The delusion was nothing but a delusion. 
 Her mind, by a habitual process, had imagined 
 it, and she had ended by being victimised by 
 it. She had ended by seriously believing 
 that she was physically and spiritually de- 
 pendent upon a factor which had no appreci- 
 able power beyond the power mistakenly 
 and insanely attributed to it by her morbid 
 imagination. 
 
 But, did any one suggest that she ought 
 to be confined in a lunatic asylum ? As- 
 
90 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 suredly not. If ever she goes to a lunatic 
 asylum it will be as a visitor, to smile 
 superiorly at the man whose welfare depends 
 utterly on hot toast. From the moral height 
 of a cigarette she will pity hot toast. 
 
 Far from scheming to get the lady into a 
 lunatic asylum, her hosts were extraordinarily 
 sympathetic, and even when they were by 
 themselves the worst thing they said was : 
 
 ' Poor thing ! She 's rather fussy about 
 cigarettes.' 
 
 II 
 
 No one, I think, will assert that I have 
 overdrawn the picture of a person victimised 
 by a delusion and yet not inhabiting a lunatic 
 asylum. Every one will be able out of his 
 own experience of the world to match my 
 example with examples of his own. And 
 indeed there are few of us who are not familiar 
 with at least one example immensely worse 
 
THE COMPLETE FUSSER 91 
 
 than the lady who staked her daily existence 
 on getting an Egyptian cigarette in her bath. 
 Few of us have not met the gentleman who 
 can only be described as ' the complete fusser.' 
 This gentleman has slowly convinced him- 
 self that the proper fulfilment of his destiny 
 depends alsolutely upon about ten thousand 
 different things. All things of course have 
 their importance, but this gentleman attaches 
 a supreme and quite fatal importance to all 
 the ten thousand things. He begins to be 
 fussy on waking up, and he stops being fussy 
 when he goes to sleep. He may not smoke a 
 cigarette in his bath, but he will probably 
 keep a thermometer in his bath because he 
 is convinced that there is a ' right ' tem- 
 perature for the bath-water, and that any 
 other temperature would impair his efficiency. 
 He may detest smoking, in which case he will 
 probably have rigid ideas about the precise 
 sort of woven stuff he must wear next to his 
 
92 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 skin. He may be almost any kind of char- 
 acter, and yet be fussy. He may be so tidy 
 that he cannot exist in a room, either in his 
 own house or in anybody else's, until he has 
 been round the walls and made all the pictures 
 exactly horizontal. He may be so untidy that 
 if his wife privily tidies his desk he is put off 
 work for the rest of the day. He may be so 
 fond of open air that he can only sleep with 
 his head out of a window, or so afraid of open 
 air that a draught deranges all his activities 
 for a fortnight. He may be so regular that 
 he kisses his wife by the clock, or so irregular 
 that he is never conscious of appetite until a 
 meal has been going cold for half an hour. 
 And so on endlessly. 
 
 But whatever he does and thinks he does 
 and thinks under the conviction that if he 
 did and thought otherwise the consequences 
 would be disastrous to himself if not to others. 
 Whereas the truth is that to change all his 
 
THE COMPLETE FUSSER 93 
 
 habits from morn to eve would result in great 
 benefit to him. He spends his days attaching 
 vast quantities of importance to a vast 
 number of things. Whereas the truth is, 
 that scarcely any of the said things are im- 
 portant in more than the slightest degree. 
 He is the victim of not one delusion but of 
 hundreds of delusions, and especially the 
 grand delusion that the world is ready to 
 come to an end on the most trifling pro- 
 vocation. 
 
 But there is no hope of him being sent to 
 join the poached egg in the lunatic asylum. 
 His friends are content to say of him : 
 ' He 's rather a particular man.' 
 True, his enemies scorn and objurgate him, 
 and proclaim him pernicious to society. 
 You naturally are his enemy, and you scorn 
 him. But you should beware how you scorn 
 him, because you may unconsciously be on 
 the way to becoming a complete fusser 
 
94 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 yourself. All of us — or at any rate ninety- 
 nine out of every hundred of us — have within 
 us the insidious microbe of fussiness. 
 
 ni 
 
 The way to becoming a complete fusser is 
 obscure at the start of it. To determine the 
 predisposing causes to fussiness would necessi- 
 tate volumes of research into the secrets of 
 individuality and the origins of character — 
 and would assuredly lead to no practical 
 result, because these creative mysteries lie 
 beyond our influence — at any rate for the 
 present. A man is born with or without the 
 instinct to fuss — that must suffice for us. 
 
 Nevertheless the real instinct to fuss ought 
 not to be confused with perfectly normal 
 impulses which may superficially resemble it. 
 Thus it is often assumed that domestic ser- 
 vants as a class are fussy, especially about 
 their food. I can see no reason why domestic 
 
THE COMPLETE FUSSER 95 
 
 servants as a class should be fussy, and I do 
 not believe they are. What is mistaken for 
 fussiness in them is merely the universal 
 human prejudice against anything to which 
 one is not accustomed. Labouring people 
 are, unfortunately for themselves, used to a 
 narrow diet. A hundred comestibles which 
 to their alleged superiors may seem quite 
 commonplace are fearsomely strange to labour- 
 ing people. A rural girl goes to serve in a 
 large house ; she is offered excellent fish, and 
 she refuses it ; she ' can't fancy it.' Where- 
 upon the mistress exclaims upon the astound- 
 ing fussiness of the poor ! The explanation 
 of the affair is simply that the rural girl has 
 never had opportunity to regard fish as an 
 article of diet. 
 
 Similar phenomena may be observed in 
 children of even the superior unfussy classes. 
 And, for another instance, gardeners will 
 grow the most superb asparagus who would 
 
96 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 not dream of eating it, and could scarcely 
 bring themselves to eat it. For them as- 
 paragus is not a luxury, but something un- 
 natural in the mouth, like snails or the hind- 
 legs of frogs. Snails and the hind-legs of 
 frogs are luxuries in various parts of the 
 world ; the Anglo - Saxon maid - scorning 
 mistress would certainly recoil from them if 
 they were put on her plate, and in so doing 
 she would not lay herself open to a charge 
 of fussiness. Yet in recoiling from them she 
 would be behaving exactly like the rural maid 
 whom she scorns. 
 
 Nor must fussiness be confused with certain 
 profound and incurable antipathies, such as 
 the strong repulsion of some individuals for 
 cats, apples, horses, etc. 
 
 The real instinct to fuss can always be dis- 
 tinguished from the other thing by this — 
 the real instinct to fuss is progressive. If 
 it is not checked with extreme firmness it 
 
THE COMPLETE FUSSER 97 
 
 goes steadily on its way. And though the 
 start of the way to becoming a complete 
 fusser may be obscure, the later portions of 
 the journey are not so obscure. Pride, if 
 not conceit, presides over them, and is always 
 pushing forward the traveller from one abnor- 
 mality to the next. Thus a man discloses 
 a dislike to black clothes. His aunt dies at 
 a great distance and leaves him some money. 
 His wife asks him : ' Shall you wear black ? ' 
 He answers with somewhat pained dignity : 
 ' Darling, you know I never wear black.' He 
 is now known to himself and to his wife as 
 the man who will not wear black. Then 
 his father dies, in the same town where the 
 son lives ; the objector to black will have to 
 attend the funeral. After a little conver- 
 sation with him the wife says to friends : 
 ' You know Edward objects to black. He does 
 really. He never wears it, and I 'm afraid he 
 won't wear it even for his father's funeral.' 
 
 G 
 
98 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 Henceforth Edward is known not merely 
 to himself and his wife but to the whole town 
 as the man who won't wear black. It is a 
 distinction. He is proud of it. His wife 
 is rather impressed by the sturdiness of his 
 resolution. He has suffered a little for his 
 objection to black. His reputation is made. 
 An anti-black clause inserts itself into his 
 religion. Pride develops into conceit. Suc- 
 cess and renown encourage the instinct to fuss, 
 and soon he has grown fussy about something 
 else. And thus does the fellow reach his 
 goal of being a complete fusser. 
 
 IV 
 
 There is no cure for the complete fusser. 
 You might think that some tremendous 
 disaster — such as marrying a shrew who hated 
 fussing, or being cast on a desert island, or 
 being imprisoned — would cure him. But it 
 would not. It would only cause a change in 
 
THE COMPLETE FUSSER 99 
 
 the symptoms ; for every human environ- 
 ment whatsoever gives occasion for fussiness 
 to the complete fusser. Even in the army, 
 even in the lowest and most order-ridden 
 grades of the army, the complete fusser con- 
 trives to flourish. And he is incurable because 
 he is unconscious of being fussy. What the 
 world regards as fussiness he regards as 
 wisdom essential to a reasonable existence. 
 He sincerely looks down upon the rest of 
 mankind. Spiritual pride puts him into the 
 category of the hopeless case — along with the 
 alcoholic drunkard, the genuine kleptomaniac, 
 and other specimens whom he would chillingly 
 despise. 
 
 Apparently the sole use of the complete 
 fusser is to serve as a terrible warning to those 
 who are on the way to becoming complete 
 fussers themselves — a terrible warning to 
 pull up. 
 
 That fussiness in its earlier stages can be 
 
100 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 cured is certain. But the cure is very drastic 
 in nature. There are Jucid moments in the 
 life of the as yet incomplete fusser when he 
 suspects his malady, when he guiltily says 
 to himself : ' I know I am peculiar, but — ' 
 Such a moment must be seized, and imme- 
 diate action taken. (The ' but ' must be 
 choked. The 'but' may be full of wisdom, 
 but it must be choked; the 'but' is fatal.) 
 If the fusser is anti-black let him proceed to 
 the shopping quarter at once. Let him not 
 order a suit-to-measure of black. Let him 
 buy a ready-made suit. Let him put it on 
 in the store or shop, and let him have the 
 other suit sent home. Let him then walk 
 about the town in black. . . . He is saved ! 
 No less thorough procedure will save him. 
 
 And similarly for all other varieties of 
 fussiness. 
 
THE MEANING OF FROCKS 
 
THE MEANING OF FROCKS 
 
 Being a man, I know that on the subject of 
 women's fashions men still talk a vast amount 
 of nonsense, partly sincere and partly insincere 
 — especially when there are no women present. 
 The fact is that the whole subject is deeply mis- 
 understood, and the great majority of people, 
 both men and women, live and dress and die 
 without getting anywhere near the truth of it. 
 Men try to explain the feminine cult of 
 clothes by asserting that women as a sex are 
 vain. It is a profound truth that women as 
 a sex are vain. It is also a profound truth 
 that men as a sex are vain. Have you ever 
 been with a man into a hosier's shop ? If 
 you are a woman you certainly have not, 
 
 103 
 
I04 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 because, though a woman is often glad to be 
 accompanied by a man when she is choosing 
 her adornments, a man will not allow a woman 
 to watch him at the same work. Fashionable 
 dressmakers are delighted to welcome the 
 accompanying man. But at the sight of a 
 woman in his establishment the fashionable 
 hosier would begin to fear for the safety of 
 the commonwealth. Even if you are a man 
 you probably have not been with another 
 man into a hosier's shop. Men prefer to do 
 these deeds quite alone ; they shun even their 
 own sex ; the shopman does not count. Why 
 this secrecy ? The answer is clear. Men 
 are ashamed of themselves on such occasions 
 because on such occasions their real vanity is 
 exposed. Tailors, hosiers, and hatters are 
 a loyal clan ; but it must be admitted that 
 they all have a strange look on their faces. 
 That look is due to the revelations of male 
 vanity which they carry locked eternally in 
 their breasts. To these purveyors men give 
 
THE MEANING OF FROCKS 105 
 
 themselves away and are shameless before 
 them. The ordinary man well knows that 
 he is vain. Besides, you can see him surrep- 
 titiously glancing at himself in shop windows 
 any day. And in some American periodicals 
 there are positively more advertisements of 
 men's finery than of women's. 
 
 Again, men try to explain the feminine 
 cult of clothes by asserting that women are 
 like sheep and must follow one another. 
 What one does all must do. This argument 
 is more than insincere ; it is impudent. For 
 women show much wider originality and 
 variations of attire among themselves than 
 men do among themselves. Half a dozen 
 average well-dressed women will be as differ- 
 ent one from another as half a dozen flowers 
 of different species ; you could distinguish 
 between them half a mile off. But half a 
 dozen well-dressed men would be indistin- 
 guishably alike if you decapitated them. It 
 is notorious that men are the slaves of fashion. 
 
io6 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 If a new shade of cravat or sock comes out, 
 the city will be painted with that shade in less 
 than a week. One year every handkerchief 
 is worn in the sleeve. Another year it will 
 be shocking to wear a handkerchief in the 
 sleeve, because the only proper place for wear- 
 ing a handkerchief is in a pocket over the 
 heart. At the slightest change in the fashion- 
 able diameter of the leg of a pair of trousers 
 every man with adequate cash or credit will 
 rush privily to his tailor's, and in sixty hours 
 a parcel will arrive at that man's home 
 marked : ' Very urgent. Deliver at once.' 
 
 Men have a perfect passion for being exactly 
 like other men — not merely in clothes, but in 
 everything. So much so that they cannot 
 bear to think that there are men unlike them- 
 selves. Thus men will form clubs of which 
 all the members are alike in some important 
 point, so that while they are in the ckib 
 they will live under the beautiful illusion of 
 universal resemblance. They loathe opinions 
 
THE MEANING OF FROCKS 107 
 
 which are unfashionable, or unfashionable in 
 their particular set and environment ; they 
 will not even read about such opinions if they 
 can help it ; they are ready to imprison or 
 kill (and often actually have imprisoned or 
 killed) the holders of such opinions, solely 
 because they are not in the fashion. And 
 could a man with a bag-wig walk down the 
 Strand or Fifth Avenue without having it 
 knocked off or being arrested for obstruction ? 
 He could not. Nevertheless a bag-wig is less 
 preposterous than a silk hat. 
 
 Yet again, men try to explain the feminine 
 cult of clothes by asserting that women as 
 a sex really enjoy the huge task of dressing, 
 and really enjoy spending money for the sake 
 of spending money, and have no brains 
 above personal embellishment. All these 
 arguments are patently ridiculous. To very 
 many well-dressed women the task of dress- 
 ing is naught but a tedious and heavy burden. 
 As for brains, it frequently occurs that the 
 
io8 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 women with the most intelligence (intelli- 
 gence far surpassing that of the average man) 
 are the most chic. In regard to the enjoy- 
 ment of mere spending, the charge is true. 
 It is, however, equally true of men. I could 
 refer to tailors, hosiers, and hatters, but I 
 will not. Take, for a change, two dining 
 parties at a restaurant, one consisting of three 
 men and three women, the other consisting of 
 six men. The bill of the six men will be the 
 heavier. As a sex men, in the French phrase, 
 ' refuse themselves nothing.' And their 
 felicity in spending for the sake of spending 
 is touchingly boyish. 
 
 Whatever may be the explanation of the 
 subjection of women to costly fashion, we 
 are now, at any rate, in a position to say 
 what the explanation is not. It is not that 
 women are specially vain. It is not that 
 women are specially like sheep. It is not 
 that they lack intelligence. It is not that 
 they enjoy the tyranny. And it is not that 
 
THE MEANING OF FROCKS 109 
 
 they are spendthrift. If the explanation lay 
 in any of these directions men would read 
 fashion papers, go to sales, and change their 
 suits four times a day. 
 
 II 
 You will say : 
 
 ' Women adorn themselves in order to be 
 attractive to the other sex.' 
 
 This is true, but only to a limited extent. 
 And men also adorn themselves in order to 
 be attractive to the other sex. Moreover, a 
 woman who has found the man of her desire, 
 and is utterly satisfied therewith, will still 
 go on adorning herself, even though the man 
 in question has made it quite clear that she 
 would attract him just as strongly in a sack 
 as in a Poiret gown. Further, some fashions 
 do not attract ; they excite ridicule rather 
 than admiration ; yet they are persisted in. 
 And women of the classes who do not and 
 cannot cultivate fashionableness succeed at 
 least as well as the other woman in attracting 
 
no SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 men, even when these men by reason of 
 laborious lives have almost no leisure for 
 dalliance. The truth is that the competition 
 among women for men is chiefly a legend — 
 not wholly. There are more women than 
 men, but not many more. Women want 
 marriage more than men want marriage, but 
 not much more. Competition is by no means 
 so fierce that women have to perform pro- 
 digies of self-ornamentation in order to in- 
 veigle a fellow-creature so simple that he 
 worries about the tint of his own necktie and 
 socks ; and the idea of such a phenomenon is 
 derogatory to women. After all, nature has 
 the business of sex-attraction in hand, and 
 she is not dependent on fashions. Long 
 before fashions had been evolved she managed 
 it precisely as well as she manages it to-day. 
 She relies, not upon textile stuffs, but upon 
 the stuff that dreams are made on ; namely, 
 glances, gestures, actions, and speech. 
 The authentic major explanation of the 
 
THE MEANING OF FROCKS iii 
 
 expensive fashionableness of women must be 
 sought in another direction. As usual, men 
 are at the bottom of the affair. When 
 woman gloriously dresses herself up to go 
 out, she does so in order to prove to the 
 world something which man wants to be 
 proved to the world. In old days the two 
 attributes which man held in the highest 
 esteem were wealth and idleness. To be 
 poor was shameful, and to work for a living 
 was shameful. Man, therefore, had to de- 
 monstrate publicly that he was neither 
 needy nor industrious. One of the best 
 methods of demonstration was costume, and 
 the costume of the successful man in those 
 days was very expensive, and so gorgeous 
 and delicate as to make toil impossible for him. 
 The time came when man ceased to be 
 proud of his own idleness, and his costume 
 altered accordingly. Then the duty of de- 
 monstrating wealth and idleness by means 
 of costume fell on woman. Man could not 
 
112 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 do the demonstration on his own person — 
 he was too busy — and hence he employed 
 the lady to be expensive on his behalf. Such 
 was her function, and still is her function. 
 The Rue de la Paix is based firmly on the 
 distant past. Assuredly long years will 
 elapse before feminine costume ceases to be 
 used as a demonstration that man possesses 
 the attributes that are most admired. Es- 
 tates demonstrate the possession of those 
 attributes ; bonds demonstrate the posses- 
 sion of those attributes. But estates are a 
 fixture, and bonds are kept in a safe. Cos- 
 tume walks about ; your wife can take it to 
 the seaside with her ; the world cannot help 
 noticing it ; and it has the further advantage 
 of ministering to the senses. 
 
 The proofs of the substantial correctness 
 of this explanation of women's dress are in- 
 numerable. Perhaps the principal proof is 
 that the very man who grumbles at fashion- 
 ableness in women would be the first to com- 
 
THE MEANING OF FROCKS 113 
 
 plain if his wife started to ignore fashion and 
 to dress merely for comfort, utility, and 
 charm. No man objects to the inexpensive- 
 ness of his wife's clothes, but every man 
 objects to them looking inexpensive. The 
 advertised lure of a blouse marked one 
 pound at a sale is that it has the air of a 
 blouse costing two pounds. Suppose a rich 
 man sees a delightful typewriting young 
 woman walking down the street, falls in love 
 with her, and marries her. Now, although 
 the clothes in which he saw her suited her 
 admirably in every way, and although she 
 has simple tastes, and more elaborate clothes 
 do not suit her so well, the first thing she has 
 to do on marriage is to alter her style of 
 dress for a more expensive style. Otherwise 
 the man will say : 'I don't want my wife 
 to look like a clerk.' In other words : ' I 
 insist on my wife demonstrating to the uni- 
 verse that I possess wealth and can afford to 
 H 
 
114 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 keep her idle on my behalf.' Even in small 
 provincial towns where personal adornment 
 is theoretically discouraged, and where people 
 preach the entirely false maxim that externals 
 don' t matter — even there the theory holds good. 
 The middle-class wife will have her sealskin 
 coat before she has her automobile. Fur coats 
 are detestable garments to walk in, but real 
 sealskin is a symbol which cannot be denied. 
 
 And it is as important that that costume 
 should prove idleness as that it should prove 
 wealth. Hence the fragility of extremely 
 fashionable costumes, and their unpractical- 
 ness. The fashionable costume must be of 
 such a nature that the least touch of the 
 workaday world will ruin it ; and it must go 
 beyond this — it must be of such a nature 
 that the wearer is actually prevented by it 
 from her full and proper activity. An un- 
 considered movement would rip it to pieces. 
 Rich Chinese males till recently kept their 
 finger-nails so long that it was impossible 
 
THE MEANING OF FROCKS 115 
 
 for them to use their hands, and they maimed 
 females so that they could not walk. Both 
 sexes were thus rendered helpless, and the 
 ability to be futile was proved like a problem 
 of Euclid. We laugh at that. Crinolines 
 were admirably designed to hinder honest 
 work. And we laugh at crinolines too. But 
 we still have the corset, though the corset 
 is not the homicidal contrivance it once was. 
 And we have the high-heeled shoe, higher 
 than ever. You say : ' But women have 
 high heels to increase their apparent height.' 
 Not a bit ! All women whose business it is 
 to demonstrate idleness to the universe wear 
 high heels, because high heels are a clear 
 presumption that the wearer is not obliged 
 really to exert herself. If a woman with a 
 rich husband is so inordinately tall that she 
 is ashamed of her height, she will wear high 
 heels to prove that her husband is rich. And, 
 not to be outdone, the delightful typewriting 
 girl walking down the street at 8.30 a.m. will 
 
ii6 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 also wear high heels— and each hurried step 
 she takes is a miracle of balance, pluck, and 
 endurance. Life is marvellous. 
 
 Ill 
 
 You will say : 
 
 ' Life may be marvellous, but these re- 
 velations about human motives are terrible, 
 and they depress us.' 
 
 They ought not to depress you. The saving 
 quality about human motives is that they are 
 so human, and therefore so forgivable. And, 
 be it remembered, I have not asserted that the 
 demonstration of wealth and leisure is the sole 
 explanation of fashionableness. I have already 
 referred to the desire to be attractive ; and to 
 this must be added the sense of beauty, which 
 is nearly allied to it. The woman who be- 
 decks herself is actuated by all three motives — 
 the motive of ostentation (to satisfy primarily 
 the man), the motive to attract, and the 
 motive to satisfy the sense of beauty. 
 
 As regards the last, it may be said that the 
 
THE MEANING OF FROCKS 117 
 
 sense of beauty does not regularly improve in 
 mankind, like, for instance, the sense of justice. 
 No feminine raiment has ever equalled the 
 classic Greek, which was not costly. But 
 then the Greeks were not worried by too much 
 wealth. And the Greek dress would be highly 
 inconvenient without the Greek daily life, and 
 especially without the Greek climate. And I 
 doubt if nowadays we should care greatly for 
 the Greek life. Still, the sense of beauty does 
 emphatically exist among us, and the desire 
 of women to be attractive is quite as power- 
 ful as it was in the time of Aspasia. These 
 two motives are constantly, and often vic- 
 toriously, fighting against the motive of 
 ostentation, and it is probably the interplay of 
 the three motives that produces the continual 
 confusing and expensive changes of fashion, 
 as has been well argued by Professor Franklin 
 Henry Giddings, one of the most brilliant 
 social philosophers in the United States. 
 ' But all this must be altered ! ' the ardent 
 
ii8 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 among you will cry out. ' In future women 
 must dress solely to be attractive and to 
 satisfy the sense of beauty.' 
 
 Well, they just won't. Men will never allow 
 it, and women themselves would never agree to 
 it. Costume will always be more than costume ; 
 costume is so handy and effective as a symbol 
 of something else ; and that something else will 
 always be — success. When wealth ceases to be 
 the standard of success, then costume will cease 
 to be employed as a proof of wealth, and not 
 before. Meanwhile, we must admit that, if the 
 possession of wealth has to be proved to the 
 world, it could not be proved in a more charm- 
 ing and less offensive way than in the costumes 
 of women. The spectacle of a stylish dress 
 stylishly worn is extremely agreeable. The 
 spectacle of a room full of stylish dresses 
 stylishly worn is thrilling. He among you 
 who has never been to a ball should go to 
 one and try the experience for himself. 
 
 Leisure, the ability to be idle and useless, 
 
THE MEANING OF FROCKS 119 
 
 is still to a certain extent a standard of 
 success in life, but not anything like so much 
 as in the past. People are gradually per- 
 ceiving that to be idle and useless is vicious. 
 Hence the unpracticalness of women's cos- 
 tumes will gradually decrease. Beyond ques- 
 tion high heels, for example, will vanish from 
 our pavements and from our drawing-rooms. 
 I even have hope that women will one day 
 wear dresses which they can put on and fasten 
 unaided without the help of one, two, or three 
 assistants. But such changes will arrive 
 slowly. You cannot hurry nature. It is a 
 great truth that the present is firmly rooted 
 in the past. It refuses to be pulled up by the 
 roots. Futile to announce that you will in 
 future be guided by nothing but common 
 sense ! Whose common sense ? Common 
 sense is a purely relative thing. The common 
 sense of the past often seems silly to us, and 
 the common sense of the present will often 
 seem silly to the future. The progress of 
 
I20 SELF AND SELF-MANAGEMENT 
 
 mankind is an extraordinarily complex busi- 
 ness. It cannot be settled in a phrase. 
 Nothing in it is simple ; nothing in it is un- 
 related to the rest. Everything in it has a 
 reason which will appeal to true intelligence. 
 And men should bear this in mind when they 
 talk lightly and scornfully (and foolishly) 
 about women's fashions. 
 
 To conclude, let me utter one word about 
 the secret fear that lies always at the back 
 of most men's minds — the fear that such- 
 and-such a change in the habits of women 
 will destroy their femininity. This fear is 
 groundless. Femininity — thank heaven ! — 
 is entirely indestructible. It will survive 
 all progress and all revolutions of taste. 
 And when the end comes on this cooling 
 planet the last vestige of it will be there, 
 fronting the last vestige of masculinity. 
 
 Printed in Great Britain by T. and A. Comitablk, Printers to Hii Mijeaty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press