IJHife^iiaaa ItlENCY I: i t ■: H INTS 'TO 'MEN- £^ 'WOMEN 1 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY GIFT OF J. i-. Bretz DATE DUE MAYjJLl -&i— P— ^ i5 CAVLORO *IIINTCDINU'S.A. Cornell University Library Br 632 B47 Mental etticiency, and other hints to me olin 3 1924 032 287 116 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924032287116 MENTAL EFFICIENCY By ARNOLD BENNETT NOVELS THESE TWAIN CLAVHANGER HUDA LESSWAYS THE OLD wives' TALE DENEY THE AUDACIOUS THE OLD ADAM HELEN WITH THE HIGH HAND THE MATADOR OP THE MVE TOWNS THE BOOK or CAELOTTA BURIED ALIVE A GREAT MAN LEONORA WHOM GOD HATH JOINED A MAN FROM THE NORTH ANNA OP THE MVE TOWNS THE GLIMPSE THE CITY OP PLEASURE THE GRAND BABYLON HOTEt HUGO THE GATES OP WRATH POCKET PHILOSOPHIES THE author's craft MARRIED LIPE PHIENDSHIP AND HAPPINESS HOW TO LIVE ON 24 HOURS A DAY THE HUMAN MACHINE LITERARY TASTE MENIAL EFFICIENCY PLAYS THE GREAT ADVENTURE CUPID AND COMMONSENSE WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS POLITE FARCES MILESIONES THE HONEYMOON MISCELLANEOUS paris nights the truth about an author liberty! OVER there: WAR SCENES GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY NEW YORK MENTAL EFFICIENCY AND OTHER HINTS TO MEN AND WOMEN BY ARNOLD BENNETT Author of '• How to Live on 24 Hours a Day " "The Old Wives' Tale," etc. GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY PUBLISHERS ^ NEW YORK f/, Copyright, 1911 By George H. Doran Company CONTENTS Page I. Mental Efficiency „ 7 The Appeal 7 The Replies 13 The Cure 19 Mental Calisthenics 24 II. Expressing One's Individuality ... 32 III. Breaking with the Past 39 IV. Settling Down in Life 45 V. Marriage 53 The Duty of It 53 The Adventure of It 59 The Two Ways of It 65 VI. Books 72 The Physical Side 7a The Philosophy of Book Buying . 78 VII. Success 84 Candid Remarks 84 The Successful and the Unsuc- cessful gi The Inwardness of Success . o . 97 Viii. The Petty Artificialities . . , . 104 IX. The Secret of Content ti2 I MENTAL EFFICIENCY THE APPEAL IF there is any virtue in advertisements — and a journalist should be the last person to say that there is not — the American na- tion is rapidly reaching a state of physical efE- ciency of which the world has probably not seen the like since Sparta. In all the American newspapers and all the American monthlies are innumerable illustrated announcements of " phy- sical-culture specialists," who guarantee to make all the organs of the body perform their duties with the mighty precision of a 60 h.p. motor-car that never breaks down. I saw a book the other day written by one of these specialists, to show how perfect health could be attained by devoting a quarter of an hour a day to certain exercises. The advertisements multiply and increase in size. They cost a great deal of money. There- fore they must bring in a great deal of business. 8 MENTAL EFFICIENCY Therefore vast numbers of people must be wor- ried about the non-efficiency of their bodies, and on the way to achieve efficiency. In our more modest British fashion, we have the same phe- nomenon in England. And it is growing. Our muscles are growing also. Surprise a man in his bedroom of a morning, and you will find him lying on his back on the floor, or standing on his head, or whirling clubs, in pursuit of physical efficiency. I remember that once I "went in" for physical efficiency myself. I, too, lay on the floor, my delicate epidermis separated from the carpet by only the thinnest of garments, and I contorted myself according to the fifteen dia- grams of a large chart (believed to be the magna, charta of physical efficiency) daily after shaving. In three weeks my collars would not meet round my prize-fighter's neck; my hosier reaped immense profits, and I came to the con- clusion that I had carried physical efficiency quite far enough. A strange thing — was it not? — that I never had the idea of devoting a quarter of an hour a day after shaving to the pursuit of mental effi- ciency. The average body is a pretty compli- MENTAL EFFICIENCY g cated affair, sadly out of order, but happily susceptible to culture. The average mind is vastly more complicated, not less sadly out of order, but perhaps even more susceptible to cul- ture. We compare our arms to the arms of the gentleman illustrated in the physical efficiency advertisement, and we murmur to ourselves the classic phrase : " This will never do." And we set about developing the muscles of our arms until we can show them off (through a frock coat) to women at afternoon tea. But it does not, perhaps, occur to us that the mind has its muscles, and a lot of apparatus besides, and that these invisible, yet paramount, mental organs are far less efficient than they ought to be; that some of them are atrophied, others starved, others out of shape, etc. A man of sedentary occupation goes for a very long walk on Easter Monday, and in the evening is so exhausted that he can scarcely eat. He wakes up to the inefficiency of his body, caused by his neglect of it, and he is so shocked that he determines on remedial measures. Either he will walk to the office, or he will play golf, or he will execute the post-shaving exercises. But let the same man after a prolonged sedentary course of newspapers, magazines, and novels, take 10 MENTAL EFFICIENCY his mind out for a stiff climb among the rocks of a scientific, philosophic, or artistic subject. What will he do? Will he stay out all day, and return in the evening too tired even to read his paper? Not he. It is ten to one that, finding himself puf- fing for breath after a quarter of an hour, he won't even persist till he gets his second wind, but will come back at once. Will he remark with genuine concern that his mind is sadly out of condition and that he really must do something to get it into order? Not he. It is a hundred to one that he will tranquilly accept the status quo, without shame and without very poignant regret. Do I make my meaning clear? I say, without a 'oety poignant regret, because a certain vague regret is indubitably caused by realizing that one is handicapped by a mental inefficiency which might, without too much diffi- culty, be cured. That vague regret exudes like a vapour from the more cultivated section of the public. It is to be detected everywhere, and es- pecially among people who are near the half-way house of life. They perceive the existence of im- mense quantities of knowledge, not the smallest particle of which will they ever make their own. MENTAL EFFICIENCY ii They stroll forth from their orderly dwellings on a starlit night, and feel dimly the wonder of the heavens. But the still small voice is telling them that, though they have read in a newspaper that there are fifty thousand stars in the Pleiades, they cannot even point to the Pleiades in the sky. How they would like to grasp the significance of the nebular theory, the most overwhelming of all the- ories ! And the years are passing ; and there are twenty-four hours in every day, out of which they work only six or seven ; and it needs only an im- pulse, an effort, a system, in order gradually to cure the mind of its slackness, to give " tone " to its muscles, and to enable it to grapple with the splendours of knowledge and sensation that await it ! But the regret is not poignant enough. They do nothing. They go on doing nothing. It is as though they passed for ever along the length of an endless table filled with delicacies, and could not stretch out a hand to seize. Do I exaggerate? Is there not deep in the consciousness of most of us a mournful feeling that our minds are like the liver of the advertisement — sluggish, and that for the sluggishness of our minds there is the excuse neither of incompetence, nor of lack of time, nor of lack of opportunity, nor of lack of means? 12 MENTAL EFFICIENCY Why does not some mental efficiency specialist come forward and show us how to make our minds do the work which our minds are certainly capable of doing? I do not mean a quack. All the physical efficiency specialists who advertise largely are not quacks. Some of them achieve very genuine results. If a course of treatment can be devised for the body, a course of treatment can be devised for the mind. Thus we might realize some of the ambitions which all of us cherish in regard to the utilization in our spare time of that magnificent machine which we allow to rust within our craniums. We have the desire to perfect ourselves, to round off our careers with the graces of knowledge and taste. How many people would not gladly undertake some branch of serious study, so that they might not die under the reproach of having lived and died without ever really having known anything about any- thing! It is not the absence of desire that pre- vents them. It is, first, the absence of will-power — not the will to begin, but the will to continue ; and, second, a mental apparatus which is out of condition, " puffy," " weedy," through sheer neg- lect. The remedy, then, divides itself into two parts, the cultivation of will-power, and the get- MENTAL EFFICIENCY 13 ting into condition of the mental apparatus. And these two branches of the cure must be worked concurrently. I am sure that the considerations which I have presented to you must have already presented themselves to tens of thousands of my readers, and that thousands must have attempted the cure. I doubt not that many have succeeded. I shall deem it a favour if those readers who have interested themselves in the question will com- municate to me at once the result of their ex- perience, whatever its outcome. I will make such use as I can of the letters I receive, and afterwards I will give my own experience. THE REPLIES The correspondence which I have received in answer to my appeal shows that at any rate I did not overstate the case. There is, among a vast mass of reflecting peo- ple in this country, a clear consciousness of being mentally less than efficient, and a strong (though ineffective) desire that such mental in- efficiency should cease to be. The desire is stronger than I had imagined, but it does not 14 MENTAL EFFICIENCY seem to have led to much hitherto. And that ' course of treatment for the mind," by means of which we are to " realize some of the ambitions which all of us cherish in regard to the utilization in our spare time of the magnificent machine which we allow to rust within our craniums " — that desiderated course of treatment has not apparently been devised by anybody. The San- dow of the brain has not yet loomed up above the horizon. On the other hand, there appears to be a general expectancy that I personally am going to play the role of the Sandow of the brain. Vain thought! I have been very much interested in the letters, some of which, as a statement of the matter in question, are admirable. It is perhaps not sur- prising that the best of them come from women — for (genius apart) woman is usually more touchingly lyrical than man in the yearning for the ideal. The most enthusiastic of all the let- ters I have received, however, is from a gentle- man whose notion is that we should be hypno- tised into mental efficiency. After advocating the establishment of " an institution of practical psy- chology from whence there can be graduated fit MENTAL EFFICIENCY 15 and proper people whose efforts would be in the direction of the subconscious mental mechanism of the child or even the adult," this hypnotist proceeds : " Between the academician, whose specialty is an inconsequential cobweb, the medi- cal man who has got it into his head that he is the logical foster-father for psychonomical mat- ters, and the blatant ' professor ' who deals with monkey tricks on a few somnambules on the music-hall stage, you are allowing to go unrecog- nized one of the most potent factors of mental de- velopment." Am I? I have not the least idea what this gentleman means, but I can assure him that he is wrong. I can make more sense out of the remarks of another correspondent who, ut- terly despising the things of the mind, compares a certain class of young men to " a halfpenny bloater with the roe out," and asserts that he himself " got out of the groove " by dint of having to unload ten tons of coal in three hours and a half every day during several years. This is interesting and it is constructive, but it is just a little beside the point. A lady, whose optimism is indicated by her pseudonym, " Esperance," puts her finger on the spot, or, rather, on one of the spots, in a very i6 MENTAL EFFICIENCY sensible letter. " It appears to me," she says, " that the great cause of mental inefficiency is lack of concentration, perhaps especially in the case of women. I can trace my chief failures to this cause. Concentration is a talent. It may be in a measure cultivated, but it needs to be inborn. . . . The greater number of us are in a state of semi-slumber, with minds which are only exerted to one-half of their capability." I thoroughly agree that inability to concentrate is one of the chief symptoms of the mental machine being out of condition. " Esperance's " suggested cure is rather drastic. She says : " Perhaps one of the best cures for mental sedentariness is arithmetic, for there is nothing else which requires greater power of concentration." Perhaps arithmetic might be an effective cure, but it is not a practical cure, because no one, or scarcely any one, would practise it. I cannot imagine the plain man who, having a couple of hours to spare of a night, and having also the sincere desire but not the will- power to improve his taste and knowledge, would deliberately sit down and work sums by way of preliminary mental calisthenics. As Ibsen's pup- pet said : " People don't do these things." Why do they not? The answer is: Simply because MENTAL EFFICIENCY 17 they won't; simply because human nature will not run to it " Esperance's " suggestion of learning poetry is slightly better. Certainly the best letter I have had is from Miss H. D. She says : " This idea [to avoid the reproach of ' living and dying without ever really knowing anything about anything'] came to me of itself from somewhere when I was a small girl. And looking back I fancy that the thought itself spurred me to do something in this world, to get into line with people who did things — people who painted pictures, wrote books, built bridges, or did something beyond the ordinary. This only has seemed to me, all my life since, worth while." Here I must interject that such a statement is somewhat sweeping. In fact, it sweeps a whole lot of fine and legitimate ambitions straight into the rubbish heap of the Not-worth-while. I think the writer would wish to modify it. She con- tinues: "And when the day comes in which I have not done some serious reading, however small the measure, or some writing ... or I have been too sad or dull to notice the brightness of colour of the sun, of grass and flowers, of the sea, or the moonlight on the water, I think the i8 MENTAL EFFICIENCY day ill-spent. So I must think the incentive to do a little each day beyond the ordinary towards the real culture of the mind, is the beginning of the cure of mental ineificiency." This is very in- genious and good. Further: "The day comes when the mental habit has become a part of our life, and we value mental work for the work's sake." But I am not sure about that. For my- self, I have never valued work for its own sake, and I never shall. And I only value such mental work for the more full and more intense con- sciousness of being alive which it gives me. Miss H. D.'s remedies are vague. As to lack of will-power, " the first step is to realize your weak- ness; the next step is to have ordinary shame that you are defective." I doubt, I gravely doubt, if these steps would lead to anything definite. Nor is this very helpful : " I would advise reading, observing, writing. I would advise the use of every sense and every faculty by which we at last learn the sacredness of life." This is beg- ging the question. If people, by merely wishing to do so, could regularly and seriously read, observe, write, and use every faculty and sense, there would be very little mental inefficiency. I MENTAL EFFICIENCY 19 see that I shall be driven to construct a pro- gramme out of my own bitter and ridiculous experiences. THE CURE " But tasks in hours of insight willed Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled." The above lines from Matthew Arnold are quoted by one of my very numerous cor- respondents to support a certain optimism in this matter of a systematic attempt to im- prove the mind. They form part of a beautiful and inspiring poem, but I gravely fear that they run counter to the vast mass of earthly experi- ence. More often than not I have found that a task willed in some hour of insight can noi be ful- filled through hours of gloom. No, no, and no! To will is easy: it needs but the momen- tary bright contagion of a stronger spirit than one's own. To fulfil, morning after morning, or evening after evening, through months and years — this is the very dickens, and there is not one of my readers that will not agree with me. Yet such is the elastic quality of human nature that most of my correspondents are quite ready to ignore the sad fact and to demand at once: 20 MENTAL EFFICIENCY "what shall we will? Tell us what we must will." Some seem to think that they have solved the difficulty when they have advocated certain sys- tems of memory and mind-training. Such systems may be in themselves useful or useless — the evidence furnished to me is contradictory — but were they perfect systems, a man cannot be intellectually born again merely by joining a memory-class. The best system depends utterly on the man's power of resolution. And what really counts is not the system, but the spirit in which the man handles it. Now, the proper spirit can only be induced by a careful considera- tion and realization of the man's conditions — the limitations of his temperament, the strength of adverse influences, and the lessons of his past. Let me take an average case. Let me take your case, O man or woman of thirty, living in comfort, with some cares, and some responsi- bilities, and some pretty hard daily work, but not too much of any! The question of mental effi- ciency is in the air. It interests you. It touches you nearly. Your conscience tells you that your mind is less active and less informed than it might be. You suddenly spring up from the MENTAL EFFICIENCY 21 garden-seat, and you say to yourself that you win take your mind in hand and do something with it. Wait a moment. Be so good as to sink back into that garden-seat and clutch that tennis racket a little longer. You have had these " hours of insight" before, you know. You have not arrived at the age of thirty without having tried to carry out noble resolutions — and failed. What precautions are you going to take against failure this time? For your will is probably no stronger now than it was aforetime. You have admitted and accepted failure in the past. And no wound is more cruel to the spirit of resolve than that dealt by failure. You fancy the wound closed, but just at the critical moment it may reopen and mortally bleed you. What are your precau- tions? Have you thought of them? No. You have not. I have not the pleasure of your acquaintance. But I know you because I know myself. Your failure in the past was due to one or more of three causes. And the first was that you undertook too much at the beginning. You started off with a magnificent programme. You are something of an expert in physical exercises — you would 22 MENTAL EFFICIENCY be ashamed not to be, in these physical days — and so you would never attempt a hurdle race or an uninterrupted hour's club-whirling without some preparation- The analogy between the body and the mind ought to have struck you. TTiis time, please do not form an elaborate programme. Do not form any programme. Simply content yourself with a preliminary canter, a ridiculously easy preliminary canter. For example (and I give this merely as an example), you might say to yourself: "Within one month from this date I will read twice Herbert Spencer's little book on * Education ' — sixpence — and will make notes in pencil inside the back cover of the things that particularly strike me." You remark that that is nothing, that you can do it " on your head," and so on. Well, do it. When it is done you will at any rate possess the satisfaction of having re- solved to do something and having done it. Your mind will have gained tone and healthy pride. You will be even justified in setting yourself some kind of a simple programme to extend over three months. And you will have acquired some gen- eral principles by the light of which to construct the programme. But best of all, you will have avoided failure, that dangerous wound. MENTAL EFFICIENCY 23 The second possible cause of previous failure was the disintegrating effect on the will-power of the ironic, superior smile of friends. Whenever a man " turns over a new leaf " he has this inane giggle to face. The drunkard may be less ashamed of getting drunk than of breaking to a crony the news that he has signed the pledge. Strange, but true! And human nature must be counted with. Of course, on a few stern spirits the effect of that smile is merely to harden the resolution. But on the majority its influence is deleterious. Therefore don't go and nail your flag to the mast. Don't raise any flag. Say nothing. Work as unobtrusively as you can. When you have won a battle or two you can begin to wave the banner, and then you will find that that miserable, pitiful, ironic, superior smile will die away ere it is born. The third possible cause was that you did not rearrange your day. Idler and time-waster though you have been, still you had done something during the twenty-four hours. You went to work with a kind of dim idea that there were twenty-six hours in every day. Something large ana definite has to be dropped. Some space in the rank jungle 24 MENTAL EFFICIENCY of the day has to be cleared and swept up for the new operations. Robbing yourself of sleep won't help you, nor trying to " squeeze in " a time for study between two other times. Use the knife, and use it freely. If you mean to read or think half an hour a day, arrange for an hour. A hun- dred per cent, margin is not too much for a begin- ner. Do you ask me where the knife is to be used? I should say that in nine cases out of ten the rites of the cult of the body might be abbreviated. I recently spent a week-end in a London suburb, and I was staggered by the wholesale attention given to physical recreation in all its forms. It was a gigantic debauch of the muscles on every side. It shocked me. " Poor withering mind ! " I thought. " Cricket, and football, and boating, and golf, and tennis have their ' seasons,' but not thou ! " These considerations are general and prefatory. Now I must come to detail. MENTAL CALISTHENICS I have dealt with the state of mind in \!^ich one should begin a serious effort towards mental efficiency, and also with the probable causes of failure in previous efforts. We come now to what I may call the calisthenics of the MENTAL EFFICIENCY 2$ business, exercises which may be roughly com- pared to the technical exercises necessary in learn- ing to play a musical instrument. It is curious that a person studying a musical instrument will have no false shame whatever in doing mere exercises for the fingers and wrists while a per- son who is trying to get his mind into order will almost certainly experience a false shame in going through performances which are undoubtedly good for him. Herein lies one of the great ob- stacles to mental efficiency. Tell a man that he should join a memory class, and he will hum and haw, and say, as I have already remarked, that memory is n't everything ; and, in short, he won't join the memory class, partly from indolence, I grant, but more from false shame. (Is not this true?) He will even hesitate about learning things by heart. Yet there are few mental exer- cises better than learning great poetry or prose by heart. Twenty lines a week for six months: what a " cure " for debility ! The chief, but not the only, merit of learning by heart as an exercise is that it compels the mind to concentrate. And the most important preliminary to self-develop- ment is the faculty of concentrating at will. Aa- other excellent exercise is to read a page of no- 26 MENTAL EFFICIENCY matter-what, and then immediately to write down — in one's own words or in the author's — one's full recollection of it. A quarter of an hour a day! No more! And it works like magic. This brings me to the department of writing. I am a writer by profession; but I do not think I have any prejudices in favour of the exercise of writing. Indeed, I say to myself every morn- ing that if there is one exercise in the world which I hate, it is the exercise of writing. But I must assert that in my opinion the exercise of writing is an indispensable part of any genuine effort towards mental efficiency. I don't care much what you write, so long as you compose sentences and achieve continuity. There are forty ways of writing in an unprofessional man- ner, and they are all good. You may keep "a full diary," as Mr. Arthur Christopher Benson says he does. This is one of the least good ways. Diaries, save in experienced hands like those of Mr. Benson, are apt to get themselves done with the very minimum of mental effort. They also tend to an exaggeration of egotism, and if they are left lying about they tend to strife. Further, one never knows when one may not be com- MENTAL EFFICIENCY 27 pelled to produce them in a court of law. A journal is better. Do not ask me to define the difference between a journal and a diary. I will not and I cannot. It is a difference Aat one feels instinctively. A diary treats exclusively of one's self and one's doings; a journal roams wider, and notes whatever one has observed of interest. A diary relates that one had lobster mayonnaise for dinner and rose the next morn- ing with a headache, doubtless attributable to mental strain. A journal relates that Mrs. , whom one took into dinner, had brown eyes, and an agreeable trick of throwing back her head after asking a question, and gives her ac- count of her husband's strange adventures in Colorado, etc. A diary is All I, I, I, I, itself I (to quote a line of the transcendental poetry of Mary Baker G. Eddy). A journal is the large spectacle of life. A journal may be special or general. I know a man who keeps a journal of all cases of current superstition which he actually encounters. He began it without the slightest suspicion that he was beginning a document of astounding interest and real scientific value ; but such was the fact In default of a diary or a 28 MENTAL EFFICIENCY journal, one may write essays (provided one has the moral courage) ; or one may simply make notes on the book one reads. Or one may con- struct anthologies of passages which have made an individual and particular appeal to one's tastes. Anthology construction is one of the pleasantest hobbies that a person who is not mad about golf and bridge — that is to say, a thinking person — can possibly have; and I recommend it to those who, discreetly mistrusting their power to keep up a fast pace from start to finish, are anxious to begin their intellectual course gently and mildly. In any event, writing — the act of writing — is vital to almost any scheme. I would say it was vital to every scheme, with- out exception, were I not sure that some kind cor- respondent would instantly point out a scheme to which writing was obviously not vital. After writing comes thinking. (The sequence may be considered odd, but I adhere to it.) In this connexion I cannot do better than quote an admirable letter which I have received from a correspondent who wishes to be known only as " An Oxford Lecturer." The italics (except the last) are mine, not his. He says: "Till a man MENTAL EFFICIENCY ag has got his physical brain completely under his control — sttppressing its ioo-great receptivHy, its iendencies io reproduce idly the thmcghts of others, and to be stayed by every passing gust of emotion — I hold that he cannot do a tenth part of the work that he would then be able to perform with little or no effort. Moreover, work apart, he has not entered upon his kingdom, and unlimited pos- sibilities of future development are barred to him. Mental efficiency can be gained by constant practice in meditation — i, e., by concentrating the mind, say, for but ten minutes daily, but with absolute regularity, on some of the highest thoughts of which it is capable. Failures will be frequent, but they must be regarded with simple indifference and dogged perseverance in the path chosen. If that path be followed luitkout inter- mission even for a few weeks the results will speak for themselves." I thoroughly agree with what this correspondent says, and am obliged to him for having so ably stated the case. But I regard such a practice of meditation as he indicates as being rather an " advanced " exercise for a be- ginner. After the beginner has got under way, and gained a little confidence in his strength of purpose, and acquired the skill to define his 30 MENTAL EFFICIENCY thoughts sufficiently to write them down — ■ then it would be time enough, in my view, to under- take what " An Oxford Lecturer " suggests. By the way, he highly recommends Mrs. Annie Besant's book, Thoaghi Ponver: Its Control and CuUare, He says that it treats the subject with scientific clearness, and gives a practical method of training the mind. I endorse the latter part of the statement. So much for the more or less technical processes of stirring the mind from its sloth and making it exactly obedient to the aspirations of the soul. And here I close. Numerous correspondents have asked me to outline a course of reading for them. In other words, they have asked me to particu- larize for them the aspirations of their souls. My subject, however, was not self-development. My subject was mental efficiency as a means to self-development. Of course, one can only ac- quire mental efficiency in the actual effort of self- development. But I was concerned, not with the choice of route; rather with the manner of fol- lowing the route. You say to me that I am busy- ing myself with the best method of walking, and refusing to discuss where to go. Precisely. One MENTAL EFFICIENCY 31 man cannot tell another man where the other man wants to go. If he can't himself decide on a goal he may as well curl up and expire, for the root of the matter is not in him. I will content myself with pointing out that the entire universe is open for inspection. Too many people fancy that self- development means literature. They associate the higher life with an intimate knowledge of the life of Charlotte Bronte, or the order of the plays of Shakespeare, The higher life may just as well be butterflies, or funeral customs, or county boundaries, or street names, or mosses, or stars, or slugs, as Charlotte Bronte or Shake- speare. Choose what interests you. Lots of finely-organized, mentally-efficient persons can't read Shakespeare at any price, and if you asked them who was the author of The Tenant of Wild- fett Hdl they might proudly answer Emily Bronte, if they did n't say they never heard of it. An accurate knowledge of any subject, coupled with a carefully nurtured sense of the relativity of that subject to other subjects, implies an enormous self-development. With this hint I conclude. 32 MENTAL EFFICIENCY II EXPRESSING ONE'S INDIVIDUALITY A MOST curious and useful thing to realize is that one :aever knows the impression one is creating on other people. One may often guess pretty accurately whether it is good, bad, or indifferent — some people render it unnecessary for one to guess, they practically inform one — but that is not what I mean, I mean much more than that. I mean that one has one's self no mental picture corresponding to the mental picture which one's personality leaves in the minds of one's friends. Has it ever struck you that there is a mysterious individual going around, walking the streets, calling at houses for tea, chattiMg, laughing, grumbling, arguing, and that all your friends know him and have long since added him up and come to a definite con- clusion about him — without sa3n[ng more than a chance, cautious word to you; and that that person is yoa} Supposing that you came into a EXPRESSING -INDIVIDUALITY 33 drawing-room where you were having tea, do you think you would recognize yourself as an individuality? I think not. You would be apt to say to yourself, as guests do when disturbed in drawing-rooms by other guests: "Who's this chap? Seems rather queer. I hope he won't be a bore." And your first telling would be slightly hostile. Why, even when you meet yourself in an unsuspected mirror in the very clothes that you have put on that very day and that you know by heart, you are almost always shocked by the realization that you are you. And now and then, when you have gone to the glass to arrange your hair in the full sobriety of early morning, have you not looked on an absolute stranger, and has not that stranger piqued your curiosity? And if it is thus with precise external details of form, colour, and movement, what may it not be with the vague complex effect of the mental and moral individuality? A man honestly tries to make a good impres- sion. What is the result? The result merely is that his friends, in the privacy of their minds, set him down as a man who tries to make a good impression. If much depends on the result of a 34 MENTAL EFFICIENCY single interview, or a couple of interviews, a man may conceivably force another to accept an im- pression of himself which he would like to con- vey. But if the receiver of the impression is to have time at his disposal, then the giver of the impression may just as well sit down and put his hands in his pockets, for nothing that he can do will modify or influence in any way the im- pression that he will ultimately give. The real impress is, in the end, given unconsciously, not consciously; and further, it is received uncon- sciously, not consciously. It depends partly on both persons. And it is immutably fixed before- hand. There can be no final deception. Take the extreme case, that of the mother and her son. One hears that the son hoodwinks his mother. Not he! If he is cruel, neglectful, overbearing, she is perfectly aware of it. He does not deceive her, and she does not deceive herself. I have often thought: If a son could look into a mother's heart, what an eye-opener he would have! " What !" he would cry. "This cold, im- partial judgment, this keen vision for my faults, this implacable memory of little slights, and in- justices, and callousnesses committed long ago, in the breast of my mother ! " Yes, my friend, in EXPRESSING INDIVIDUALITY 35 the breast of your mother. The only difference between your mother and another person is that she takes you as you are, and loves you for what you are. She is n't blind: do not imagine it. The marvel is, not that people are such bad judges of character, but that they are such good judges, especially of what I may call fundamental character. The wiliest person cannot for ever conceal his fundamental character from the simplest. And people are very stern judges, too. Think of your best friends — are you oblivious of their defects? On the contrary, you are perhaps too conscious of them. When you summon them before your mind's eye, it is no ideal creation that you see. When you meet them and talk to them you are constantly mak- ing reservations in their disfavour — unless, of course, you happen to be a schoolgirl gushing over like a fountain with enthusiasm. It is well, when one is judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality. It is well to grasp the fact that you are going through life under the scrutiny of a band of acquaintances who are subject to very few illusions about you, whose views of you are, indeed, apt to be harsh and 36 MENTAL EFFICIENCY even cruel. Above all it is advisable to compre- hend thoroughly that the things in your indi- viduality which annoy your friends most are the things of which you are completely unconscious. It is not until years have passed that one begins to be able to form a dim idea of what one has looked like to one's friends. At forty one goes back ten years, and one says sadly, but with a certain amusement : " I must have been pretty blatant then. I can see how I must have exas- perated 'em. And yet I hadn't the faintest no- tion of it at the time. My intentions were of the best. Only I didn't know enough." And one recollects some particularly crude action, and kicks one's self. . . . Yes, that is all very well; and the enlightenment which has come with increasing age is exceedingly satisfactory. But you are forty now. What shall you be say- ing of yourself at fifty? Such reflections foster humility, and they foster also a reluctance, which it is impossible to praise too highly, to tread on other people's toes. A moment ago I used the phrase " funda- mental character." It is a reminiscence of Stevenson's phrase " fundamental decency." And EXPRESSING INDIVIDUALITY 37 it is the final test by which one judges one's friends. " After all, he 's a decent fellow." We must be able to use that formula concerning our friends. Kindliness of heart is not the greatest of human qualities — and its general effect on the progress of the world is not entirely benefi- cent — but it is the greatest of human qualities in friendship. It is the least dispensable quality. We come back to it with relief from more bril- liant qualities. And it has the great advantage of always going with a broad mind. Narrow- minded people are never kind-hearted. You may be inclined to dispute this statement: please think it over; I am inclined to uphold it. We can forgive the absence of any quality except kindliness of heart. And when a man lacks that, we blame him, we will not forgive him. This is, of course, scandalous. A man is born as he is born. And he can as easily add a cubit to his stature as add kindliness to his heart. The feat never has been done, and never will be done. And yet we blame those who have not kindliness. We have the incredible, insufferable, and odious audacity to blame them. We think of them as though they had nothing 38 MENTAL EFFICIENCY to do but go into a shop and buy kindliness. I hear you say that kindliness of heart can be " cultivated." Well, I hate to have even the appearance of contradicting you, but it can only be cultivated in the botanical sense. You can't cultivate violets on a nettle. A philosopher has enjoined us to suffer fools gladly. He had more usefully enjoined us to suffer ill-natured persons gladly. ... I see that in a fit of absentminded- ness I have strayed into the pulpit. I descend. BREAKING WITH THE PAST 39 III BREAKING WITH THE PAST ON that dark morning we woke up, and it instantly occurred to us — or at any rate to those of us who have preserved some of our illusions and our naiveie — that we had something to be cheerful about, some cause for a gay and strenuous vivacity; and then we remembered that it was New Year's Day, and there were those Resolutions to put into force! Of course, we all smile in a superior manner at the very mention of New Year's Resolutions; we pretend they are toys for children, and that we have long since ceased to regard them seri- ously as a possible aid to conduct. But we are such deceivers, such miserable, moral cowards, in such terror of appearing naive, that I for one am not to be taken in by that smile and that pretence. The individual who scoffs at New Year's Resolutions resembles the woman who says she doesn't look under the bed at nights; the truth is not in him, and in the very moment 40 MENTAL EFFICIENCY of his lying, could his cranium suddenly become transparent, we should see Resolutions burning brightly in his brain like lamps in Trafalgar Square. Of this I am convinced, that nineteen- twentieths of us got out of bed that morning animated by that special feeling of gay and strenuous vivacity which Resolutions alone can produce. And nineteen-twentieths of us were also conscious of a high virtue, forgetting that it is not the making of Resolutions} but the keep- ing of them, which renders pardonable the con- sciousness of virtue. And at this hour, while the activity of the Resolution is yet in full blast, I would wish to insist on the truism, obvious perhaps, but apt to be overlooked, that a man cannot go forward and stand still at the same time. Just as moral- ists have often animadverted upon the tendency to live in the future, so I would animadvert upon the tendency to live in the past. Because all around me I see men carefully tying them- selves with an unbreakable rope to an immovable post at the bottom of a hill and then struggling to climb the hill. If there is one Resolution more important than another it is the Resolution to break with the past. If life is not a continual BREAKING WITH THE PAST 41 denial of the past, then it is nothing. This may seem a hard and callous doctrine, but you know there are aspects of common sense which de- cidedly are hard and callous. And one finds con- stantly in plain common-sense persons (O rare and select band!) a surprising quality of ruth- lessness mingled with softer traits. Have you not noticed it? The past is absolutely intract- able. One can't do anything with it. And an exaggerated attention to it is like an exaggerated attention to sepulchres — a sign of barbarism. Moreover, the past is usually the enemy of cheerfulness, and cheerfulness is a most precious attainment. Personally, I could even go so far as to ex- hibit hostility towards grief, and a marked hostility towards remorse — two states of mind which feed on the past instead of on the present. Remorse, which is not the same thing as re- pentance, serves no purpose that I have ever been able to discover. What one has done, one has done, and there 's an end of it. As a great prelate unforgettably said, "Things are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be. Why, then, attempt to do- 42 MENTAL EFFICIENCY ceive ourselves " — that remorse for wickedness is a useful and praiseworthy exercise? Much better to forget. As a matter of fact, people " indulge " in remorse ; it is a somewhat vicious form of spiritual pleasure. Grief, of course, is different, and it must be handled with delicate consideration. Nevertheless, when I see, as one does see, a man or a woman dedicating existence to sorrow for the loss of a beloved creature, and the world tacitly applauding, my feeling is cer- tainly inimical. To my idea, that man or woman is not honouring, but dishonouring, the memory of the departed; society suffers, the individual suffers, and no earthly or heavenly good is achieved. Grief is of the past; it mars the pres- ent; it is a form of indulgence, and it ought to be bridled much more than it often is. The human heart is so large that mere remembrance should not be allowed to tyrannize over every part of it. But cases of remorse and absorbing grief are comparatively rare. What is not rare is that misguided loyalty to the past which dominates the lives of so many of us. I do not speak of leading principles, which are not likely to in- BREAKING WITH THE PAST 43 commode us by changing; I speak of secondary yet still important things. We will not do so-and-so because we have never done it — as if that was a reason! Or we have always done so-and-so, therefore we must always do it — as if that was logic! This disposition to an irra- tional Toryism is curiously discoverable in ad- vanced Radicals, and it will show itself in the veriest trifles. I remember such a man whose wife objected to his form of hat (not that I would call so crowning an affair as a hat a trifle!). "My dear," he protested, "I have al- ways worn this sort of hat. It may not suit me, but it is absolutely impossible for me to alter it now." However, she took him by means of an omnibus to a hat shop and bought him another hat and put it on his head, and made a present of the old one to the shop assistant, and marched him out of the shop. " There ! " she said, " you see how impossible it is." This is a parable. And I will not insult your intelligence by apply- ing it. The faculty that we chiefly need when we are in the resolution-making mood is the faculty of imagination, the faculty of looking at our lives 44 MENTAL EFFICIENCY as though we had never looked at them before — freshly, with a new eye. Supposing that you had been born mature and full oi experience, and that yesterday had been the first day of your life, you would regard it to-day as an ex- periment, you would challenge each act in it, and you would probably arrange to-morrow in a manner that showed a healthy disrespect for yesterday. You certainly would not say : " I have done so-and-so once, therefore I must keep on doing it." The past is never more than an experiment. A genuine appreciation of this fact will make our new Resolutions more valuable and drastic than they usually are. I have a dim notion that the most useful Resolution for most of us would be to break quite fifty per cent, of all the vows we have ever made. " Do not ac- custom yourself to enchain your