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 THE HUMAN MACHINE
 
 BY ARNOLD BENNETT 
 
 NOVELS 
 
 THESE TWAIN 
 
 CLAYHANGER 
 
 HILDA LESSWAYS 
 
 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 DENRY THE AUDACIOUS 
 
 THE OLD ADAM 
 
 HELEN WITH THE HIGH HAND 
 
 THE MATADOR OF THE FIVE TOWHS 
 
 THE BOOK OF CARLOTTA 
 
 BURIED ALIVE 
 
 A GREAT MAN 
 
 LEONORA 
 
 WHOM GOD HATH JOINED 
 
 A MAN FROM THE NORTH 
 
 ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS 
 
 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 THE CITY OF PLEASURE 
 
 THE GRAND BABYLON HOTEL 
 
 HUGO 
 
 THE GATES OF WRATH 
 
 POCKET PHILOSOPHIES 
 
 THE AUTHOR'S CRAFT 
 MARRIED LIFE 
 FRIENDSHIP AND HAPPINESS 
 HOW TO LIVE ON 24 HOURS A DAV 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 LITERARY TASTE 
 MENTAL EFFICIENCY 
 
 PLAYS 
 
 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 
 CUPID AND COMMONSENSK 
 WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS 
 POLITE FARCES 
 MILESTONES 
 THE HONEYMOON 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS 
 PARIS NIGHTS 
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT AN AUTHOR 1 
 LIBERTY! 
 OVER THERE: WAR SCENES 
 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 NEW YORK
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 BY 
 
 ARNOLD BENNETT 
 
 Author of " How to Live on 24 Hours a Day" 
 
 Thc Old Wives' Tale," etc. 
 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS ^\ NEW YORK
 
 Author's Edition
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. Taking Oneself for Granted . . . 
 
 II. Amateurs in the Art of Living . . 
 
 III. The Brain as a Gentleman-at-Large 
 
 IV. The First Practical Step 29 
 
 V. Habit-Forming by Concentration . . 36 
 
 VI. Lord over the Noddle 44 
 
 VII. What "Living" chiefly is .... 51 
 
 VIII. The Daily Friction 58 
 
 IX. "Fire!" 65 
 
 X. Mischievously Overworking it ... 72 
 
 XI. An Interlude 79 
 
 XII. An Interest in Life 87 
 
 XIII. Success and Failure 94 
 
 XIV. A Man and His Environment . . . 101 
 XV. L. S. D. log 
 
 XVI. Reason, Reason ! 117
 
 TAKING ONESELF FOR 
 GRANTED 
 
 THERE are men who are capable of lov- 
 ing a machine more deeply than they 
 can love a woman. They are among 
 the happiest men on earth. This is not a sneer 
 meanly shot from cover at women. It is simply 
 a statement of notorious fact. Men who worry 
 themselves to distraction over the perfecting of 
 a machine are indubitably blessed beyond their 
 kind. Most of us have known such men. Yes- 
 terday they were constructing motor-cars. But 
 to-day aeroplanes are in the air or, at any 
 rate, they ought to be, according to the in- 
 ventors. Watch the inventors. Invention is not 
 usually their principal business. They must 
 invent in their spare time. They must invent 
 before breakfast, invent in the Strand between 
 Lyons's and the office, invent after dinner, in- 
 vent on Sundays. See with what ardour they 
 rush home of a night! See how they seize a
 
 8 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 half -holiday, like hungry dogs a bone! They 
 don't want golf, bridge, limericks, novels, illus- 
 trated magazines, clubs, whisky, starting-prices, 
 hints about neckties, political meetings, yarns, 
 comic songs, anturic salts, nor the smiles that 
 are situate between a gay corsage and a picture 
 hat. They never wonder, at a loss, what they 
 will do next. Their evenings never drag are 
 always too short. You may, indeed, catch them 
 at twelve o'clock at night on the flat of their 
 backs ; but not in bed ! No, in a shed, under the 
 machine, holding a candle (whose paths drop 
 fatness) up to the connecting-rod that is strained, 
 or the wheel that is out of centre. They are con- 
 tinually interested, nay, enthralled. They have 
 a machine, and they are perfecting it. They get 
 one part right, and then another goes wrong; 
 and they get that right, and then another goes 
 wrong, and so on. When they are quite sure 
 they have reached perfection, forth issues the 
 machine out of the shed and in five minutes 
 is smashed up, together with a limb or so of the 
 inventors, just because they had been quite sure 
 too soon. Then the whole business starts again. 
 They do not give up that particular wreck 
 was, of course, due to a mere oversight; the
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 9 
 
 whole business starts again. For they have 
 glimpsed perfection; they have the gleam of 
 perfection in their souls. Thus their lives run 
 away. " They will never fly ! " you remark, cyni- 
 cally. Well, if they don't? Besides, what about 
 Wright? With all your cynicism, have you never 
 envied them their machine and their passionate 
 interest in it? 
 
 You know, perhaps, the moment when, brush- 
 ing in front of the glass, you detected your first 
 grey hair. You stopped brushing; then you re- 
 sumed brushing, hastily; you pretended not to 
 be shocked, but you were. Perhaps you know 
 a more disturbing moment than that, the mo- 
 ment when it suddenly occurred to you that you 
 had "arrived" as far as you ever will arrive; 
 and you 'had realised as much of your early 
 dream as you ever will realise, and the realisation 
 was utterly unlike the dream ; and marriage was 
 excessively prosaic and eternal, not at all what 
 you expected it to be; and your illusions were 
 dissipated; and games and hobbies had an un- 
 pleasant core of tedium and futility; and the 
 ideal tobacco-mixture did not exist; and one 
 literary masterpiece resembled another; and all 
 the days that are to come will more or less re-
 
 io . THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 semble the present day, until you die ; and in an 
 illuminating flash you understood what all those 
 people were driving at when they wrote such 
 unconscionably long letters to the Telegraph as 
 to life being worth living or not worth living; 
 and there was naught to be done but face the 
 grey, monotonous future, and pretend to be 
 cheerful with the worm of ennai gnawing at 
 your heart! In a word, the moment when it 
 occurred to you that yours is " the common lot." 
 In that moment have you not wished do you 
 not continually wish for an exhaustless ma- 
 chine, a machine that you could never get to the 
 end of? Would you not give your head to be 
 lying on the flat of your back, peering with a 
 candle, dirty, foiled, catching cold but ab- 
 sorbed in the pursuit of an object? Have you 
 not gloomily regretted that you were born with- 
 out a mechanical turn, because there is really 
 something about a machine . . . ? 
 
 It has never struck you that you do possess a 
 machine! Oh, blind! Oh, dull! It has never 
 struck you that you have at hand a machine won- 
 derful beyond all mechanisms in sheds, intricate, 
 delicately adjustable, of astounding and miracu- 
 lous possibilities, interminably interesting ! That
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE n 
 
 machine is yourself. ** This fellow is preaching. 
 I won't have it ! " you exclaim resentfully. Dear 
 sir, I am not preaching, and, even if I were, I 
 think you would have it. I think I can anyhow 
 keep hold of your button for a while, though you 
 pull hard. I am not preaching. I am simply bent 
 on calling your attention to a fact which has 
 perhaps wholly or partially escaped you 
 namely, that you are the most fascinating bit of 
 machinery that ever was. You do yourself less 
 than justice. It is said that men are only inter- 
 ested in themselves. The truth is that, as a rule, 
 men are interested in every mortal thing except 
 themselves. They have a habit of taking them- 
 selves for granted, and that habit is responsible 
 for nine-tenths of the boredom and despair on 
 the face of the planet. 
 
 A man will wake up in the middle of the night 
 (usually owing to some form of delightful ex- 
 cess), and his brain will be very active indeed 
 for a space ere he can go to sleep again. In that 
 candid hour, after the exaltation of the evening 
 and before the hope of the dawn, he will see 
 everything in its true colours except himself. 
 There is nothing like a sleepless couch for a clear 
 vision of one's environment. He will see all his
 
 ia THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 wife's faults and the hopelessness of trying to 
 cure them. He will momentarily see, though 
 with less sharpness of outline, his own faults. 
 He will probably decide that the anxieties of 
 children outweigh the joys connected with chil- 
 dren. He will admit all the shortcomings of 
 existence, will face them like a man, grimly, 
 sourly, in a sturdy despair. He will mutter : " Of 
 course I'm angry! Who wouldn't be? Of 
 course I 'm disappointed ! Did I expect this 
 twenty years ago? Yes, we ought to save more. 
 But we don't, so there you are ! I 'm bound to 
 worry ! I know I should be better if I did n't 
 smoke so much. I know there 's absolutely no 
 sense at all in taking liqueurs. Absurd to be 
 ruffled with her when she 's in one of her moods. 
 I don't have enough exercise. Can't be regular, 
 somehow. Not the slightest use hoping that 
 things will be different, because I know they 
 won't. Queer world! Never really what you 
 may call happy, you know. Now, if things were 
 different . . ." He loses consciousness. 
 
 Observe: he has taken himself for granted, 
 just glancing at his faults and looking away again. 
 It is his environment that has occupied his atten- 
 tion, and his environment " things " that he
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 13 
 
 would wish to have " different," did he not know, 
 out of the fulness of experience, that it is futile 
 to desire such a change? What he wants is a 
 pipe that won't put itself into his mouth, a glass 
 that won't leap of its own accord to his lips, 
 money that won't slip untouched out of his 
 pocket, legs that without asking will carry him 
 certain miles every day in the open air, habits 
 that practise themselves, a wife that will expand 
 and contract according to his humours, like a 
 Wernicke bookcase, always complete but never 
 finished. Wise man, he perceives at once that 
 he can't have these things. And so he resigns 
 himself to the universe, and settles down to a 
 permanent, restrained discontent. No one shall 
 say he is unreasonable. 
 
 You see, he has given no attention to the ma- 
 chine. Let us not call it a flying-machine. Let 
 us call it simply an automobile. There it is on 
 the road, jolting, screeching, ratttling, perfum- 
 ing. And there he is, saying : " This road ought 
 to be as smooth as velvet. That hill in front is 
 ridiculous, and the descent on the other side 
 positively dangerous. And it's all turns I 
 can't see a hundred yards in front." He has a 
 wild idea of trying to force the County Council
 
 14 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 to sand-paper the road, or of employing the new 
 Territorial Army to remove the hill. But he dis- 
 misses that idea he is so reasonable. He ac- 
 cepts all. He sits clothed in reasonableness on 
 the machine, and accepts all. " Ass ! " you ex- 
 claim. " Why does n't he get down and inflate 
 that tyre, for one thing? Anyone can see the 
 sparkling apparatus is wrong, and it's perfectly 
 certain the gear-box wants oil. Why doesn't 
 
 he ? " I will tell you why he does n't. Just 
 
 because he is n't aware that he is on a machine 
 at all. He has never examined what he is on. 
 And at the back of his consciousness is a dim idea 
 that he is perched on a piece of solid, immutable 
 rock that runs on castors.
 
 II 
 
 AMATEURS IN THE ART OF 
 LIVING 
 
 CONSIDERING that we have to spend 
 the whole of our lives in this human 
 machine, considering that it is our sole 
 means of contact and compromise with the rest 
 of the world, we really do devote to it very little 
 attention. When I say " we," I mean our inmost 
 spirits, the instinctive part, the mystery within 
 that exists. And when I say "the human ma- 
 chine " I mean the brain and the body and 
 chiefly the brain. The expression of the soul by 
 means of the brain and body is what we call the 
 art of "living." We certainly do not learn this 
 art at school to any appreciable extent. At school 
 we are taught that it is necessary to fling our 
 arms and legs to and fro for so many hours per 
 diem. We are also shown, practically, that our 
 brains are capable of performing certain useful 
 tricks, and that if we do not compel our brains
 
 16 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 to perform those tricks we shall suffer. Thus 
 one day we run home and proclaim to our de- 
 lighted parents that eleven twelves are 132. A 
 feat of the brain! So it goes on until our parents 
 begin to look up to us because we can chatter 
 of cosines or sketch the foreign policy of Louis 
 XIV. Good! But not a word about the prin- 
 ciples of the art of living yet! Only a few de- 
 tached rules from our parents, to be blindly fol- 
 lowed when particular crises supervene. And, 
 indeed, it would be absurd to talk to a school- 
 boy about the expression of his soul. He would 
 probably mutter a monosyllable which is not 
 " mice." 
 
 Of course, school is merely a preparation for 
 living; unless one goes to a university, in which 
 case it is a preparation for university. One is 
 supposed to turn one's attention to living when 
 these preliminaries are over say at the age of 
 about twenty. Assuredly one lives then; there 
 is, however, nothing new in that, for one has 
 been living all the time, in a fashion; all the 
 time one has been using the machine without 
 understanding it. But does one, school and col- 
 lege being over, enter upon a study of the ma- 
 chine? Not a bit. The question then becomes,
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 17 
 
 not how to live, but how to obtain and retain a 
 position in which one will be able to live; how 
 to get minute portions of dead animals and plants 
 which one can swallow, in order not to die of 
 hunger; how to acquire and constantly renew a 
 stock of other portions of dead animals and plants 
 in which one can envelop oneself in order not to 
 die of cold; how to procure the exclusive right 
 of entry into certain huts where one may sleep 
 and eat without being rained upon by the clouds 
 of heaven. And so forth. And when one has 
 realised this ambition, there comes the desire to 
 be able to double the operation and do it, not for 
 oneself alone, but for oneself and another. Mar- 
 riage! But no scientific sustained attention is 
 yet given to the real business of living, of smooth 
 intercourse, of self-expression, of conscious adap- 
 tation to environment in brief, to the study 
 of the machine. At thirty the chances are that 
 a man will understand better the draught of a 
 chimney than his own respiratory apparatus 
 to name one of the simple, obvious things and 
 as for understanding the working of his own 
 brain what an idea! As for the skill to avoid 
 the waste of power involved by friction in the 
 business of living, do we give an hour to it in
 
 i8 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 a month? Do we ever at all examine it save in 
 an amateurish and clumsy fashion? A young 
 lady produces a water-colour drawing. " Very 
 nice ! " we say, and add, to ourselves, " For an 
 amateur." But our living is more amateurish 
 than that young lady's drawing; though surely 
 we ought everyone of us to be professionals at 
 living ! 
 
 When we have been engaged in the prelimi- 
 naries to living for about fifty-five years, we 
 begin to think about slacking off. Up till this 
 period our reason for not having scientifically 
 studied the art of living the perfecting and use 
 of the finer parts of the machine is not that 
 we have lacked leisure (most of us have enor- 
 mous heaps of leisure), but that we have simply 
 been too absorbed in the preliminaries, have, in 
 fact, treated the preliminaries to the business as 
 the business itself. Then at fifty-five we ought 
 at last to begin to live our lives with professional 
 skill, as a professional painter paints pictures. 
 Yes, but we can't. It is too late then. Neither 
 painters, nor acrobats, nor any professionals can 
 be formed at the age of fifty-five. Thus we finish 
 our lives amateurishly, as we have begun them. 
 And when the machine creaks and sets our teeth
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 19 
 
 on edge, or refuses to obey the steering-wheel 
 and deposits us in the ditch, we say : " Can't be 
 helped! " or " Does n't matter! It will be all the 
 same a hundred years hence ! " or : "I must make 
 the best of things." And we try to believe that 
 in accepting the status quo we have justified 
 the status quo, and all the time we feel our 
 insincerity. 
 
 You exclaim that I exaggerate. I do. To 
 force into prominence an aspect of affairs usually 
 overlooked, it is absolutely necessary to exag- 
 gerate. Poetic license is one name for this kind 
 of exaggeration. But I exaggerate very little 
 indeed, much less than perhaps you think. I 
 know that you are going to point out to me that 
 vast numbers of people regularly spend a con- 
 siderable portion of their leisure in striving after 
 self-improvement. Granted! And I am glad of 
 it. But I should be gladder if their strivings 
 bore more closely upon the daily business of 
 living, of self-expression without friction and 
 without futile desires. See this man who regu- 
 larly studies every evening of his life! He has 
 genuinely understood the nature of poetry, and 
 his taste is admirable. He recites verse with 
 true feeling, and may be said to be highly culti-
 
 ao THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 vated. Poetry is a continual source of pleasure 
 to him. True ! But why is he always complain- 
 ing about not receiving his deserts in the office? 
 Why is he worried about finance? Why does he 
 so often sulk with his wife? Why does he per- 
 sist in eating more than his digestion will toler- 
 ate? It was not written in the book of fate that 
 he should complain and worry and sulk and 
 suffer. And if he was a professional at living he 
 would not do these things. There is no reason 
 why he should do them, except the reason that 
 he has never learnt his business, never studied 
 the human machine as a whole, never really 
 thought rationally about living. Supposing you 
 encountered an automobilist who was swerving 
 and grinding all over the road, and you stopped 
 to ask what was the matter, and he replied: 
 " Never mind what 's the matter. Just look at 
 my lovely acetylene lamps, how they shine, and 
 how I Ve polished them ! " You would not re- 
 gard him as a Clifford-Earp, or even as an en- 
 tirely sane man. So with our student of poetry. 
 It is indubitable that a large amount of what is 
 known as self-improvement is simply self-indul- 
 gence a form of pleasure which only inciden- 
 tally improves a particular part of the machine,
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 21 
 
 and even that to the neglect of far more impor- 
 tant parts. 
 
 My aim is to direct a man's attention to himself 
 as a whole, considered as a machine, complex 
 and capable of quite extraordinary efficiency, for 
 travelling through this world smoothly, in any 
 desired manner, with satisfaction not only to 
 himself but to the people he meets en route, and 
 the people who are overtaking him and whom 
 he is overtaking. My aim is to show that only 
 an inappreciable fraction of our ordered and sus- 
 tained efforts is given to the business of actual 
 living, as distinguished from the preliminaries 
 to living.
 
 Ill 
 
 THE BRAIN AS A GENTLE- 
 MAN-AT-LARGE 
 
 IT is not as if, in this business of daily living, 
 we were seriously hampered by ignorance 
 either as to the results which we ought to 
 obtain, or as to the general means which we must 
 employ in order to obtain them. With all our 
 absorption in the mere preliminaries to living, 
 and all our carelessness about living itself, we 
 arrive pretty soon at a fairly accurate notion of 
 what satisfactory living is, and we perceive with 
 some clearness the methods necessary to success. 
 I have pictured the man who wakes up in the 
 middle of the night and sees the horrid semi- 
 fiasco of his life. But let me picture the man 
 who wakes up refreshed early on a fine summer 
 morning and looks into his mind with the eyes 
 of hope and experience, not experience and de- 
 spair. That man will pass a delightful half-hour 
 in thinking upon the scheme of the universe as 
 it affects himself. He is quite clear that content-
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 23 
 
 ment depends on his own acts, and that no power 
 can prevent him from performing those acts. 
 He plans everything out, and before he gets up 
 he knows precisely what he must and will do in 
 certain foreseen crises and junctures. He sin- 
 cerely desires to live efficiently who would 
 wish to make a daily mess of existence? and 
 he knows the way to realise the desire. 
 
 And yet, mark me! That man will not have 
 been an hour on his feet on this difficult earth 
 before the machine has unmistakably gone 
 wrong: the machine which was designed to do 
 this work of living, which is capable of doing it 
 thoroughly well, but which has not been put into 
 order! What is the use of consulting the map 
 of life and tracing the itinerary, and getting the 
 machine out of the shed, and making a start, if 
 half the nuts are loose, or the steering pillar is 
 twisted, or there is no petrol in the tank? (Hav- 
 ing asked this question, I will drop the me- 
 chanico-vehicular comparison, which is too rough 
 and crude for the delicacy of the subject.) 
 Where has the human machine gone wrong? 
 It has gone wrong in the brain. What, is he 
 "wrong in the head"? Most assuredly, most 
 strictly. He knows none better that when
 
 24 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 his wife employs a particular tone containing 
 ten grains of asperity, and he replies in a par- 
 ticular tone containing eleven grains, the conse- 
 quences will be explosive. He knows, on the 
 other hand, that if he replies in a tone contain- 
 ing only one little drop of honey the consequences 
 may not be unworthy of two reasonable beings. 
 He knows this. His brain is fully instructed. 
 And lo! his brain, while arguing that women 
 are really too absurd (as if that was the point), 
 is sending down orders to the muscles of the 
 throat and mouth which result in at least eleven 
 grains of asperity, and conjugal relations are 
 endangered for the day. He didn't want to do 
 it. His desire was not to do it. He despises 
 himself for doing it. But his brain was not in 
 working order. His brain ran away " raced " 
 on its own account, against reason, against 
 desire, against morning resolves and there 
 he is! 
 
 That is just one example, of the simplest and 
 slightest. Examples can be multiplied. The man 
 may be a young man whose immediate future 
 depends on his passing an examination an 
 examination which he is capable of passing " on 
 his head," which nothing can prevent him from
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 25 
 
 passing if only his brain will not be so absurd 
 as to give orders to his legs to walk out of the 
 house towards the tennis court instead of send- 
 ing them upstairs to the study; if only, having 
 once safely lodged him in the study, his brain 
 will devote itself to the pages of books instead 
 of dwelling on the image of a nice girl not 
 at all like other girls. Or the man may be an old 
 man who will live in perfect comfort if only his 
 brain will not interminably run round and round 
 in a circle of grievances, apprehensions, and fears 
 which no amount of contemplation can destroy 
 or even ameliorate. 
 
 The brain, the brain that is the seat of 
 trouble ! " Well," you say, " of course it is. We 
 all know that ! " We don't act as if we did, any- 
 way. " Give us more brains, Lord ! " ejaculated 
 a great writer. Personally, I think he would 
 have been wiser if he had asked first for the 
 power to keep in order such brains as we have. 
 We indubitably possess quite enough brains, 
 quite as much as we can handle. The supreme 
 muddlers of living are often people of quite 
 remarkable intellectual faculty, with a quite 
 remarkable gift of being wise for others. The 
 pity is that our brains have a way of " wander-
 
 26 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 ing," as it is politely called. Brain-wandering is 
 indeed now recognised as a specific disease. I 
 wonder what you, O business man with an office 
 in Ludgate Circus, would say to your office-boy, 
 whom you had dispatched on an urgent message 
 to Westminster, and whom you found larking 
 around Euston Station when you rushed to catch 
 your week-end train. " Please, sir, I started to 
 go to Westminster, but there 's something funny 
 in my limbs that makes me go up all manner of 
 streets. I can't help it, sir! " " Can't you? " you 
 would say. " Well, you had better go and be 
 somebody else's office-boy." Your brain is 
 something worse than that office-boy, something 
 more insidiously potent for evil. 
 
 I conceive the brain of the average well- 
 intentioned man as possessing the tricks and 
 manners of one of those gentlemen-at-large who, 
 having nothing very urgent to do, stroll along 
 and offer their services gratis to some short- 
 handed work of philanthropy. They will com- 
 monly demoralise and disorganise the business 
 conduct of an affair in about a fortnight. They 
 come when they like; they go when they like. 
 Sometimes they are exceedingly industrious and 
 obedient, but then there is an even Chance that
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 27 
 
 they will shirk and follow their own sweet will. 
 And they mustn't be spoken to, or pulled up 
 for have they not kindly volunteered, and are 
 they not giving their days for naught? These 
 persons are the bane of the enterprises in which 
 they condescend to meddle. Now, there is a vast 
 deal too much of the gentleman-at-large about 
 one's brain. One's brain has no right whatever 
 to behave as a gentleman-at-large; but it in fact 
 does. It forgets; it flatly ignores orders; at the 
 critical moment, when pressure is highest, it 
 simply lights a cigarette and goes out for a walk. 
 And we meekly sit down under this behaviour! 
 " I did n't feel like stewing," says the young man 
 who, against his wish, will fail in his examina- 
 tion. " The words were out of my mouth before 
 I knew it," says the husband whose wife is a 
 woman. " I could n't get any inspiration to-day," 
 says the artist. " I can't resist Stilton," says the 
 fellow who is dying of greed. " One can't help 
 one's thoughts," says the old worrier. And this 
 last really voices the secret excuse of all five. 
 
 And you all say to me : " My brain is myself. 
 How can I alter myself? I was born like that." 
 In the first place you were not born " like that," 
 you have lapsed to that. And in the second
 
 28 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 place your brain is not yourself. It is only a 
 part of yourself, and not the highest seat of 
 authority. Do you love your mother, wife, or 
 children with your brain? Do you desire with 
 your brain? Do you, in a word, ultimately and 
 essentially Rite with your brain? No. Your 
 brain is an instrument. The proof that it is an 
 instrument lies in the fact that, when extreme 
 necessity urges, you can command your brain to 
 do certain things, and it does them. The first 
 of the two great principles which underlie the 
 efficiency of the human machine is this: The 
 brain is a servant, exterior to the central force of 
 the Ego. If it is out of control the reason is not 
 that it is uncontrollable, but merely that its dis- 
 cipline has been neglected. The brain can be 
 trained, as the hand and eye can be trained; it 
 can be made as obedient as a sporting dog, and 
 by similar methods. In the meantime the indis- 
 pensable preparation for brain-discipline is to 
 form the habit of regarding one's brain as an 
 instrument exterior to one's self, like a tongue 
 or a foot.
 
 THE brain is a highly quaint organism. 
 Let me say at once, lest I should be 
 cannonaded by physiologists, psycholo- 
 gists, or metaphysicians, by that the " brain " 
 I mean the faculty which reasons and which 
 gives orders to the muscles. I mean exactly 
 what the plain man means by the brain. The 
 brain is the diplomatist which arranges relations 
 between our instinctive self and the universe, 
 and it fulfils its mission when it provides for the 
 maximum of freedom to the instincts with the 
 minimum of friction. It argues with the in- 
 stincts. It takes them on one side and points 
 out the unwisdom of certain performances. It 
 catches them by the coat-tails when they are 
 about to make fools of themselves. " Don't drink 
 all that iced champagne at a draught," it says 
 to one instinct ; " we may die of it." " Don't 
 catch that rude fellow one in the eye," it says 
 to another instinct; "he is more powerful than
 
 30 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 us." It is, in fact, a majestic spectacle of com- 
 mon sense. And yet it has the most extraordi- 
 nary lapses. It is just like that man we all 
 know him and consult him who is a continual 
 fount of excellent, sagacious advice on every- 
 thing, but who somehow cannot bring his sagac- 
 ity to bear on his own personal career. 
 
 In the matter of its own special activities the 
 brain is usually undisciplined and unreliable. 
 We never know what it will do next. We give it 
 some work to do, say, as we are walking along 
 the street to the office. Perhaps it has to devise 
 some scheme for making 150 suffice for 200, 
 or perhaps it has to plan out the heads of a very 
 important letter. We meet a pretty woman, and 
 away that undisciplined, sagacious brain runs 
 after her, dropping the scheme or the draft 
 letter, and amusing itself with aspirations or 
 regrets for half an hour, an hour, sometimes a 
 day. The serious part of our instinctive self 
 feebly remonstrates, but without effect. Or it 
 may be that we have suffered a great disap- 
 pointment, which is definite and hopeless. Will 
 the brain, like a sensible creature, leave that dis- 
 appointment alone, and instead of living in the 
 past live in the present or the future? Not it!
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 31 
 
 Though it knows perfectly well that it is wasting 
 its +ime and casting a very painful and utterly 
 unnecessary gloom over itself and us, it can so 
 little control its unhealthy, morbid appetite that 
 no expostulations will induce it to behave ration- 
 ally. Or perhaps, after a confabulation with the 
 soul, it has been decided that when next a certain 
 harmful instinct comes into play the brain shall 
 firmly interfere. " Yes," says the brain, " I really 
 will watch that." But when the moment arrives, 
 is the brain on the spot? The brain has prob- 
 ably forgotten the affair entirely, or remembered 
 it too late; or sighs, as the victorious instinct 
 knocks it on the head : " Well, next time ! " 
 
 All this, and much more that every reader can 
 supply from his own exciting souvenirs, is absurd 
 and ridiculous on the part of the brain. It is 
 a conclusive proof that the brain is out of con- 
 dition, idle as a nigger, capricious as an actor- 
 manager, and eaten to the core with loose habits. 
 Therefore the brain must be put into training. 
 It is the most important part of the human 
 machine by which the soul expresses and de- 
 velops itself, and it must learn good habits. And 
 primarily it must be taught obedience. Obedi- 
 ence can only be taught by imposing one's will,
 
 32 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 by the sheer force of volition. And the brain 
 must be mastered by will-power. The begin- 
 ning of wise living lies in the control of the brain 
 by the will ; so that the brain may act according 
 to the precepts which the brain itself gives. 
 With an obedient disciplined brain a man may 
 live always right up to the standard of his best 
 moments. 
 
 To teach a child obedience you tell it to do 
 something, and you see that that something is 
 done. The same with the brain. Here is the 
 foundation of an efficient life and the antidote 
 for the tendency to make a fool of oneself. It 
 is marvellously simple. Say to your brain: 
 " From 9 o'clock to 9.30 this morning you must 
 dwell without ceasing on a particular topic which 
 I will give you." Now, it does n't matter what 
 this topic is the point is to control and invig- 
 orate the brain by exercise but you may just 
 as well give it a useful topic to think over as a 
 futile one. You might give it this : " My brain 
 is my servant. I am not the plaything of my 
 brain." Let it concentrate on these statements 
 for thirty minutes. " What? " you cry. " Is this 
 the way to an efficient life? Why, there's noth- 
 ing in it ! " Simple as it may appear, this is the
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 33 
 
 way, and it is the only way. As for there being 
 nothing in it, try it. I guarantee that you will 
 fail to keep your brain concentrated on the given 
 idea for thirty seconds let alone thirty min- 
 utes. You will find your brain conducting itself 
 in a manner which would be comic were it not 
 tragic. Your first experiments will result in dis- 
 heartening failure, for to exact from the brain, at 
 will and by will, concentration on a given idea 
 for even so short a period as half an hour is an 
 exceedingly difficult feat and a fatiguing! It 
 needs perseverance. It needs a terrible obsti- 
 nacy on the part of the will. That brain of yours 
 will be hopping about all over the place, and 
 every time it hops you must bring it back by 
 force to its original position. You must abso- 
 lutely compel it to ignore every idea except the 
 one which you have selected for its attention. 
 You cannot hope to triumph all at once. But 
 you can hope to triumph. There is no royal road 
 to the control of the brain. There is no patent 
 dodge about it, and no complicated function 
 which a plain person may not comprehend. It 
 is simply a question of : "I will, / will, and I 
 'will" (Italics here are indispensable.) 
 
 Let me resume. Efficient living, living up to
 
 34 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 one's best standard, getting the last ounce of 
 power out of the machine with the minimum of 
 friction: these things depend on the disciplined 
 and vigorous condition of the brain. The brain 
 can be disciplined by learning the habit of obedi- 
 ence. And it can learn the habit of obedience 
 by the practice of concentration. Disciplinary 
 concentration, though nothing could have the air 
 of being simpler, is the basis of the whole struc- 
 ture. This fact must be grasped imaginatively; 
 it must be seen and felt. The more regularly 
 concentration is practised, the more firmly will 
 the imagination grasp the effects of it, both 
 direct and indirect. After but a few days of 
 honest trying in the exercise which I have indi- 
 cated, you will perceive its influence. You will 
 grow accustomed to the idea, at first strange in 
 its novelty, of the brain being external to the 
 supreme force which is yoa, and in subjection 
 to that force. You will, as a not very distant 
 possibility, see yourself in possession of the 
 power to switch your brain on and off in a par- 
 ticular subject as you switch electricity on and 
 off in a particular room. The brain will get used 
 to the straight paths of obedience. And a re- 
 markable phenomenon it will, by the mere
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 35 
 
 practice of obedience, become less forgetful and 
 more effective. It will not so frequently give 
 way to an instinct that takes it by surprise. In 
 a word, it will have received a general tonic. 
 With a brain that is improving every day you 
 can set about the perfecting of the machine in 
 a scientific manner.
 
 HABIT-FORMING BY CONCEN- 
 TRATION 
 
 A soon as the will has got the upper hand 
 of the brain as soon as it can say to 
 the brain, with a fair certainty of being 
 obeyed : " Do this. Think along these lines, and 
 continue to do so without wandering until I give 
 you leave to stop " then is the time arrived 
 when the perfecting of the human machine may 
 be undertaken in a large and comprehensive 
 spirit, as a city council undertakes the purifica- 
 tion and reconstruction of a city. The tremen- 
 dous possibilities of an obedient brain will be 
 perceived immediately we begin to reflect upon 
 what we mean by our " character." Now, a 
 person's character is, and can be, nothing else 
 but the total result of his habits of thought. A 
 person is benevolent because he habitually thinks 
 benevolently. A person is idle because his 
 thoughts dwell habitually on the instant pleas- 
 ures of idleness. It is true that everybody is
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 37 
 
 born with certain predispositions, and that these 
 predispositions influence very strongly the early 
 formation of habits of thought. But the fact 
 remains that the character is built by long-con- 
 tinued habits of thought. If the mature edifice 
 of character usually shows in an exaggerated 
 form the peculiarities of the original predispo- 
 sition, this merely indicates a probability that 
 the slow erection of the edifice has proceeded at 
 haphazard, and that reason has not presided 
 over it. A child may be born with a tendency to 
 bent shoulders. If nothing is done, if on the 
 contrary he becomes a clerk and abhors gym- 
 nastics, his shoulders will develop an excessive 
 roundness, entirely through habit. Whereas, if 
 his will, guided by his reason, had compelled the 
 formation of a corrective physical habit, his 
 shoulders might have been, if not quite straight, 
 nearly so. Thus a physical habit! The same 
 with a mental habit. 
 
 The more closely we examine the develop- 
 ment of original predispositions, the more clearly 
 we shall see that this development is not inev- 
 itable, is not a process which works itself out 
 independently according to mysterious, ruthless 
 laws which we cannot understand. For instance,
 
 3 8 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 the effect of an original predisposition may be 
 destroyed by an accidental shock. A young man 
 with an inherited tendency to alcohol may de- 
 velop into a stern teetotaller through the shock 
 caused by seeing his drunken father strike his 
 mother; whereas, if his father had chanced to 
 be affectionate in drink, the son might have 
 ended in the gutter. No ruthless law here! It 
 is notorious, also, that natures are sometimes 
 completely changed in their development by 
 chance momentary contact with natures stronger 
 than themselves. " From that day I resolved 
 
 " etc. You know the phrase. Often the 
 
 resolve is not kept ; but often it is kept. A spark 
 has inflamed the will. The burning will has 
 tyrannised over the brain. New habits have 
 been formed. And the result looks just like 
 a miracle. 
 
 Now, if these great transformations can be 
 brought about by accident, cannot similar trans- 
 formations be brought about by a reasonable 
 design? At any rate, if one starts to bring them 
 about, one starts with the assurance that trans- 
 formations are not impossible, since they have 
 occurred. One starts also in the full knowledge 
 of the influence of habit on life. Take any one
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 39 
 
 of your own habits, mental or physical. You 
 will be able to recall the time when that habit 
 did not exist, or if it did exist it was scarcely 
 perceptible. And you will discover that nearly 
 all your habits have been formed unconsciously, 
 by daily repetitions which bore no relation to 
 a general plan, and which you practised not 
 noticing. You will be compelled to admit that 
 your " character," as it is to-day, is a structure 
 that has been built almost without the aid of an 
 architect; higgledy-piggledy, anyhow. But oc- 
 casionally the architect did step in and design 
 something. Here and there among your habits 
 you will find one that you consciously and of 
 deliberate purpose initiated and persevered with 
 doubtless owing to some happy influence. 
 What is the difference between that conscious 
 habit and the unconscious habits? None what- 
 ever as regards its effect on the sum of your 
 character. It may be the strongest of all your 
 habits. The only quality that differentiates it 
 from the others is that it has a definite object 
 (most likely a good object), and that it wholly 
 or partially fulfils that object. There is not a 
 man who reads these lines but has, in this detail 
 or that, proved in himself that the will, forcing
 
 40 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 the brain to repeat the same action again 
 and again, can modify the shape of his char- 
 acter as a sculptor modifies the shape of 
 damp clay. 
 
 But if a grown man's character is developing 
 from day to day (as it is), if nine-tenths of the 
 development is due to unconscious action and 
 one-tenth to conscious action, and if the one- 
 tenth conscious is the most satisfactory part 
 of the total result; why, in the name of common 
 sense, henceforward, should not nine-tenths, in- 
 stead of one-tenth, be due to conscious action? 
 What is there to prevent this agreeable consum- 
 mation? There is nothing whatever to prevent 
 it except insubordination on the part of the 
 brain. And insubordination of the brain can be 
 cured, as I have previously shown. When I see 
 men unhappy and inefficient in the craft of liv- 
 ing, from sheer, crass inattention to their own 
 development; when I see misshapen men build- 
 ing up businesses and empires, and never stop- 
 ping to build up themselves; when I see dreary 
 men expending precisely the same energy on 
 teaching a dog to walk on its hind-legs as would 
 brighten the whole colour of their own lives, I 
 feel as if I wanted to give up the ghost, so ridic-
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 41 
 
 ulous, so fatuous does the spectacle seem! But, 
 of course, I do not give up the ghost. The par- 
 oxysm passes. Only I really must cry out: 
 " Can't you see what you 're missing? Can't you 
 see that you 're missing the most interesting 
 thing on earth, far more interesting than busi- 
 nesses, empires, and dogs ? Does n't it strike you 
 how clumsy and short-sighted you are work- 
 ing always with an inferior machine when 
 you might have a smooth-gliding perfection? 
 Does n't it strike you how badly you are treating 
 yourself? " 
 
 Listen, you confirmed grumbler, you who make 
 the evening meal hideous with complaints against 
 destiny for it is you I will single out. Are 
 you aware what people are saying about you 
 behind your back? They are saying that you 
 render yourself and your family miserable by 
 the habit which has grown on you of always 
 grumbling. "Surely it isn't as bad as that?" 
 you protest. Yes, it is just as bad as that. You 
 say : " The fact is, I know it 's absurd to grumble. 
 But I 'm like that. I 've tried to stop it, and I 
 can't! " How have you tried to stop it? " Well, 
 I 've made up my mind several times to fight 
 against it, but I never succeed. This is strictly
 
 42 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 between ourselves. I don't usually admit that 
 I 'm a grumbler." Considering that you grumble 
 for about an v hour and a half every day of your 
 life, it was sanguine, my dear sir, to expect to 
 cure such a habit by means of a solitary inten- 
 tion, formed at intervals in the brain and then 
 forgotten. No!. You must do more than that* 
 If you will daily fix your brain firmly for half 
 an hour on the truth (you know it to be a truth) 
 that grumbling is absurd and futile, your brain 
 will henceforward begin to form a habit in that 
 direction; it will begin to be moulded to the 
 idea that grumbling is absurd and futile. In odd 
 moments, when it isn't thinking of anything in 
 particular, it will suddenly remember that grum- 
 bling is absurd and futile. When you sit down 
 to the meal and open your mouth to say : *' I 
 can't think what my ass of a partner means 
 by " it will remember that grumbling is 
 absurd and futile, and will alter the arrange- 
 ment of your throat, teeth, and tongue, so that 
 you will say : " What fine weather we 're hav- 
 ing ! " In brief, it will remember involuntarily, 
 by a new habit. All who look into, their experi- 
 ence will admit that the failure to replace old 
 habits by new ones is due to the fact that at the
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 43 
 
 critical moment the brain does not remember; it 
 simply forgets. The practice of concentration 
 will cure that. All depends on regular concen- 
 tration. This grumbling is an instance, though 
 chosen not quite at hazard.
 
 VI 
 LORD OVER THE NODDLE 
 
 HAVING proved by personal experiment 
 the truth of the first of the two great 
 principles which concern the human 
 machine namely, that the brain is a servant, 
 not a master, and can be controlled we may now 
 come to the second. The second is more funda- 
 mental than the first, but it can be of no use 
 until the first is understood and put into practice. 
 The human machine is an apparatus of brain 
 and muscle for enabling the Ego to develop freely 
 in the universe by which it is surrounded, with- 
 out friction. Its function is to convert the facts 
 of the universe to the best advantage of the 
 Ego. The facts of the universe are the material 
 with which it is its business to deal not the 
 facts of an ideal universe, but the facts of this 
 universe. Hence, when friction occurs, when 
 the facts of the universe cease to be of advantage 
 to the Ego, the fault is in the machine. It is not 
 the solar system that has gone wrong, but the
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 45 
 
 human machine. Second great principle, there- 
 fore : " In case of friction, the machine is always 
 at fault/' 
 
 You can control nothing but your own mind. 
 Even your two-year-old babe may defy you by 
 the instinctive force of its personality. But your 
 own mind you can control. Your own mind is 
 a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful 
 can enter except by your permission. Your own 
 mind has the power to transmute every external 
 phenomenon to its own purposes. If happiness 
 arises from cheerfulness, kindliness, and recti- 
 tude (and who will deny it?), what possible com- 
 bination of circumstances is going to make you 
 unhappy so long as the machine remains in 
 order? If self-development consists in the utili- 
 sation of one's environment (not utilisation of 
 somebody else's environment), how can your 
 environment prevent you from developing? You 
 would look rather foolish without it, anyway. 
 In that noddle of yours is everything necessary 
 for development, for the maintaining of dignity, 
 for the achieving of happiness, and you are abso- 
 lute lord over the noddle, will you but exercise 
 the powers of lordship. Why worry about the 
 contents of somebody else's noddle, in which
 
 46 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 you can be nothing but an intruder, when you 
 may arrive at a better result, with absolute cer- 
 tainty, by confining your activities to your own? 
 " Look within." " The Kingdom of Heaven 
 is within you." " Oh, yes ! " you protest. " All 
 that's old. Epictetus said that. Marcus Aure- 
 lius said that. Christ said that." They did. I ad- 
 mit it readily. But if you were ruffled this morn- 
 ing because your motor-omnibus broke down, 
 and you had to take a cab, then so far as you are 
 concerned these great teachers lived in vain. 
 You, calling yourself a reasonable man, are 
 going about dependent for your happiness, dig- 
 nity, and growth, upon a thousand things over 
 which you have no control, and the most exqui- 
 sitely organised machine for ensuring happiness, 
 dignity, and growth, is rusting away inside you. 
 And all because you have a sort of notion that 
 a saying said two thousand years ago cannot be 
 practical. 
 
 You remark sagely to your child : " No, my 
 child, you cannot have that moon, and you will 
 accomplish nothing by crying for it. Now, here 
 is this beautiful box of bricks, by means of which 
 you may amuse yourself while learning many 
 wonderful matters and improving your mind.
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 47 
 
 You must try to be content with what you have, 
 and to make the best of it. If you had the moon 
 you wouldn't be any happier." Then you lie 
 awake half the night repining because the last 
 post has brought a letter to the effect that " the 
 Board cannot entertain your application for," 
 etc. You say the two cases are not alike. They 
 are not. Your child has never heard of Epicte- 
 tus. On the other hand, justice is the moon. 
 At your age you surely know that. " But the 
 Directors ought to have granted my application," 
 you insist. Exactly! I agree. But we are not 
 in a universe of oughts. You have a special 
 apparatus within you for dealing with a universe 
 where oughts are flagrantly disregarded. And 
 you are not using it. You are lying awake, keep- 
 ing your wife awake, injuring your health, in- 
 juring hers, losing your dignity and your cheer- 
 fulness. Why? Because you think that these 
 antics and performances will influence the Board? 
 Because you think that they will put you into a 
 better condition for dealing with your environ- 
 ment to-morrow? Not a bit. Simply because 
 the machine is at fault. 
 
 In certain cases we do make use of our ma- 
 chines (as well as their sad condition of neglec':
 
 48 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 will allow), but in other cases we behave in an 
 extraordinarily irrational manner. Thus if we 
 sally out and get caught in a heavy shower we 
 do not, unless very far gone in foolishness, sit 
 down and curse the weather. We put up our 
 umbrella, if we have one, and if not we hurry 
 home. We may grumble, but it is not serious 
 grumbling; we accept the shower as a fact of 
 the universe, and control ourselves. Thus also, 
 if by a sudden catastrophe we lose somebody 
 who is important to us, we grieve, but we con- 
 trol ourselves, recognising one of those hazards 
 of destiny from which not even millionaires are 
 exempt. And the result on our Ego is usually 
 to improve it in essential respects. But there 
 are other strokes of destiny, other facts of the 
 universe, against which we protest as a child 
 protests ' when deprived of the moon. 
 
 Take the case of an individual with an imper- 
 fect idea of honesty. Now, that individual is 
 the consequence of his father and mother and 
 his environment, and his father and mother of 
 theirs, and so backwards to the single-celled 
 protoplasm. That individual is a result of the 
 cosmic order, the inevitable product of cause and 
 effect. We know that. We must admit that he
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 49 
 
 is just as much a fact of the universa as a shower 
 of rain or a storm at sea that swallows a ship. 
 We freely grant in the abstract that there must 
 be, at the present stage of evolution, a certain 
 number of persons with unfair minds. We are 1 
 quite ready to contemplate such an individual 
 with philosophy until it happens that, in the 
 course of the progress of the solar system, he 
 runs up against ourselves. Then listen to the 
 outcry! Listen to the continual explosions of a 
 righteous man aggrieved! The individual may 
 be our clerk, cashier, son, father, brother, part- 
 ner, wife, employer. We are ill-used! We are 
 being treated unfairly! We kick; we scream. 
 We nourish the inward sense of grievance that 
 eats the core out of content. We sit down in 
 the rain. We decline to think of umbrellas, or 
 to run to shelter. 
 
 We care not that that individual is a fact which 
 the universe has been slowly manufacturing for 
 millions of years. Our attitude implies that we 
 want eternity to roll back and begin again, in 
 such wise that we at any rate shall not be dis- 
 turbed. Though we have a machine for the trans- 
 mutation of facts into food for our growth, we 
 do not dream of using it. But we say, he is
 
 5 o THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 doing us harm! Where? In our minds. He has 
 robbed us of our peace, our comfort, our happi- 
 ness, our good temper. Even if he has, we might 
 just as well inveigh against a shower. But has 
 he? What was our brain doing while this 
 naughty person stepped in and robbed us of the 
 only possessions worth having? No, no! It is 
 not that he has done us harm the one cheerful 
 item in a universe of stony facts is that no one 
 can harm anybody except himself it is merely 
 that we have been silly, precisely as silly as if 
 we had taken a seat in the rain with a folded 
 umbrella by our side. . . . The machine is at 
 fault. I fancy we are now obtaining glimpses 
 of what that phrase really means.
 
 VII 
 WHAT "LIVING" CHIEFLY IS 
 
 IT is in intercourse social, sentimental, or 
 business with one's fellows that the 
 qualities and the condition of the human 
 machine are put to the test and strained. That 
 part of my life which I conduct by myself, with- 
 out reference or at any rate without direct 
 reference to others, I can usually manage in 
 such a way that the gods do not positively weep 
 at the spectacle thereof. My environment is 
 simpler, less puzzling, when I am alone, my 
 calm and my self-control less liable to violent 
 fluctuations. Impossible to be disturbed by a 
 chair! Impossible that a chair should get on 
 one's nerves! Impossible to blame a chair for 
 not being as reasonable, as archangelic as I am 
 myself! But when it comes to people! . . . 
 Well, that is "living," then! The art of life, 
 the art of extracting all its power from the human 
 machine, does not lie chiefly in processes of
 
 52 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 bookish-culture, nor in contemplations of the 
 beauty and majesty of existence. It lies chiefly 
 in keeping the peace, the whole peace, and noth- 
 ing but the peace, with those with whom one is 
 " thrown." Is it in sitting ecstatic over Shelley, 
 Shakespeare, or Herbert Spencer, solitary in my 
 room of a night, that I am " improving myself " 
 and learning to live? Or is it in watching over 
 all my daily human contacts? Do not seek to 
 escape the comparison by insinuating that I 
 despise study, or by pointing out that the eternal 
 verities are beyond dailiness. Nothing of the 
 kind ! I am so " silly " about books that merely 
 to possess them gives me pleasure. And if the 
 verities are good for eternity they ought to be 
 good for a day. If I cannot exchange them for 
 daily coin if I can't buy happiness for a single 
 day because I 've nothing less than an eternal 
 verity about me and nobody has sufficient change 
 then my eternal verity is not an eternal verity. 
 It is merely an unnegotiable bit of glass (called 
 a diamond), or even a note on the Bank of 
 Engraving. 
 
 I can say to myself when I arise in the morn- 
 ing : " I am master of my brain. No one can 
 get in there and rage about like a bull in a china
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 53 
 
 shop. If my companions on the planet's crust 
 choose to rage about they cannot affect me I I 
 will not let them. I have power to maintain my 
 own calm, and I will. No earthly being can force 
 me to be false to my principles, or to be blind 
 to the beauty of the universe, or to be gloomy, 
 or to be irritable, or to complain against my lot. 
 For these things depend on the brain; cheer- 
 fulness, kindliness, and honest thinking are all 
 within the department of the brain. The dis- 
 ciplined brain can accomplish them. And my 
 brain is disciplined, and I will discipline it more 
 and more as the days pass. I am, therefore, in- 
 dependent of hazard, and I will back myself to 
 conduct all intercourse as becomes a rational 
 creature." ... I can say this. I can ram this 
 argument by force of will into my brain, and by 
 dint of repeating it often enough I shall assur- 
 edly arrive at the supreme virtues of reason. I 
 should assuredly conquer the brain being such 
 a machine of habit even if I did not take the 
 trouble to consider in the slightest degree what 
 manner of things my fellow-men are by acting 
 merely in my own interests. But the way of 
 perfection (I speak relatively) will be immensely 
 shortened and smoothed if I do consider, dis-
 
 54 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 passionately, the case of the other human ma- 
 chines. Thus : 
 
 The truth is that my attitude towards my fel- 
 lows is fundamentally and totally wrong, and 
 that it entails on my thinking machine a strain 
 which is quite unnecessary, though I may have 
 arranged the machine so as to withstand the 
 strain successfully. The secret of smooth living 
 is a calm cheerfulness which will leave me always 
 in full possession of my reasoning faculty in 
 order that I may live by reason instead of by 
 instinct and momentary passion. The secret of 
 calm cheerfulness is kindliness; no person can 
 be consistently cheerful and calm who does not 
 consistently think kind thoughts. But how can 
 I be kindly when I pass the major portion of 
 my time in blaming the people who surround 
 me who are part of my environment? If I, 
 blaming, achieve some approach to kindliness, it 
 is only by a great and exhausting effort of self- 
 mastery. The inmost secret, then, lies in not 
 blaming, in not judging and emitting verdicts. 
 Oh ! I do not blame by word of mouth ! I am far 
 too advanced for such a puerility. I keep the 
 blame in my own breast, where it festers. I am 
 always privately forgiving, which is bad for me.
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 55 
 
 Because, you know, there is nothing to forgive. 
 I do not have to forgive bad weather; nor, if I 
 found myself in an earthquake, should I have to 
 forgive the earthquake. 
 
 All blame, uttered or unexpressed, is wrong. I 
 do not blame myself. I can explain myself to 
 myself. I can invariably explain myself. If I 
 forged a friend's name on a cheque I should ex- 
 plain the affair quite satisfactorily to myself. 
 And instead of blaming myself I should sympa- 
 thise with myself for having been driven into 
 such an excessively awkward corner. Let me 
 examine honestly my mental processes, and I 
 must admit that my attitude towards others is 
 entirely different from my attitude towards my- 
 self. I must admit that in the seclusion of my 
 mind, though I say not a word, I am constantly 
 blaming others because I am not happy. When- 
 ever I bump up against an opposing personality 
 and my smooth progress is impeded, I secretly 
 blame the opposer. I act as though I had shouted 
 to the world : " Clear out of the way, everyone, 
 for / am coming ! " Everyone does not clear 
 out of the way. I did not really expect everyone 
 to clear out of the way. But I act, within, as 
 though I had so expected. I blame. Hence
 
 56 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 kindliness, hence cheerfulness, is rendered vastly 
 more difficult for me. 
 
 What I ought to do is this ! I ought to reflect 
 again and again, and yet again, that the beings 
 among whom I have to steer, the living environ- 
 ment out of which I have to manufacture my 
 happiness, are just as inevitable in the scheme 
 of evolution as I am myself; have just as much 
 right to be themselves as I have to be myself; 
 are precisely my equals in the face of Nature; 
 are capable of being explained as I am capable 
 of being explained ; are entitled to the same lati- 
 tude as I am entitled to, and are no more respon- 
 sible for their composition and their environment 
 than I for mine. I ought to reflect again and 
 again, and yet again, that they all deserve from 
 me as much sympathy as I give to myself. Why 
 not? Having thus reflected in a general manner, 
 I ought to take one by one the individuals with 
 whom I am brought into frequent contact, and 
 seek, by a deliberate effort of the imagination 
 and the reason, to understand them, to under- 
 stand why they act thus and thus, what their 
 difficulties are, what their " explanation " is, and 
 how friction can be avoided. So I ought to re- 
 flect, morning after morning, until my brain is
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 57 
 
 saturated with the cases of these individuals. 
 Here is a course of discipline. If I follow it I 
 shall gradually lose the preposterous habit of 
 blaming, and I shall have laid the foundations of 
 that quiet, unshakable self-possession which is 
 the indispensable preliminary of conduct accord- 
 ing to reason, of thorough efficiency in the ma- 
 chine of happiness. But something in me, 
 something distinctly base, says : " Yes. The put- 
 yourself-in-his-place business over again! The 
 do-unto-others business over again ! " Just so ! 
 Something in me is ashamed of being " moral." 
 (You all know the feeling!) Well, morals are 
 naught but another name for reasonable con- 
 duct; a higher and more practical form of ego- 
 tism an egotism which, while freeing others, 
 frees myself. I have tried the lower form of 
 egotism. And it has failed. If I am afraid of 
 being moral, if I prefer to cut off my nose to 
 spite my face, well, I must accept the conse- 
 quences. But truth will prevail.
 
 VIII 
 THE DAILY FRICTION 
 
 IT is with common daily affairs that I am 
 now dealing, not with heroic enterprises, 
 ambitions, martyrdoms. Take the day, the 
 ordinary day in the ordinary house or office. 
 Though it comes seven times a week, and is the 
 most banal thing imaginable, it is quite worth at- 
 tention. How does the machine get through it? 
 Ah! the best that can be said of the machine is 
 that it does get through it, somehow. The fric- 
 tion, though seldom such as to bring matters to 
 a standstill, is frequent the sort of friction that, 
 when it occurs in a bicycle, is just sufficient to 
 annoy the rider, but not sufficient to make him 
 get off the machine and examine the bearings. 
 Occasionally the friction is very loud; indeed, 
 disturbing, and at rarer intervals it shrieks, like 
 an omnibus brake out of order. You know those 
 days when you have the sensation that life is 
 not large enough to contain the household or the 
 office-staff, when the business of intercourse may
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 59 
 
 be compared to the manoeuvres of two people 
 who, having awakened with a bad headache, are 
 obliged to dress simultaneously in a very small 
 bedroom. " After you with that towel ! " in ac- 
 cents of bitter, grinding politeness. " If you 
 could kindly move your things off this chair ! " 
 in a voice that would blow brains out if it were 
 a bullet. I venture to say that you know those 
 days. " But," you reply, " such days are few. 
 Usually ... ! " Well, usually, the friction, 
 though less intense, is still proceeding. We grow 
 accustomed to it. We scarcely notice it, as a 
 person in a stuffy chamber will scarcely notice 
 the stuffiness. But the deteriorating influence 
 due to friction goes on, even if unperceived. And 
 one morning we perceive its ravages and write 
 a letter to the Telegraph to inquire whether life 
 is worth living, or whether marriage is a failure, 
 or whether men are more polite than women. 
 The proof that friction, in various and varying 
 degrees, is practically continuous in most house- 
 holds lies in the fact that when we chance on a 
 household where there is no friction we are 
 startled. We can't recover from the phenome- 
 non. And in describing this household to our 
 friends, we say : V They get on so well together,"
 
 60 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 as if we were saying : " They have wings and 
 can fly! Just fancy! Did you ever hear of such 
 a thing? " 
 
 Ninety per cent of all daily friction is caused 
 by tone mere tone of voice. Try this experi- 
 ment. Say : " Oh, you little darling, you sweet 
 pet, you entirely charming creature ! " to a baby 
 or a dog; but roar these delightful epithets in 
 the tone of saying: "You infernal little nui- 
 sance ! If I hear another sound I '11 break every 
 bone in your body ! " The baby will infallibly 
 whimper, and the dog will infallibly mouch off. 
 True, a dog is not a human being, neither is a 
 baby. They cannot understand. It is precisely 
 because they cannot understand and articulate 
 words that the experiment is valuable; for it 
 separates the effect of the tone from the effect of 
 the words spoken. He who speaks, speaks twice. 
 His words convey his thought, and his tone con- 
 veys his mental attitude towards the person 
 spoken to. And certainly the attitude, so far as 
 friction goes, is more important than the thought. 
 Your wife may say to you : " I shall buy that 
 hat I spoke to you about." And you may reply, 
 quite sincerely, " As you please." But it will 
 depend on your tone whether you convey : " As
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 61 
 
 you please. I am sympathetically anxious that 
 your innocent caprices should be indulged." Or 
 whether you convey : " As you please. Only 
 don't bother me with hats. I am above hats. A 
 great deal too much money is spent in this house 
 on hats. However, I 'm helpless ! " Or whether 
 you convey : " As you please, heart of my heart, 
 but if you would like to be a nice girl, go gently. 
 We 're rather tight." I need not elaborate. I 
 am sure of being comprehended. 
 
 As tone is the expression of attitude, it is, of 
 course, caused by attitude. The frictional tone 
 is chiefly due to that general attitude of blame 
 which I have already condemned as being absurd 
 and unjustifiable. As, by constant watchful dis- 
 cipline, we gradually lose this silly attitude of 
 blame, so the tone will of itself gradually change. 
 But the two ameliorations can proceed together, 
 and it is a curious thing that an agreeable tone, 
 artificially and deliberately adopted, will influ- 
 ence the mental attitude almost as much as the 
 mental attitude will influence the tone. If you 
 honestly feel resentful against someone, but, 
 having understood the foolishness of fury, inten- 
 tionally mask your fury under a persuasive tone, 
 your fury will at once begin to abate. You will
 
 62 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 be led into a rational train of thought; you will 
 see that after all the object of your resentment 
 has a right to exist, and that he is neither a door- 
 mat nor a scoundrel, and that anyhow nothing 
 is to be gained, and much is to be lost, by fury. 
 You will see that fury is unworthy of you. 
 
 Do you remember the gentleness of the tone 
 which you employed after the healing of your 
 first quarrel with a beloved companion? Do you 
 remember the persuasive tone which you used 
 when you wanted to obtain something from a 
 difficult person on whom your happiness de- 
 pended? Why should not your tone always 
 combine these qualities? Why should you not 
 carefully school your tone? Is it beneath you 
 to ensure the largest possible amount of your 
 own " way " by the simplest means? Or is there 
 at the back of your mind that peculiarly English 
 and German idea that politeness, sympathy, and 
 respect for another immortal soul would imply 
 deplorable weakness on your part? You say that 
 your happiness does not depend on every person 
 whom you happen to speak to. Yes, it does. 
 Your happiness is always dependent on just that 
 person. Produce friction, and you suffer. Idle 
 to argue that the person has no business to be
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 63 
 
 upset by your tone ! You have caused avoidable 
 friction, simply because your machine for deal- 
 ing with your environment was suffering from 
 pride, ignorance, or thoughtlessness. You say I 
 am making a mountain out of a mole-hill. No! 
 I am making a mountain out of ten million mole- 
 hills. And that is what life does. It is the little 
 but continuous causes that have great effects. I 
 repeat: Why not deliberately adopt a gentle, 
 persuasive tone just to see what the results 
 are? Surely you are not ashamed to be wise. 
 You may smile superiorly as you read this. Yet 
 you know very well that more than once you 
 have resolved to use a gentle and persuasive tone 
 on all occasions, and that the sole reason why 
 you had that fearful shindy yesterday with your 
 cousin's sister-in-law was that you had long since 
 failed to keep your resolve. But you were of 
 my mind once, and more than once. 
 
 What you have to do is to teach the new habit 
 to your brain by daily concentration on it; by 
 forcing your brain to think of nothing else for 
 half an hour of a morning. After a time the brain 
 will begin to remember automatically. For, of 
 course, the explanation of your previous fail- 
 ures is that your brain, undisciplined, merely
 
 64 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 forgot at the critical moment. The tone was out 
 of your mouth before your brain had waked up. 
 It is necessary to watch, as though you were a 
 sentinel, not only against the wrong tone, but 
 against the other symptoms of the attitude of 
 blame. Such as the frown. It is necessary to 
 regard yourself constantly, and in minute detail. 
 You lie in bed for half an hour and enthusiasti- 
 cally concentrate on this beautiful new scheme 
 of the right tone. You rise, and because you 
 don't achieve a proper elegance of necktie at the 
 first knotting, you frown and swear and clench 
 your teeth! There is a symptom of the wrong 
 attitude towards your environment. You are 
 awake, but your brain is n't. It is in such a 
 symptom that you may judge yourself. And not 
 a trifling symptom, either! If you will frown 
 at a necktie, if you will use language to a necktie 
 which no gentleman should use to a necktie, 
 what will you be capable of to a responsible 
 being? . . . Yes, it is very difficult. But it can 
 be done.
 
 IX 
 
 " FIRE ! " 
 
 IN this business of daily living, of ordinary 
 usage of the machine in hourly intercourse, 
 there occurs sometimes a phenomenon 
 which is the cause of a great deal of trouble, and 
 the result of a very ill-tended machine. It is a 
 phenomenon impossible to ignore, and yet, so 
 shameful is it, so degrading, so shocking, so 
 miserable, that I hesitate to mention it. For one 
 class of reader is certain to ridicule me, loftily 
 saying : " One really does n't expect to find this 
 sort of thing in print nowadays ! " And another 
 class of reader is certain to get angry. Never- 
 theless, as one of my main objects in the present 
 book is to discuss matters which "people don't 
 talk about," I shall discuss this matter. But my 
 diffidence in doing so is such that I must ap- 
 proach it deviously, describing it first by means 
 of a figure. 
 
 Imagine that, looking at a man's house, you 
 suddenly perceive it to be on fire. The flame is
 
 66 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 scarcely perceptible. You could put it out if 
 you had a free hand. But you have not got a 
 free hand. It is his house, not yours. He may 
 or may not know that his house is burning. You 
 are aware by experience, however, that if you 
 directed his attention to the flame, the effect of 
 your warning would be exceedingly singular, 
 almost incredible. For the effect would be that 
 he would instantly begin to strike matches, pour 
 on petroleum, and fan the flame, violently re- 
 senting interference. Therefore you can only 
 stand and watch, hoping that he will notice the 
 flames before they are beyond control, and ex- 
 tinguish them. The probability is, however, 
 that he will notice the flames too late. And, 
 powerless to avert disaster, you are condemned, 
 therefore, to watch the damage of valuable prop- 
 erty. The flames leap higher and higher, and 
 they do not die down till they have burned them- 
 selves out. You avert your gaze from the 
 spectacle, and until you are gone the owner 
 of the house pretends that nothing has oc- 
 curred. When alone, he curses himself for his 
 carelessness. 
 
 The foregoing is meant to be a description of 
 what happens when a man passes through the
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 67 
 
 incendiary experience known as "losing his 
 temper." (There! the cat of my chapter is out 
 of the bag!) A man who has lost his temper is 
 simply being "burnt out." His constitutes one 
 of the most curious and (for everybody) humili- 
 ating spectacles that life offers. It is an insur- 
 rection, a boiling-over, a sweeping storm. Dig- 
 nity, common sense, justice are shrivelled up 
 and destroyed. Anarchy reigns. The devil has 
 broken his chain. Instinct is stamping on the 
 face of reason. And in that man civilisation has 
 temporarily receded millions of years. Of course, 
 the thing amounts to a nervous disease, and I 
 think it is almost universal. You at once pro- 
 test that you never lose your temper have n't 
 lost your temper for ages ! But do you not mean 
 that you have not smashed furniture for ages? 
 These fires are of varying intensities. Some of 
 them burn very dully. Yet they burn. One man 
 loses his temper ; another is merely " ruffled." 
 But the event is the same in kind. When you are 
 " ruffled," when you are conscious of a resentful 
 vibration that surprises all your being, when 
 your voice changes, when you notice a change 
 in the demeanour of your companion, who sees 
 that he has " touched a tender point," you may
 
 68 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 not go to the length of smashing furniture, but 
 you have had a fire, and your dignity is dam- 
 aged. You admit it to yourself afterwards. I 
 am sure you know what I mean. And I am 
 nearly sure that you, with your courageous can- 
 dour, will admit that from time to time you suffer 
 from these mysterious " fires." 
 
 " Temper," one of the plagues of human soci- 
 ety, is generally held to be incurable, save by 
 the vague process of exercising self-control a 
 process which seldom has any beneficial results. 
 It is regarded now as small-pox used to be re- 
 garded as a visitation of Providence, which 
 must be borne. But I do not hold it to be in- 
 curable. I am convinced that it is permanently 
 curable. And its eminent importance as a nui- 
 sance to mankind at large deserves, I think, that 
 it should receive particular attention. Anyhow, 
 I am strongly against the visitation of Provi- 
 dence theory, as being unscientific, primitive, 
 and conducive to unashamed laissez-aller. A 
 man can be master in his own house. If he can- 
 not be master by simple force of will, he can be 
 master by ruse and wile. I would employ clever- 
 ness to maintain the throne of reason when it is 
 likely to be upset in the mind by one of these
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 69 
 
 devastating and disgraceful insurrections of brute 
 instinct. 
 
 It is useless for a man in the habit of losing 
 or mislaying his temper to argue with himself 
 that such a proceeding is folly, that it serves no 
 end, and does nothing but harm. It is useless 
 for him to argue that in allowing his temper to 
 stray he is probably guilty of cruelty, and cer- 
 tainly guilty of injustice to those persons who 
 are forced to witness the loss. It is useless for 
 him to argue that a man of uncertain temper in 
 a house is like a man who goes about a house 
 with a loaded revolver sticking from his pocket, 
 and that all considerations of fairness and reason 
 have to be subordinated in that house to the 
 fear of the revolver, and that such peace as is 
 maintained in that house is often a shameful and 
 an unjust peace. These arguments will not be 
 strong enough to prevail against one of the most 
 powerful and capricious of all habits. This 
 habit must be met and conquered (and it can 
 be!) by an even more powerful- quality in the 
 human mind; I mean the universal human hor- 
 ror of looking ridiculous. The man who loses 
 his temper often thinks he is doing something 
 rather fine and majestic. On the contrary, so
 
 70 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 far is this from being the fact, he is merely 
 making an ass of himself. He is merely parading 
 himself as an undignified fool, as that supremely 
 contemptible figure a grown-up baby. He 
 may intimidate a feeble companion by his raging, 
 or by the dark sullenness of a more subdued 
 flame, but in the heart of even the weakest com- 
 panion is a bedrock feeling of contempt for him. 
 The way in which a man of uncertain temper is 
 treated by his friends proves that they despise 
 him, for they do not treat him as a reasonable 
 being. How should they treat him as a reason- 
 able being when the tenure of his reason is so 
 insecure? And if only he could hear what is 
 said of him behind his back! . . . 
 
 The invalid can cure himself by teaching his 
 brain the habit of dwelling upon his extreme 
 fatuity. Let him concentrate regularly, with 
 intense fixation, upon the ideas : " When I lose 
 my temper, when I get ruffled, when that mys- 
 terious vibration runs through me, I am making 
 a donkey of myself, a donkey, and . a donkey ! 
 You understand, a preposterous donkey! I am 
 behaving like a great baby. I look a fool. I am 
 a spectacle bereft of dignity. Everybody de- 
 spises me, smiles at me in secret, disdains the
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 71 
 
 idiotic ass with whom it is impossible to 
 reason." 
 
 Ordinarily the invalid disguises from himself 
 this aspect of his disease, and his brain will in- 
 stinctively avoid it as much as it can. But in 
 hours of calm he can slowly and regularly force 
 his brain, by the practice of concentration, to 
 familiarise itself with just this aspect, so that in 
 time its instinct will be to think first, and not 
 last, of just this aspect. When he has arrived 
 at that point he is saved. No man who, at the 
 very inception of the fire, is visited with a clear 
 vision of himself as an arrant ass and pitiable 
 object of contempt, will lack the volition to put 
 the fire out. But, be it noted, he will not succeed 
 until he can do it at once. A fire is a fire, and 
 the engines must gallop by themselves out of the 
 station instantly. This means the acquirement 
 of a mental habit. During the preliminary stages 
 of the cure he should, of course, avoid inflam- 
 mable situations. This is a perfectly simple thing 
 to do, if the brain has been disciplined out of its 
 natural forgetfulness.
 
 MISCHIEVOUSLY OVERWORK- 
 ING IT 
 
 I HAVE dealt with the two general major 
 causes of friction in the daily use of the 
 machine. I will now deal with a minor 
 cause, and make an end of mere dailiness. This 
 minor cause and after all I do not know that 
 its results are so trifling as to justify the epithet 
 " minor " is the straining of the machine by 
 forcing it to do work which it was never intended 
 to do. Although we are incapable of persuading 
 our machines to do effectively that which they 
 x are bound to do somehow, we continually over- 
 burden them with entirely unnecessary and inept 
 tasks. We cannot, it would seem, let things 
 alone. 
 
 For example, in the ordinary household the 
 amount of machine horse-power expended in 
 fighting for the truth is really quite absurd. This 
 pure zeal for the establishment and general ad- 
 mission of the truth is usually termed " contra-
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 73 
 
 dictoriness." But, of course, it is not that; it is 
 something higher. My wife states that the 
 Joneses have gone into a new flat, of which the 
 rent is 165 a year. Now, Jones has told me 
 personally that the rent of his new flat is 156 
 a year. I correct my wife. Knowing that she 
 is in the right, she corrects me. She cannot bear 
 that a falsehood should prevail. It is not a ques- 
 tion of 9, it is a question of truth. Her en- 
 thusiasm for truth excites my enthusiasm for 
 truth. Five minutes ago I did n't care twopence 
 whether the rent of the Joneses' new flat was 
 165 or 156 or 1,056 a year. But now I 
 care intensely that it is 156. I have formed 
 myself into a select society for the propagating 
 of the truth about the rent of the Joneses' new 
 flat, and my wife has done the same. In elo- 
 quence, in argumentative skill, in strict super- 
 vision of our tempers, we each of us squander 
 enormous quantities of that h.-p. which is so 
 precious to us. And the net effect is naught. 
 
 Now, if one of us two had understood the ele- 
 mentary principles of human engineering, that 
 one would have said (privately) : " Truth is in- 
 destructible. Truth will out. Truth is never in 
 a hurry. If it doesn't come out to-day it will
 
 74 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 come out to-morrow or next year. It can take 
 care of itself. Ultimately my wife (or my hus- 
 band) will learn the essential cosmic truth about 
 the rent of the Joneses' new flat. I already know 
 it, and the moment when she (or he) knows it 
 also will be the moment of my triumph. She 
 (or he) will not celebrate my triumph openly, 
 but it will be none the less real. And my reputa- 
 tion for accuracy and calm restraint will be con- 
 solidated. If, by a rare mischance, I am in 
 error, it will be vastly better for me in the day 
 of my undoing that I have not been too positive 
 now. Besides, nobody has appointed me sole 
 custodian of the great truth concerning the rent 
 of the Joneses' new flat. I was not brought into 
 the world to be a safe-deposit, and more urgent 
 matters summon me to effort." If one of us had 
 meditated thus, much needless friction would 
 have been avoided and power saved; amour- 
 propre would not have been exposed to risks; 
 the sacred cause of truth would not in the least 
 have suffered; and the rent of the Joneses' new 
 flat would anyhow have remained exactly what 
 it is. 
 
 In addition to straining the machine by our 
 excessive anxiety for the spread of truth, we give
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 75 
 
 a very great deal too much attention to the 
 state of other people's machines. I cannot too 
 strongly, too sarcastically, deprecate this aston- 
 ishing habit. It will be found to be rife in nearly 
 every household and in nearly every office. We 
 are most of us endeavouring to rearrange the 
 mechanism in other heads than our own. This 
 is always dangerous and generally futile. Con- 
 sidering the difficulty we have in our own brains, 
 where our efforts are sure of being accepted as 
 well-meant, and where we have at any rate a 
 rough notion of the machine's construction, our 
 intrepidity in adventuring among the delicate 
 adjustments of other brains is remarkable. We 
 are cursed by too much of the missionary spirit. 
 We must needs voyage into the China of our 
 brother's brain, and explain there that things are 
 seriously wrong in that heathen land, and make 
 ourselves unpleasant in the hope of getting them 
 put right. We have all our own brain and body 
 on which to wreak our personality, but this is 
 not enough; we must extend our personality 
 further, just as though we were a colonising 
 world-power intoxicated by the idea of the 
 " white man's burden." 
 
 One of the central secrets of efficient daily
 
 76 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 living is to leave our daily companions alone a 
 great deal more than we do, and attend to our- 
 selves. If a daily companion is conducting his 
 life upon principles which you know to be false, 
 and with results which you feel to be unpleasant, 
 the safe rule is to keep your mouth shut. Or if, 
 out of your singular conceit, you are compelled 
 to open it, open it with all precautions, and with 
 the formal politeness you would use to a stranger. 
 Intimacy is no excuse for rough manners, though 
 the majority of us seem to think it is. You are 
 not in charge of the universe ; you are in charge 
 of yourself. You cannot hope to manage the 
 universe in your spare time, and if you try you 
 will probably make a mess of such part of the 
 universe as you touch, while gravely neglecting 
 yourself. In every family there is generally 
 someone whose meddlesome interest in other 
 machines leads to serious friction in his own. 
 Criticise less, even in the secrecy of your cham- 
 ber. And do not blame at all. Accept your 
 environment and adapt yourself to it in silence, 
 instead of noisily attempting to adapt your en- 
 vironment to yourself. Here is true wisdom. 
 You have no business trespassing beyond the 
 confines of your own individuality. In so tres-
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 77 
 
 passing you are guilty of impertinence. This is 
 obvious. And yet one of the chief activities of 
 home-life consists in prancing about at random 
 on other people's private lawns. What I say 
 applies even to the relations between parents and 
 children. And though my precept is exaggerated, 
 it is purposely exaggerated in order effectively 
 to balance the exaggeration in the opposite 
 direction. 
 
 All individualities, other than one's own, are 
 part of one's environment. The evolutionary 
 process is going on all right, and they are a por- 
 tion of it. Treat them as inevitable. To assert 
 that they are inevitable is not to assert that they 
 are unalterable. Only the alteration of them is 
 not primarily your affair; it is theirs. Your 
 affair is to use them, as they are, without 
 self-righteousness, blame, or complaint, for the 
 smooth furtherance of your own ends. There is 
 no intention here to rob them of responsibility 
 by depriving them of free-will while saddling 
 you with responsibility as a free agent. As your 
 environment they must be accepted as inevita- 
 ble, because they are inevitable. But as centres 
 themselves they have their own responsibility: 
 which is not yours. The historic question:
 
 78 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 " Have we free-will, or are we the puppets of 
 determinism?" enters now. As a question it is 
 fascinating and futile. It has never been, and it 
 never will be, settled. The theory of determin- 
 ism cannot be demolished by argument. But in 
 his heart every man, including the most obstinate 
 supporter of the theory, demolishes it every hour 
 of every day. On the other hand, the theory of 
 free-will can be demolished by ratiocination! So 
 much the worse for ratiocination ! // we regard 
 ourselves as free agents, and the personalities 
 surrounding us as the puppets of determinism-, 
 we shall have arrived at the working compromise 
 from which the finest results of living can be 
 obtained. The philosophic experience of cen- 
 turies, if it has proved anything;, has proved this. 
 And the man who acts upon it in the common, 
 banal contacts and collisions of the difficult ex- 
 periment which we call daily life, will speedily 
 become convinced of it& practical worth.
 
 XI 
 
 AN INTERLUDE 
 
 FOR ten chapters you have stood it, but 
 not without protest. I know the feeling 
 which is in your minds, and which has 
 manifested itself in numerous criticisms of my 
 ideas. That feeling may be briefly translated, 
 perhaps, thus : " This is all very well, but it 
 is n't true, not a bit ! It 's only a fairy-tale that 
 you have been telling us. Miracles don't hap- 
 pen," etc. I, on my part, have a feeling that 
 unless I take your feeling in hand at once, and 
 firmly deal with it, I had better put my shutters 
 up, for you will have got into the way of regard- 
 ing me simply as a source of idle amusement. 
 Already I can perceive, from the expressions of 
 some critics, that, so far as they are concerned, 
 I might just as well not have written a word. 
 Therefore at this point I pause, in order to insist 
 once more upon what I began by saying. 
 
 The burden of your criticism is : " Human 
 nature is always the same. I know my faults.
 
 8o THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 But it is useless to tell me about them. I can't 
 alter them. I was born like that." The fata 1 
 weakness of this argument is, first, that it is 
 based on a complete falsity; and second, that it 
 puts you in an untenable position. Human na- 
 ture does change. Nothing can be more unscien- 
 tific, more hopelessly mediaeval, than to imagine 
 that it does not. It changes like everything else. 
 You can't see it change. True! But then you 
 can't see the grass growing not unless you 
 arise very early. 
 
 Is human nature the same now as in the days 
 of Babylonian civilisation, when the social ma- 
 chine was oiled by drenchings of blood? Is it 
 the same now as in the days of Greek civilisation, 
 when there was no such thing as romantic love 
 between the sexes? Is it the same now as it was 
 during the centuries when constant friction ha* 
 to provide its own cure in the shape of constant 
 war? Is it the same now as it was on March 
 2nd, 1819, when the British Government officially 
 opposed a motion to consider the severity of the 
 criminal laws (which included capital punish- 
 ment for cutting down a tree, and other sensible 
 dodges against friction), and were defeated by 
 a majority of only nineteen votes? Is it the
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 81 
 
 same now as in the year 1883, when the first 
 S.P.C.C. was formed in England? 
 
 If you consider that human nature is still the 
 same, you should instantly go out and make a 
 bonfire of the works of Spencer, Darwin, and 
 Wallace, and then return to enjoy the purely joc- 
 ular side of the present volume. If you admit 
 that it has changed, let me ask you how it has 
 changed, unless by the continual infinitesimal 
 efforts, upon themselves, of individual men, like 
 you and me. Did you suppose it was changed 
 by magic, or by acts of parliament, or by the 
 action of groups on persons, and not of persons 
 on groups? Let me tell you that human nature 
 has changed since yesterday. Let me tell you 
 that to-day reason has a more powerful voice in 
 the directing of instinct than it had yesterday. 
 Let me tell you that to-day the friction of the 
 machines is less screechy and grinding than it 
 was yesterday. 
 
 " You were born like that, and you can't alter 
 yourself, and so it 's no use talking." If you 
 really believe this, why make any effort at all? 
 Why not let the whole business beautifully slide 
 and yield to your instincts? What object can 
 there be in trying to control yourself in any
 
 82 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 manner whatever if you are unalterable? Assert 
 yourself to be unalterable, and you assert your- 
 self a fatalist. Assert yourself a fatalist, and you 
 free yourself from all moral responsibility and 
 other people, too. Well, then, act up to your 
 convictions, if convictions they are. If you can't 
 alter yourself, I can't alter myself, and supposing 
 that I come along and bash you on the head and 
 steal your purse, you can't blame me. You can 
 only, on recovering consciousness, affectionately 
 grasp my hand and murmur : " Don't apologise, 
 my dear fellow; we can't alter ourselves." 
 
 This, you say, is absurd. It is. That is one 
 of my innumerable points. The truth is, you do 
 not really believe that you cannot alter yourself. 
 What is the matter with you is just what is the 
 matter with me sheer idleness. You hate get- 
 ting up in the morning, and to excuse your inex- 
 cusable indolence you talk big about Fate. Just 
 as " patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel," 
 so fatalism is the last refuge of a shirker. But 
 you deceive no one, least of all yourself. You 
 have not, rationally, a leg to stand on. At this 
 juncture, because I have made you laugh, you 
 consent to say : " I do try, all I can. But I can 
 only alter myself a very little. By constitution
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 83 
 
 I am mentally idle. I can't help that, can I?" 
 Well, so long as you are not the only absolutely 
 unchangeable thing in a universe of change, I 
 don't mind. It is something for you to admit 
 that you can alter yourself even a very little. 
 The difference between our philosophies is now 
 only a question of degree. 
 
 In the application of any system of perfecting 
 the machine, no two persons will succeed equally. 
 From the disappointed tone of some of your 
 criticisms it might be fancied that I had adver- 
 tised a system for making archangels out of 
 tailor's dummies. Such was not my hope. I 
 have no belief in miracles. But I know that 
 when a thing is thoroughly well done it often has 
 the air of being a miracle. My sole aim is to in- 
 sist that every man shall perfect his machine to 
 the best of his powers, not to the best of some- 
 body else's powers. I do not indulge in any hope 
 that a man can be better than his best self. I am, 
 however, convinced that every man fails to be 
 his best self a great deal oftener than he need 
 fail for the reason that his will-power, be it 
 great or small, is not directed according to the 
 principles of common sense. 
 
 Common sense will surely lead a man to ask
 
 84 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 the question : " Why did my actions yesterday 
 contradict my reason? " The reply to this ques- 
 tion will nearly always be : " Because at the 
 critical moment I forgot." The supreme expla- 
 nation of the abortive results of so many efforts 
 at self-alteration, the supreme explanation of our 
 frequent miserable scurrying into a doctrine of 
 fatalism, is simple forgetfulness. It is not force 
 that we lack, but the skill to remember exactly 
 what our reason would have us do or think at 
 the moment itself. How is this skill to be ac- 
 quired? It can only be acquired, as skill at 
 games is acquired, by practice; by the training 
 of the organ involved to such a point that the 
 organ acts rightly by instinct instead of wrongly 
 by instinct. There are degrees of success in this 
 procedure, but there is no such phenomenon as 
 complete failure. 
 
 Habits which increase friction can be replaced 
 by habits which lessen friction. Habits which 
 arrest development can be replaced by habits 
 which encourage development. And as a habit 
 is formed naturally, so it can be formed artifi- 
 cially, by imitation of the unconscious process, 
 by accustoming the brain to the new idea. Let 
 me, as an example, refer again to the minor sub-
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 85 
 
 ject of daily friction, and, within that subject, 
 to the influence of tone. A man employs a fric- 
 tional tone through habit. The frictional tone 
 is an instinct with him. But if he had a quarter 
 of an hour to reflect before speaking, and if dur- 
 ing that quarter of an hour he could always listen 
 to arguments against the frictional tone, his use 
 of the frictional tone would rapidly diminish; 
 his reason would conquer his instinct. As things 
 are, his instinct conquers his reason by a surprise 
 attack, by taking it unawares. Regular daily 
 concentration of the brain, for a certain period, 
 upon the non-frictional tone, and the immense 
 advantages of its use, will gradually set up in the 
 brain a new habit of thinking about the non- 
 frictional tone; until at length the brain, disci- 
 plined, turns to the correct act before the old, 
 silly instinct can capture it; and ultimately a 
 new sagacious instinct will supplant the old 
 one. 
 
 This is the rationale. It applies to all habits. 
 Any person can test its efficiency in any habit. 
 I care not whether he be of strong or weak will 
 he can test it. He will soon see the tremen- 
 dous difference between merely " making a good 
 resolution " (he has been doing that all his
 
 86 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 life without any very brilliant consequences) 
 and concentrating the brain for a given time ex- 
 clusively upon a good resolution. Concentra- 
 tion, the efficient mastery of the brain all is 
 there!
 
 XII 
 AN INTEREST IN LIFE 
 
 A~TER a certain period of mental discipline, 
 of deliberate habit-forming and habit- 
 breaking, such as I have been indicating, 
 a man will begin to acquire at any rate a super- 
 ficial knowledge, a nodding acquaintance, with 
 that wonderful and mysterious affair, his brain, 
 and he will also begin to perceive how important 
 a factor in daily life is the control of his brain. 
 He will assuredly be surprised at the miracles 
 which lie between his collar and his hat, in that 
 queer box that he calls his head. For the effects 
 that can be accomplished by mere steady, per- 
 sistent thinking must appear to be miracles to 
 apprentices in the practice of thought. When 
 once a man, having passed an unhappy day be- 
 cause his clumsy, negligent brain forgot to con- 
 trol his instincts at a critical moment, has said 
 to his brain : " I will force you, by concentrating 
 you on that particular point, to act efficiently the 
 next time similar circumstances arise," and when
 
 88 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 he has carried out his intention, and when the 
 awkward circumstances have recurred, and his 
 brain, disciplined, has done its work, and so pre- 
 vented unhappiness then that man will regard 
 his brain with a new eye. " By Jove ! " he will 
 say ; " I Ve stopped one source of unhappiness, 
 anyway. There was a time when I should have 
 made a fool of myself in a little domestic crisis 
 such as to-day's. But I have gone safely through 
 it. I am all right. She is all right. The atmo- 
 sphere is not dangerous with undischarged elec- 
 tricity! And all because my brain, being in 
 proper condition, watched firmly over my in- 
 stincts ! I must keep this up." He will peer into 
 that brain more and more. He will see more 
 and more of its possibilities. He will have a new 
 and a supreme interest in life. A garden is a 
 fairly interesting thing. But the cultivation of 
 a garden is as dull as cold mutton compared to 
 the cultivation of a brain ; and wet weather won't 
 interfere with digging, planting, and pruning in 
 the box. 
 
 In due season the man whose hobby is his 
 brain will gradually settle down into a daily 
 routine, with which routine he will start the 
 day. The idea at the back of the mind of the
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 89 
 
 ordinary man (by the ordinary man I mean the 
 man whose brain is not his hobby) is almost 
 always this : " There are several things at pres- 
 ent hanging over me worries, unfulfilled am- 
 bitions, unrealised desires. As soon as these 
 things are definitely settled, then I shall begin 
 to live and enjoy myself." That is the ordinary 
 man's usual idea. He has it from his youth to 
 his old age. He is invariably waiting for some- 
 thing to happen before he really begins to live. 
 I am sure that if you are an ordinary man (of 
 course, you are n't, I know) you will admit that 
 this is true of you; you exist in the hope that 
 one day things will be sufficiently smoothed out 
 for you to begin to live. That is just where you 
 differ from the man whose brain is his hobby. 
 His daily routine consists in a meditation in the 
 following vein : " This day is before me. The 
 circumstances of this day are my environment; 
 they are the material out of which, by means of 
 my brain, I have to live and be happy and to 
 refrain from causing unhappiness in other people. 
 It is the business of my brain to make use of 
 this material. My brain is in its box for that 
 sole purpose. Not to-morrow! Not next year! 
 Not when I have made my fortune! Not when
 
 go THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 my sick child is out of danger ! Not when my wife 
 has returned to her senses ! Not when my salary 
 is raised! Not when I have passed that exami- 
 nation! Not when my indigestion is better! 
 But now I To-day, exactly as to-day is! The 
 facts of to-day, which in my unregeneracy I 
 regarded primarily as anxieties, nuisances, im- 
 pediments, I now regard as so much raw material 
 from which my brain has to weave a tissue of 
 life that is comely." 
 
 And then he foresees the day as well as he 
 can. His experience teaches him where he will 
 have difficulty, and he administers to his brain 
 the lessons of which it will have most need. He 
 carefully looks the machine over, and arranges 
 it specially for the sort of road which he knows 
 that it will have to traverse. And especially he 
 readjusts his point of view, for his point of view 
 is continually getting wrong. He is continually 
 seeing worries where he ought to see material. 
 He may notice, for instance, a patch on the back 
 of his head, and he wonders whether it is the 
 result of age or of disease, or whether it has 
 always been there. And his wife tells him he 
 must call at the chemist's and satisfy himself at 
 once. Frightful nuisance! Age! The endless
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 91 
 
 trouble of a capillary complaint! Calling at the 
 chemist's will make him late at the office! etc., 
 etc. But then his skilled, efficient brain inter- 
 venes : " What peculiarly interesting material 
 this mean and petty circumstance yields for the 
 practice of philosophy and right living ! " And 
 again: "Is this to ruffle you, O my soul? Will 
 it serve any end whatever that I should buzz 
 nervously round this circumstance instead of 
 attending to my usual business? " 
 
 I give this as an example of the necessity of 
 adjusting the point of view, and of the manner 
 in which a brain habituated by suitable concen- 
 tration to correct thinking will come to the rescue 
 in unexpected contingencies. Naturally it will 
 work with greater certainty in the manipulation 
 of difficulties that are expected, that can be " seen 
 coming " ; and preparation for the expected is, 
 fortunately, preparation for the unexpected. The 
 man who commences his day by a steady con- 
 templation of the dangers which the next sixteen 
 hours are likely to furnish, and by arming him- 
 self specially against those dangers, has thereby 
 armed himself, though to a less extent, against 
 dangers which he did not dream of. But the 
 routine must be fairly elastic. It may be neces-
 
 92 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 sary to commence several days in succession 
 for a week or for months, even with disciplin- 
 ing the brain in one particular detail, to the tem- 
 porary neglect of other matters. It is astonish- 
 ing how you can weed every inch of a garden 
 path and keep it in the most meticulous order, 
 and then one morning find in the very middle of 
 it a lusty, full-grown plant whose roots are posi- 
 tively mortised in granite! All gardeners are 
 familiar with such discoveries. 
 
 But a similar discovery, though it entails hard 
 labour on him, will not disgust the man whose 
 hobby is his brain. For the discovery in itself 
 is part of the material out of which he has to 
 live. If a man is to turn everything whatsoever 
 into his own calm, dignity, and happiness, he 
 must make this use even of his own failures. 
 He must look at them as phenomena of the brain 
 in that box, and cheerfully set about taking meas- 
 ures to prevent their repetition. All that happens 
 to him, success or check, will but serve to in- 
 crease his interest in the contents of that box. 
 I seem to hear you saying : " And a fine egotist 
 he ? 11 be! " Well, he '11 be the right sort of ego- 
 tist. The average man is not half enough of an 
 egotist. If egotism means a terrific interest in
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 93 
 
 one's self, egotism is absolutely essential to effi- 
 cient living. There is no getting away from that. 
 But if egotism means selfishness, the serious stu- 
 dent of the craft of daily living will not be an 
 egotist for more than about a year. In a year 
 he will have proved the ineptitude of egotism.
 
 XIII 
 SUCCESS AND FAILURE 
 
 1AM sadly aware that these brief chapters 
 will be apt to convey, especially to the 
 trustful and enthusiastic reader, a false im- 
 pression; the impression of simplicity; and that 
 when experience has roughly corrected this im- 
 pression, the said reader, unless he is most sol- 
 emnly warned, may abandon the entire enter- 
 prise in a fit of disgust, and for ever afterwards 
 maintain a cynical and impolite attitude towards 
 all theories of controlling the human machine. 
 Now, the enterprise is not a simple one. It is 
 based on one simple principle the conscious 
 discipline of the brain by selected habits of 
 thought but it is just about as complicated as 
 anything well could be. Advanced golf is child's 
 play compared to it. The man who briefly says 
 to himself : " I will get up at 8, and from 8.30 
 to 9 I will examine and control my brain, and so 
 my life will at once be instantly improved out 
 of recognition " that man is destined to un-
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 95 
 
 pleasant surprises. Progress will be slow. Prog- 
 ress may appear to be quite rapid at first, and 
 then a period of futility may set in, and the 
 would-be vanquisher of his brain may suffer a 
 series of the most deadly defeats. And in his 
 pessimism he may imagine that all his pains have 
 gone for nothing, and that the unserious loung- 
 ers in exhibition gardens and readers of novels 
 in parlours are in the right of it after all. 
 He may even feel rather ashamed of himself 
 for having been, as he thinks, taken in by spe- 
 cious promises, like the purchaser of a quack 
 medicine. 
 
 The conviction that great effort has been made 
 and no progress achieved is the chief of the 
 dangers that affront the beginner in machine- 
 tending. It is, I will assert positively, in every 
 case a conviction unjustified by the facts, and 
 usually it is the mere result of reaction after 
 fatigue, encouraged by the instinct for laziness. 
 I do not think it will survive an impartial ex- 
 amination; but I know that a man, in order to 
 find an excuse for abandoning further effort, is 
 capable of convincing himself that past effort has 
 yielded no fruit at all. So curious is the human 
 machine. I beg every student of himself to con-
 
 g6 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 sider this remark with all the intellectual honesty 
 at his disposal. It is a grave warning. 
 
 When the machine-tender observes that he is 
 frequently changing his point of view; when he 
 notices that what he regarded as the kernel of 
 the difficulty yesterday has sunk to a triviality 
 to-day, being replaced by a fresh phenomenon; 
 when he arises one morning and by means of a 
 new, unexpected glimpse into the recesses of the 
 machine perceives that hitherto he has been quite 
 wrong and must begin again; when he wonders 
 how on earth he could have been so blind and so 
 stupid as not to see what now he sees ; when the 
 new vision is veiled by new disappointments and 
 narrowed by continual reservations; when he is 
 overwhelmed by the complexity of his under- 
 taking then let him enhearten himself, for he 
 is succeeding. The history of success in any art 
 and machine-tending is an art is a history 
 of recommencements, of the dispersal and re- 
 forming of doubts, of an ever-increasing concep- 
 tion of the extent of the territory unconquered, 
 and an ever-decreasing conception of the extent 
 of the territory conquered. 
 
 It is remarkable that, though no enterprise 
 could possibly present more diverse and change-
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 97 
 
 ful excitements than the mastering of the brain, 
 the second great danger which threatens its ulti- 
 mate success is nothing but a mere drying-up of 
 enthusiasm for it! One would have thought 
 that in an affair which concerned him so nearly, 
 in an affair whose results might be in a, very 
 strict sense vital to him, in an affair upon which 
 his happiness and misery might certainly turn, 
 a man would not weary from sheer tedium. 
 Nevertheless, it is so. Again and again I have 
 noticed the abandonment, temporary or perma- 
 nent, of this mighty and thrilling enterprise from 
 simple lack of interest. And I imagine that, in 
 practically all cases save those in which an excep- 
 tional original force of will renders the enterprise 
 scarcely necessary, the interest in it will languish 
 unless it is regularly nourished from without. 
 Now, the interest in it cannot be nourished from 
 without by means of conversation with other 
 brain-tamers. There are certain things which 
 may not be discussed by sanely organised people ; 
 and this is one. The affair is too intimate, and 
 it is also too moral. Even after only a few min- 
 utes' vocalisation on this subject a deadly infec- 
 tion seems to creep into the air the infection 
 of priggishness. (Or am I mistaken, and do I
 
 98 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 fancy this horror? No; I cannot believe that 
 I am mistaken.) 
 
 Hence the nourishment must be obtained by 
 reading; a little reading every day. I suppose 
 there are some thousands of authors who have 
 written with more or less sincerity on the man- 
 agement of the human machine. But the two 
 which, for me, stand out easily above all the 
 rest are Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and Epicte- 
 tus. Not much has been discovered since their 
 time. " The perfecting of life is a power resid- 
 ing in the soul," wrote Marcus Aurelius in the 
 ninth book of " To Himself," over seventeen hun- 
 dred years ago. Marcus Aurelius is assuredly 
 regarded as the greatest of writers in the human 
 machine school, and not to read him daily is con- 
 sidered by many to be a bad habit. As a con- 
 fession his work stands alone. But as a practical 
 " Bradshaw " of existence, I would put the dis- 
 courses of Epictetus before M. Aurelius. Epicte- 
 tus is grosser; he will call you a blockhead as 
 soon as look at you; he is witty, he is even 
 humorous, and he never wanders far away from 
 the incidents of daily life. He is brimming over 
 with actuality for readers of the year 1908. He 
 was a freed slave. M. Aurelius was an Emperor,
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 99 
 
 and he had the morbidity from which all em- 
 perors must suffer. A finer soul than Epictetus, 
 he is not, in my view, so useful a companion. 
 Not all of us can breathe freely in his atmo- 
 sphere. Nevertheless, he is of course to be read, 
 and re-read continually. When you have gone 
 through Epictetus a single page or paragraph 
 per day, well masticated and digested, suffices 
 you can go through M. Aurelius, and then you 
 can return to Epictetus, and so on, morning by 
 morning, or night by night, till your life's end. 
 And they will conserve your interest in yourself. 
 In the matter of concentration, I hesitate to 
 recommend Mrs. Annie Besant's " Thought 
 Power," and yet I should be possibly unjust if 
 I did not recommend it, having regard to its 
 immense influence on myself. It is not one of 
 the best books of this astounding woman. It is 
 addressed to theosophists, and can only be com- 
 pletely understood in the light of theosophistic 
 doctrines. (To grasp it all I found myself obliged 
 to study a much larger work dealing with the- 
 osophy as a whole.) It contains an appreciable 
 quantity of what strikes me as feeble sentimen- 
 talism, and also a lot of sheer dogma. But it is 
 the least unsatisfactory manual of the brain that
 
 ioo THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 I have met with. And if the profane reader ig- 
 nores all that is either Greek or twaddle to him, 
 there will yet remain for his advantage a vast 
 amount of very sound information and advice. 
 All these three books are cheap.
 
 XIV 
 A MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT 
 
 I NOW come to an entirely different aspect 
 of the whole subject. Hitherto I have 
 dealt with the human machine as a con- 
 trivance for adapting the man to his environ- 
 ment. My aim has been to show how much de- 
 pends on the machine and how little depends on 
 the environment, and that the essential business 
 of the machine is to utilise, for making the stuff 
 of life, the particular environment in which it 
 happens to find itself and no other! All this, 
 however, does not imply that one must accept, 
 fatalistically and permanently and passively, 
 any preposterous environment into which destiny 
 has chanced to throw us. If we carry far enough 
 the discipline of our brains, we can, no doubt, 
 arrive at surprisingly good results in no matter 
 what environment. But it would not be " right 
 reason " to expend an excessive amount of will- 
 power on brain-discipline when a slighter effort 
 in a different direction would produce conse-
 
 102 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 quences more felicitous. A man whom fate had 
 pitched into a canal might accomplish miracles 
 in the way of rendering himself amphibian; he 
 might stagger the world by the spectacle of his 
 philosophy under amazing difficulties; people 
 might pay sixpence a head to come and see him; 
 but he would be less of a nincompoop if he 
 climbed out and arranged to live definitely on the 
 bank. 
 
 The advantage of an adequate study of the 
 control of the machine, such as I have outlined, 
 is that it enables the student to judge, with some 
 certainty, whether the unsatisfactoriness of his 
 life is caused by a disordered machine or by an 
 environment for which the machine is, in its 
 fundamental construction, unsuitable. It does 
 help him to decide justly whether, in the case of 
 a grave difference between them, he, or the rest 
 of the universe, is in the wrong. And also, if he 
 decides that he is not in the wrong, it helps him 
 to choose a new environment, or to modify the 
 old, upon some scientific principle. The vast 
 majority of people never know, with any pre- 
 cision, why they are dissatisfied with their so- 
 journ on this planet. They make long and 
 fatiguing excursions in search of precious mate-
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 103 
 
 rials which all the while are concealed in their 
 own breasts. They don't know what they want; 
 they only know that they want something. Or, 
 if they contrive to settle in their own minds what 
 they do want, a hundred to one the obtaining of 
 it will leave them just as far off contentment as 
 they were at the beginning! This is a matter of 
 daily observation: that people are frantically 
 engaged in attempting to get hold of things 
 which, by universal experience, are hideously dis- 
 appointing to those who have obtained posses- 
 sion of them. And still the struggle goes on, and 
 probably will go on. All because brains are lying 
 idle ! " It is no trifle that is at stake," said Epic- 
 tetus as to the question of control of instinct by 
 reason. "It means, Are you in yottr senses or 
 are you not?" In this significance, indubitably 
 the vast majority of people are not in their 
 senses ; otherwise they would not behave as they 
 do, so vaguely, so happy-go-luckily, so blindly. 
 But the man whose brain is in working order 
 emphatically is in his senses. 
 
 And when a man, by means of the efficiency 
 of his brain, has put his reason in definite com- 
 mand over his instincts, he at once sees things 
 in a truer perspective than was before possible,
 
 104 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 and therefore he is able to set a just value upon 
 the various parts which go to make up his en- 
 vironment. If, for instance, he lives in London, 
 and is aware of constant friction, he will be led 
 to examine the claims of London as a Mecca for 
 intelligent persons. He may say to himself: 
 " There is something wrong, and the seat of 
 trouble is not in the machine. London compels 
 me to tolerate dirt, darkness, ugliness, strain, 
 tedious daily journeyings, and general expen- 
 siveness. What does London give me in ex- 
 change? " And he may decide that, as London 
 offers him nothing special in exchange except 
 the glamour of London and an occasional seat at 
 a good concert or a bad play, he may get a better 
 return for his expenditure of brains, nerves, and 
 money in the provinces. He may perceive, with 
 a certain French novelist, that " most people of 
 truly distinguished mind prefer the provinces." 
 And he may then actually, in obedience to rea- 
 son, quit the deceptions of London with a tran- 
 quil heart, sure of his diagnosis. Whereas a man 
 who had not devoted much time to the care of 
 his mental machinery could not screw himself 
 up to the step, partly from lack of resolution, and 
 partly because he had never examined the sources
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 105 
 
 of his unhappiness. A man who, not having full 
 control of his machine, is consistently dissatisfied 
 with his existence, is like a man who is being 
 secretly poisoned and cannot decide with what or 
 by whom. And so he has no middle course be- 
 tween absolute starvation and a continuance of 
 poisoning. 
 
 As with the environment of place, so with the 
 environment of individuals. Most friction be- 
 tween individuals is avoidable friction; some- 
 times, however, friction springs from such deep 
 causes that no skill in the machine can do away 
 with it. But how is the man whose brain is not 
 in command of his existence to judge whether the 
 unpleasantness can be cured or not, whether it 
 arises in himself or in the other? He simply can- 
 not judge. Whereas a man who keeps his brain 
 for use and not for idle amusement will, when 
 he sees that friction persists in spite of his brain, 
 be so clearly impressed by the advisability of sep- 
 aration as the sole cure that he will steel himself 
 to the effort necessary for a separation. One of 
 the chief advantages of an efficient brain is that 
 an efficient brain is capable of acting with firm- 
 ness and resolution, partly, of course, because it 
 has been toned up, but more because its opera-
 
 io6 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 tions are not confused by the interference of mere 
 instincts. 
 
 Thirdly, there is the environment of one's gen- 
 eral purpose in life, which is, I feel convinced, 
 far more often hopelessly wrong and futile than 
 either the environment of situation or the en- 
 vironment of individuals. I will be bold enough 
 to say that quite seventy per cent of ambition is 
 never realised at all, and that ninety-nine per 
 cent of all realised ambition is fruitless. In other 
 words, that a gigantic sacrifice of the present to 
 the future is always going on. And here again 
 the utility of brain-discipline is most strikingly 
 shown. A man whose first business it is every 
 day to concentrate his mind on the proper per- 
 formance of that particular day, must necessarily 
 conserve his interest in the present. It is im- 
 possible that his perspective should become so 
 warped that he will devote, say, fifty-five years 
 of his career to problematical preparations for 
 his comfort and his glory during the final ten 
 years. A man whose brain is his servant, and 
 not his lady-help or his pet dog, will be in receipt 
 of such daily content and satisfaction that he will 
 early ask himself the question : " As for this am- 
 bition that is eating away my hours, what will it
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 107 
 
 give me that I have not already got? " Further, 
 the steady development of interest in the hobby 
 (call it!) of common-sense daily living will act 
 as an automatic test of any ambition. If an am- 
 bition survives and flourishes on the top of that 
 daily cultivation of the machine, then the owner 
 of the ambition may be sure that it is a genuine 
 and an invincible ambition, and he may pursue 
 it in full faith ; his developed care for the present 
 will prevent him from making his ambition an 
 altar on which the whole of the present is to be 
 offered up. 
 
 I shall be told that I want to do away with 
 ambition, and that ambition is the great motive- 
 power of existence, and that therefore I am an 
 enemy of society and the truth is not in me. But 
 I do not want to do away with ambition. What 
 I say is that current ambitions usually result in 
 disappointment, that they usually mean the com- 
 plete distortion of a life. This is an incontestable 
 fact, and the reason of it is that ambitions are 
 chosen either without knowledge of their real 
 value or without knowledge of what they will 
 cost. A disciplined brain will at once show the 
 unnecessariness of most ambitions, and will en- 
 sure that the remainder shall be conducted with
 
 io8 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 reason. It will also convince its possessor that 
 the ambition to live strictly according to the 
 highest common sense during the next twenty- 
 four hours is an ambition that needs a lot of 
 beating.
 
 XV 
 L.S.D. 
 
 AYBODY who really wishes to talk simple 
 truth about money at the present time is 
 confronted by a very serious practical 
 difficulty. He must put himself in opposition 
 to the overwhelming body of public opinion, and 
 resign himself to being regarded either as a 
 poseur, a crank, or a fool. The public is in 
 search of happiness now, as it was a million 
 years ago. Money is not the principal factor in 
 happiness. It may be argued whether, as a fac- 
 tor in happiness, money is of twentieth-rate 
 importance or fiftieth-rate importance. But it 
 cannot be argued whether money, in point of fact, 
 does or does not of itself bring happiness. There 
 can be no doubt whatever that money does not 
 bring happiness. Yet, in face of this incontro- 
 vertible and universal truth, the whole public 
 behaves exactly as if money were the sole or the 
 principal preliminary to happiness. The public 
 does not reason, and it will not listen to reason;
 
 no THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 its blood is up in the money-hunt, and the phi- 
 losopher might as well expostulate with an earth- 
 quake as try to take that public by the button- 
 hole and explain. If a man sacrifices his interest 
 under the will of some dead social tyrant in order 
 to marry whom he wishes, if an English minister 
 of religion declines twenty-five thousand dollars 
 a year to go into exile and preach to New York 
 millionaires, the phenomenon is genuinely held 
 to be so astounding that it at once flies right 
 round the world in the form of exclamatory news- 
 paper articles ! In an age when such an attitude 
 towards money is sincere, it is positively danger- 
 ous I doubt if it may not be harmful to per- 
 sist with loud obstinacy that money, instead of 
 being the greatest, is the least thing in the world. 
 In times of high military excitement a man may 
 be ostracised if not lynched for uttering opinions 
 which everybody will accept as truisms a couple 
 of years later, and thus the wise philosopher 
 holds his tongue lest it should be cut out. So 
 at the zenith of a period when the possession of 
 money in absurd masses is an infallible means 
 to the general respect, I have no intention either 
 of preaching or of practising quite all that I pri- 
 vately believe in the matter of riches.
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE in 
 
 It was not always thus. Though there have 
 been previous ages as lustful for wealth and os- 
 tentation as our own, there have also been ages 
 when money-getting and millionaire-envying 
 were not the sole preoccupations of the average 
 man. And such an age will undoubtedly succeed 
 to ours. Few things would surprise me less, in 
 social life, than the upspringing of some anti- 
 luxury movement, the formation of some league 
 or guild among the middling classes (where alone 
 intellect is to be found in quantity), the members 
 of which would bind themselves to stand aloof 
 from all the great, silly, banal, ugly, and tedious 
 fore -activities of the time, and not to spend more 
 than a certain sum per annum on eating, drink- 
 ing, covering their bodies, and being moved about 
 like parcels from one spot of the earth's surface 
 to another. Such a movement would, and will, 
 help towards the formation of an opinion which 
 would condemn lavish expenditure on personal 
 satisfactions as bad form. However, the share- 
 holders of grand hotels, restaurants, and race- 
 courses of all sorts, together with popular singers 
 and barristers, etc., need feel no immediate alarm. 
 The movement is not yet. 
 
 As touching the effect of money on the efficient
 
 H2 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 ordering of the human machine, there is happily 
 no necessity to inform those who have begun to 
 interest themselves in the conduct of their own 
 brains that money counts for very little in that 
 paramount affair. Nothing that really helps 
 towards perfection costs more than is within the 
 means of every person who reads these pages. 
 The expenses connected with daily meditation, 
 with the building-up of mental habits, with the 
 practice of self-control and of cheerfulness, with 
 the enthronement of reason over the rabble of 
 primeval instincts these expenses are really, 
 you know, trifling. And whether you get that 
 well-deserved rise of a pound a week or whether 
 you don't, you may anyhow go ahead with the 
 machine ; it is n't a motor-car, though I started 
 by comparing it to one. And even when, having 
 to a certain extent mastered, through sensible 
 management of the machine, the art of achieving 
 a daily content and dignity, you come to the 
 embroidery of life even the best embroidery 
 of life is not absolutely ruinous. Meat may go 
 up in price it has done but books won't. 
 Admission to picture galleries and concerts and 
 so forth will remain quite low. The views from 
 Richmond Hill or Hindhead, or along Pall Mall
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 113 
 
 at sunset, the smell of the earth, the taste of fruit 
 and of kisses these things are unaffected by 
 the machinations of trusts and the hysteria of 
 stock exchanges. Travel, which after books is 
 the finest of all embroideries (and which is not 
 to be valued by the mile but by the quality), is 
 decidedly cheaper than ever it was. All that is 
 rt quired is ingenuity in one's expenditure. And 
 much ingenuity with a little money is vastly more 
 profitable and amusing than much money with- 
 out ingenuity. 
 
 And all the while as you read this you are say- 
 ing, with your impatient sneer : " It 's all very 
 well; it's all very fine talking, but . . . ." In 
 brief, you are not convinced. You cannot de- 
 racinate that wide-rooted dogma within your 
 soul that more money means more joy. I regret 
 it. But let me put one question, and let me ask 
 you to answer it honestly. Your financial means 
 are greater now than they used to be. Are you 
 happier or less discontented than you used to 
 be? Taking your existence day by day, hour by 
 hour, judging it by the mysterious feel (in the 
 chest) of responsibilities, worries, positive joys 
 and satisfactions, are you genuinely happier than 
 you used to be?
 
 H4 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 I do not wish to be misunderstood. The finan- 
 cial question cannot be ignored. If it is true that 
 money does not bring happiness, it is no less 
 true that the lack of money induces a state of 
 affairs in which efficient living becomes doubly 
 difficult. These two propositions, superficially 
 perhaps self-contradictory, are not really so. A 
 modest income suffices for the fullest realisation 
 of the Ego in terms of content and dignity; but 
 you must live within it. You cannot righteously 
 ignore money. A man, for instance, who culti- 
 vates himself and instructs a family of daughters 
 in everything except the ability to earn their own 
 livelihood, and then has the impudence to die 
 suddenly without leaving a penny that man is 
 a scoundrel. Ninety or should I say ninety- 
 nine ? per cent of all those anxieties which ren- 
 der proper living almost impossible are caused 
 by the habit of walking on the edge of one's in- 
 come as one might walk on the edge of a preci- 
 pice. The majority of Englishmen have some 
 financial worry or other continually, everlastingly 
 at the back of their minds. The sacrifice neces- 
 sary to abolish this condition of things is more 
 apparent than real. All spending is a matter of 
 habit.
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 115 
 
 Speaking generally, a man can contrive, out of 
 an extremely modest income, to have all that he 
 needs unless he needs the esteem of snobs. 
 Habit may, and habit usually does, make it just 
 as difficult to keep a family on two thousand a 
 year as on two hundred. I suppose that for the 
 majority of men the suspension of income for a 
 single month would mean either bankruptcy, the 
 usurer, or acute inconvenience. Impossible, 
 under such circumstances, to be in full and 
 independent possession of one's immortal soul! 
 Hence I should be inclined to say that the first 
 preliminary to a proper control of the machine is 
 the habit of spending decidedly less than one 
 earns or receives. The veriest automaton of a 
 clerk ought to have the wherewithal of a whole 
 year as a shield against the caprices of his em- 
 ployer. It would be as reasonable to expect the 
 inhabitants of an unfortified city in the midst of 
 a plain occupied by a hostile army to apply them- 
 selves successfully to the study of logarithms or 
 metaphysics, as to expect a man without a year's 
 income in his safe to apply himself successfully 
 to the true art of living. 
 
 And the whole secret of relative freedom from 
 financial anxiety lies not in income, but in ex-
 
 n6 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 penditure. I am ashamed to utter this antique 
 platitude. But, like most aphorisms of unassail- 
 able wisdom, it is completely ignored. You say, 
 of course, that it is not easy to leave a margin 
 between your expenditure and your present in- 
 come. I know it. I fraternally shake your hand. 
 Still, it is, in most cases, far easier to lessen one's 
 expenditure than to increase one's income with- 
 out increasing one's expenditure. The alterna- 
 tive is before you. However you decide, be as- 
 sured that the foundation of philosophy is a 
 margin, and that the margin can always be had.
 
 XVI 
 REASON, REASON! 
 
 IN conclusion, I must insist upon several 
 results of what I may call the " intensive 
 culture " of the reason. The brain will not 
 only grow more effectively powerful 'in the de- 
 partments of life where the brain is supposed 
 specially to work, but it will also enlarge the 
 circle of its activities. It will assuredly interfere 
 in everything. The student of himself must nec- 
 essarily conduct his existence more and more 
 according to the views of his brain. This will 
 be most salutary and agreeable both for himself 
 and for the rest of the world. You object. You 
 say it will be a pity when mankind refers every- 
 thing to reason. You talk about the heart. You 
 envisage an entirely reasonable existence as a 
 harsh and callous existence. Not so. When the 
 reason and the heart come into conflict the heart 
 is invariably wrong. I do not say that the reason 
 is always entirely right, but I do say that it is 
 always less wrong than the heart. The empire
 
 n8 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 of the reason is not universal, but within its 
 empire reason is supreme, and if other forces 
 challenge it on its own soil they must take the 
 consequences. Nearly always, when the heart 
 opposes the brain, the heart is merely a pretty 
 name which we give to our idleness and our 
 egotism. 
 
 We pass along the Strand and see a respectable 
 young widow standing in the gutter, with a baby 
 in her arms and a couple of boxes of matches in 
 one hand. We know she is a widow because of 
 her weeds, and we know she is respectable by 
 her clothes. We know she is not begging be- 
 cause she is selling matches. The sight of her in 
 the gutter pains our heart. Our heart weeps and 
 gives the woman a penny in exchange for a half- 
 penny box of matches, and the pain of our heart 
 is thereby assuaged. Our heart has performed a 
 good action. But later on our reason (unfortu- 
 nately asleep at the moment) wakes up and says : 
 " That baby was hired ; the weeds and matches 
 merely a dodge. The whole affair was a spec- 
 tacle got up to extract money from a fool like 
 you. It is as mechanical as a penny in the slot. 
 Instead of relieving distress you have simply 
 helped to perpetuate an infamous system. You
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE ng 
 
 ought to know that you can't do good in that off- 
 hand way." The heart gives pennies in the 
 street. The brain runs the Charity Organisation 
 Society. Of course, to give pennies in the street 
 is much less trouble than to run the C.O.S. As 
 a method of producing a quick, inexpensive, and 
 pleasing effect on one's egotism the C.O.S. is 
 simply not in it with this dodge of giving pennies 
 at random, without inquiry. Only which of 
 the two devices ought to be accused of harshness 
 and callousness? Which of them is truly kind? 
 I bring forward the respectable young widow as 
 a sample case of the Heart <o. Brain conflict. All 
 other cases are the same. The brain is always 
 more kind than the heart; the brain is always 
 more willing than the heart to put itself to a 
 great deal of trouble for a very little reward ; the 
 brain always does the difficult, unselfish thing, 
 and the heart always does the facile, showy 
 thing. Naturally the result of the brain's activity 
 on society is always more advantageous than the 
 result of the heart's activity. 
 
 Another point. I have tried to show that, if 
 the reason is put in command of the feelings, it 
 is impossible to assume an attitude of blame 
 towards any person whatsoever for any act what-
 
 120 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 soever. The habit of blaming must depart abso- 
 lutely. It is no argument against this statement 
 that it involves anarchy and the demolition of 
 society. Even if it did (which emphatically it 
 does not), that would not affect its truth. All 
 great truths have been assailed on the ground 
 that to accept them meant the end of everything. 
 As if that mattered! As I make no claim to be 
 the discoverer of this truth I have no hesitation 
 in announcing it to be one of the most important 
 truths that the world has yet to learn. However, 
 the real reason why many people object to this 
 truth is not because they think it involves the 
 utter demolition of society (fear of the utter 
 demolition of society never stopped anyone from 
 doing or believing anything, and never will), but 
 because they say to themselves that if they can't 
 blame they can't praise. And they do so like 
 praising! If they are so desperately fond of 
 praising, it is a pity that they don't praise a little 
 more! There can be no doubt that the average 
 man blames much more than he praises. His 
 instinct is to blame. If he is satisfied he says 
 nothing; if he is not, he most illogically kicks 
 up a row. So that even if the suppression of 
 blame involved the suppression of praise the
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 121 
 
 change would certainly be a change for the better. 
 But I can perceive no reason why the suppression 
 of blame should involve the suppression of praise. 
 On the contrary, I think that the habit of prais- 
 ing should be fostered. (I do not suggest the 
 occasional use of trowels, but the regular use of 
 salt-spoons.) Anyhow, the triumph of the brain 
 over the natural instincts (in an ideally organised 
 man the brain and the natural instincts will never 
 have even a tiff) always means the ultimate tri- 
 umph of kindness. 
 
 And, further, the culture of the brain, the con- 
 stant disciplinary exercise of the reasoning fac- 
 ulty, means the diminution of misdeeds. (Do 
 not imagine I am hinting that you are on the 
 verge of murdering your wife or breaking into 
 your neighbour's house. Although you person- 
 ally are guiltless, there is a good deal of sin still 
 committed in your immediate vicinity.) Said 
 Balzac in " La Cousine Bette," " A crime is in the 
 first instance a defect of reasoning powers." In 
 the appreciation of this truth, Marcus Aurelius 
 was, as usual, a bit beforehand with Balzac. M. 
 Aurelius said, " No soul wilfully misses truth." 
 And Epictetus had come to the same conclusion 
 before M. Aurelius, and Plato before Epictetus.
 
 122 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 All wrongdoing is done in the sincere belief that it 
 is the best thing to do. Whatever sin a man does 
 he does either for his own benefit or for the bene- 
 fit of society. At the moment of doing it he is 
 convinced that it is the only thing to do. He is 
 mistaken. And he is mistaken because his brain 
 has been unequal to the task of reasoning the 
 matter out. Passion (the heart) is responsible 
 for all crimes. Indeed, crime is simply a conven- 
 ient monosyllable which we apply to what hap- 
 pens when the brain and the heart come into 
 conflict and the brain is defeated. That trans- 
 action of the matches was a crime, you know. 
 
 Lastly, the culture of the brain must result in 
 the habit of originally examining all the phe- 
 nomena of life and conduct, to see what they 
 really are, and to what they lead. The heart 
 hates progress, because the dear old thing always 
 wants to do as has always been done. The heart 
 is convinced that custom is a virtue. The heart 
 of the dirty working man rebels when the State 
 insists that he shall be clean, for no other reason 
 than that it is his custom to be dirty. Useless to 
 tell his heart that, clean, he will live longer ! He 
 has been dirty and he will be. The brain alone 
 is the enemy of prejudice and precedent, which
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 123 
 
 alone are the enemies of progress. And this 
 habit of originally examining phenomena is per- 
 haps the greatest factor that goes to the making 
 of personal dignity; for it fosters reliance on 
 one's self and courage to accept the consequences 
 of the act of reasoning. Reason is the basis of 
 personal dignity. 
 
 I finish. I have said nothing of the modifica- 
 tions which the constant use of the brain will 
 bring about in the general 'values of existence. 
 Modifications slow and subtle, but tremendous! 
 The persevering will discover them. It will hap- 
 pen to the persevering that their whole lives are 
 changed texture and colour, too ! Naught will 
 happen to those who do not persevere.
 
 r 
 
 Tl 
 
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