THE 
 REASONABLE 
 
 £>3 ug LIFE 
 I<?81 il 
 
 V9.RNOLD BENNETT 
 
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Ulatnell HnitJEraitg Ethtarg 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
 THE G[FT OF 
 
 HENRY W. SAGE 
 
 1891 
 
Cornell University Library 
 BJ1581.B47 R2 
 
 Reasonable life, being hints for men and 
 
 olin 
 
 1924 029 202 086 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029202086 
 
THE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
Works by Arnold Bennett. 
 
 NOVELS 
 
 A MAN FROM THE NORTH 
 
 ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS 
 
 LEONORA 
 
 A GREAT MAN 
 
 SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE 
 
 WHOM GOD HATH JOINED 
 
 FANTASIAS 
 
 THE GRAND BABYLON HOTEL 
 
 THE GATES OF WRATH 
 
 TERESA OF WATLING STREET 
 
 THE LOOT OF CITIES 
 
 HUGO 
 
 THE GHOST 
 
 SHORT STORIES 
 
 TALES OF THE FIVE TOWNS 
 
 BELLES-LETTRES 
 
 JOURNALISM FOR WOMEN 
 FAME AND FICTION 
 HOW TO BECOME AN AUTHOR 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT AN AUTHOR 
 
 DRAMA 
 
 POLITE FARCES 
 
THE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
 Being Hints for Men and Women 
 
 By 
 
 ARNOLD BENNETT 
 
 LONDON 
 A. C. FIFIELD, 44 FLEET STREET, E.C 
 
 1907 
 
All Rights Reserved 
 
NOTE 
 
 The matter of this little hook consists of a selection of 
 " The Savoir Vivre Papers," a series of articles intended 
 to deal practically with daily existence, which I contri- 
 buted during the years 1905 and 1906 to " T.P.'s Weekly." 
 These articles gave rise to a vast amount of correspon- 
 dence, and it is in response to many requests that I reprint 
 some of them. I have chosen the least controversial. I 
 acknowledge with much pleasure the courtesy of the 
 editor of " T.P.'s Weekly " in my regard. 
 
 A. B. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I Mental Efficiency — 
 
 i. The Appeal .... 7 
 ii. The Replies . . . .11 
 hi. The Cure ..... 15 
 iv. Mind Calisthenics ... 19 
 
 II Expressing one's Individuality . . 24 
 
 III Breaking with the Past . . -29 
 
 IV Settling Down in Life ■ ■ • 33 
 V Success — 
 
 i. Candid Remarks ... 38 
 
 ii. The Successful and the Unsuc- 
 cessful . . . . -42 
 iii. The Inwardness of Success . 46 
 VI Those Petty Artificialities . . 51 
 VII The Secret of Content ... 56 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 
 
 I. The Appeal 
 
 IF there is any virtue in advertisements — and a 
 journalist should be the last person to say that 
 there is not — the American nation is rapidly reaching 
 a state of physical efficiency of which the world has 
 probably not seen the like since Sparta. In all the 
 American newspapers and all the American monthlies 
 are innumerable illustrated announcements of " phy- 
 sical-culture specialists," who guarantee to make 
 all the organs of the body perform their duties with 
 the mighty precision of a 60 h.p. motor-car that 
 never breaks down. I saw a book the other day 
 written by one of these specialists, to show how 
 perfect health could be attained by devoting a 
 quarter of an hour a day to certain exercises. The 
 advertisements multiply and increase in size. They 
 cost a great deal of money. Therefore they must 
 bring in a great deal of business. Therefore vast 
 numbers of people must be worried about the non- 
 efficiency of their bodies, and on the way to achieve 
 efficiency. In our more modest British fashion, we 
 have the same phenomenon in England. And it is 
 growing. Our muscles are growing also. Surprise a 
 man in his bedroom of a morning, and you will find 
 him lying on his back on the floor, or standing on his 
 head, or whirhng clubs, in pursuit of physical efficiency. 
 I remember that once I "went in " for physical efficiency 
 
8 THE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
 myself. I, too, lay on the floor, my delicate epidermis 
 separated from the carpet by only the thinnest of gar- 
 ments, and I contorted myself according to the fifteen 
 diagrams of a large chart (believed to be the magna 
 charta of physical efficiency) daily after shaving. In 
 three weeks my collars would not meet round my 
 prize-fighter's neck ; my hosier reaped immense pro- 
 fits, and I came to the conclusion that I had carried 
 physical efficiency quite far enough. 
 
 ""Wi "^Wl ^"^h 
 
 A strange thing — was it not ? — that I never had 
 the idea of devoting a quarter of an hour a day after 
 shaving to the pursuit of mental efficiency. The 
 average body is a pretty complicated affair, sadly out 
 of order, but happily susceptible to culture. The 
 average mind is vastly more complicated, not less sadly 
 out of order, but perhaps even more susceptible to 
 culture . We compare our arms to the arms of the gentle- 
 man illustrated in the physical efficiency advertisement, 
 and we murmur to ourselves the classic phrase : " This 
 wiU never do." And we set about developing the 
 muscles of our arms until we can show them off (through 
 a frock coat) to women at afternoon tea. But it does 
 not, perhaps, occur to us that the mind has its muscles, 
 and a lot of apparatus besides, and that these invis- 
 ible, yet paramount, mental organs are far less efficient 
 than they ought to be ; that some of them are atro- 
 phied, others starved, others out of shape, etc. A 
 man of sedentary occupation goes for a very long walk 
 on Easter Monday, and in the evening is so exhausted 
 that he can scarcely eat. He wakes up to the inefficiency 
 of his body, caused by his neglect of it, and he is so 
 shocked that he determines on remedial measures. 
 Either he wiU walk to the office, or he wiU play golf, 
 or he will execute the post-shaving exercises. But 
 let the same man after a prolonged sedentary course 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 9 
 
 of newspapers, magazines, and novels, take his mind 
 out for a stiff climb among the rocks of a scientific, 
 philosophic, or artistic subject. What will he do ? 
 Will he stay out aU day, and return in the evening 
 too tired even to read his paper ? Not he. It is ten 
 to one that, finding himself puffing for breath after a 
 quarter of an hour, he won't even persist tiU he gets 
 his second wind, but will come back at once. Will 
 he remark with genuine concern that his mind is sadly 
 out of condition and that he really must do something 
 to get it into order ? Not he. It is a hundred to one 
 that he will tranquilly accept the status quo, without 
 shame and without very poignant regret. Do I make 
 my meaning clear ? 
 
 ''^ ^^ ^"9^ 
 
 I say, without a very poignant regret, because a 
 certain vague regret is indubitably caused by realizing 
 that one is handicapped by a mental inefficiency which 
 might, without too much difficulty, be cured. That 
 vague regret exudes like a vapour from the more cul- 
 tivated section of the pubhc. It is to be detected every- 
 where, and especially among people who are near the 
 half-way house of life. They perceive the existence 
 of immense quantities of knowledge, not the smallest 
 particle of which will they ever make their own. They 
 stroll forth from their orderly dwellings on a starlit 
 night, and feel dimly the wonder of the heavens. But 
 the still small voice is telling them that, though 
 they have read in a newspaper that there are 
 fifty thousand stars in the Pleiades, they cannot 
 even point to the Pleiades in the sky. How they 
 would like to grasp the signiiicance of the nebular 
 theory, the most overwhelming of all theories ! And 
 the years are passing ; and there are twenty-four 
 hours in every day, out of which they only work 
 six or seven ; and it only needs an impulse, an effort, 
 
10 THE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
 a system, in order gradually to cure the mind of its 
 slackness, to give " tone " to its muscles, and to enable 
 it to grapple with the splendours of knowledge and 
 sensation that await it ! But the regret is not poignant 
 enough. They do nothing. They go on doing nothing. 
 It is as though they passed for ever along the length 
 of an endless table filled with delicacies, and could 
 not stretch out a hand to seize. Do I exaggerate ? 
 Is there not deep in the consciousness of most of us 
 a mournful feeling that our minds are like the liver 
 of the advertisement — sluggish, and that for the slug- 
 gishness of our minds there is the excuse neither of 
 incompetence, nor of lack of time, nor of lack of oppor- 
 tunity, nor of lack of means ? 
 
 "■^ "^^ -"^i 
 
 Why does not some mental efficiency specialist come 
 forward and show us how to make our minds do the 
 work which our minds are certainly capable of doing ? 
 I do not mean a quack. AU the physical efficiency 
 speciaUsts who advertise largely are not quacks. Some 
 of them achieve very genuine results. If a course of 
 treatment can be devised for the body, a course of 
 treatment can be devised for the mind. Thus we might 
 realize some of the ambitions which all of us cherish 
 in regard to the utilization in our spare time of that 
 magnificent machine which we allow to rust within our 
 craniums. We have the desire to perfect ourselves, 
 to round off our careers with the graces of knowledge 
 and taste. How many people would not gladly under- 
 take some branch of serious study, so that they might 
 not die under the reproach of having lived and died 
 without ever really having known anything about 
 anything ! It is not the absence of desire that prevents 
 them. It is, first, the absence of will-power — not the 
 will to begin, but the will to continue ; and, second, 
 a mental apparatus which is out of condition, " puffy," 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY ii 
 
 " weedy," through sheer neglect. The remedy, then, 
 divides itself into two parts, the cultivation of will- 
 power, and the getting into condition of the mental 
 apparatus. And these two branches of the cure must 
 be worked concurrently. 
 
 ""^h '"^i '"^i 
 
 I am sure that the considerations which I have 
 presented to you must have already presented them- 
 selves to tens of thousands of my readers, and that 
 thousands must have attempted the cure. I doubt not 
 that many have succeeded. I shall deem it a favour if 
 those readers who have interested themselves in the 
 question will communicate to me at once the result 
 of their experience, whatever its outcome. I will 
 make such use as I can of the letters I receive, and 
 afterwards I wiU give my own experience. 
 
 II. The Replies 
 
 THE correspondence which I have received in 
 answer to my appeal shows that at any rate I 
 did not overstate the case. There is, among a vast 
 mass of reflecting people in this country, a clear con- 
 sciousness of being mentally less than efficient, and 
 a strong (though ineffective) desire that such mental 
 inefficiency should cease to be. The desire is stronger 
 than I had imagined, but it does not seem to have led 
 to much hitherto. And that " course of treatment 
 for the mind," by means of which we are to " reahze 
 some of the ambitions which all of us cherish in regard 
 to the utilization in our spare time of the magnificent 
 machine which we allow to rust within our craniums " 
 — that desiderated course of treatment has not appar- 
 ently been devised by anybody. The Sandow of the 
 brain has not yet loomed up above the horizon. On 
 
12 THE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
 the other hand, there appears to be a general ex- 
 pectancy that I personally am going to play the role of 
 the Sandow of the brain. Vain thought ! 
 
 ""^i ""Wi ■"'Wi 
 
 I have been very much interested in the letters, 
 some of which, as a statement of the matter in question, 
 are admirable. It is perhaps not surprising that the 
 best of them come from women — for (genius apart) 
 woman is usually more touchingly lyrical than man 
 in the yearning for the ideal. The most enthusiastic 
 of all the letters I have received, however, is from a 
 gentleman whose notion is that we should be hypno- 
 tised into mental efficiency. After advocating the 
 establishment of "an institution of practical psy- 
 chology from whence there can be graduated fit and 
 proper people whose efforts would be in the direction 
 of the subconscious mental mechanism of the child 
 or even the adult," this hypnotist proceeds : " Be- 
 tween the academician, whose speciality is an inconse- 
 quential cobweb, the medical man who has got it into 
 his head that he is the logical foster-father for psy- 
 chonomical matters, and the blatant ' professor ' who 
 deals with monkey tricks on a few somnambules on 
 the music-hall stage, you are allowing to go unrecog- 
 nized one of the most potent factors of mental develop- 
 ment." Am I ? I have not the least idea what this 
 gentleman means, but I can assure him that he is wrong. 
 I can make more sense out of the remarks of another 
 correspondent who, utterly despising the things of 
 the mind, compares a certain class of young men to 
 " a halfpenny bloater with the roe out," and asserts 
 that he himself " got out of the groove " by dint of 
 having to unload ten tons of coal in three hours and a 
 half ever}' day during several years. This is interesting 
 and it is constructive, but it is just a little beside the 
 point. 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 13 
 
 A lady, whose optimism is indicated by her pseu- 
 donym, " Esperance," puts her finger on the spot, or, 
 rather, on one of the spots, in a very sensible letter. 
 " It appears to me," she says, " that the great cause 
 of mental inefficiency is lack of concentration, perhaps 
 especially in the case of women. I can trace my chief 
 failures to this cause. Concentration is a talent. 
 It may be in a measure cultivated, but it needs to be 
 inborn. . . . The greater number of us are in a state 
 of semi-slumber, with minds which are only exerted 
 to one-half of their capability." I thoroughly agree 
 that inability to concentrate is one of the chief symp- 
 toms of the mental machine being out of condition. 
 " Esperance's " suggested cure is rather drastic. 
 She says : " Perhaps one of the best cures for mental 
 sedentariness is'arithmetic, for there is nothing else which 
 requires greater power of concentration." Perhaps 
 arithmetic might be an effective cure, but it is not a 
 practical cure, because no one, or scarcely any one, 
 would practise it. I cannot imagine the plain man 
 who, having a couple of hours to spare of a night, and 
 having also the sincere desire but not the will-power 
 to improve his taste and knowledge, would deliberately 
 sit down and work sums by way of preliminary mental 
 calisthenics. As Ibsen's puppet said : " People don't 
 do these things." Why do they not ? The answer 
 is : Simply because they won't ; simply because human 
 nature will not run to it. " Esp&ance's " suggestion 
 of learning poetry is slightly better. 
 ''^ ^^ ^^ 
 
 Certainly the best letter I have had is from Miss 
 H. D. She says : " This idea [to avoid the reproach 
 of ' living and dying without ever really knowing any- 
 thing about anything '] came to me of itself from 
 somewhere when I was a small girl. And looking 
 back I fancy that the thought itself spurred me to do 
 
14 THE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
 something in this world, to get into line with people 
 who did things — people who painted pictures, wrote 
 books, built bridges, or did something beyond the 
 ordinary. This only has seemed to me, all my life 
 since, worth while." Here I must interject that such 
 a statement is somewhat sweeping. In fact, it sweeps 
 a whole lot of fine and legitimate ambitions straight 
 into the rubbish heap of the Not-worth-while. I 
 think the writer would wish to modify it. She con- 
 tinues : " And when the day comes in which I have 
 not done some serious reading, however small the 
 measure, or some writing ... or I have been too sad 
 or dull to notice the brightness of colour of the sun, 
 of grass and flowers, of the sea, or the moonhght on 
 the water, I think the day ill-spent. So I must think 
 the incentive to do a little each day beyond the ordinary 
 towards the real culture of the mind, is the beginning 
 of the cure of mental inefficiency." This is very in- 
 genious and good. Further : " The day comes when 
 the mental habit has become a part of our life, and we 
 value mental work for the work's sake." But I am 
 not sure about that. For myself, I have never valued 
 work for its own sake, and I never shall. And I only 
 value such mental work for the more full and more 
 intense consciousness of being alive which it gives me. 
 
 Miss H. D.'s remedies are vague. As to lack of 
 will-power, " the first step is to realize your weakness ; 
 the next step is to have ordinary shame that you are 
 defective." I doubt, I gravely doubt, if these steps 
 would lead to anything definite. Nor is this very help- 
 ful : "I would advise reading, observing, writing. I 
 would advise the use of every sense and every faculty 
 by which we at last learn the sacredness of life." 
 This is begging the question. If people, by merely 
 wishing to do so, could regularly and seriously read, 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 15 
 
 observe, write, and use every faculty and sense, there 
 would be very little mental inefficiency. I see that 
 I shall be driven to construct a programme out of my 
 own bitter and ridiculous experiences. 
 
 III. The Cure 
 
 " But tasks in hours of insight willed 
 Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled." 
 
 THE above lines from Matthew Arnold are quoted 
 by one of my very numerous correspondents 
 to support a certain optimism in this matter of a system- 
 atic attempt to improve the mind. They form part 
 of a beautiful and inspiring poem, but I gravely fear 
 that they run counter to the vast mass of earthly exper- 
 ience. More often than not I have found that a task 
 willed in some hour of insight can not be fulfilled through 
 hours of gloom. No, no, and no ! To will is easy : 
 it needs but the momentary bright contagion of a 
 stronger spirit than one's own. To fulfil, morning after 
 morning, or evening after evening, through months 
 and years — this is the very dickens, and there is not 
 one of my readers that will not agree with me. Yet 
 such is the elastic quality of human nature that most 
 of my correspondents are quite ready to ignore the 
 sad fact and to demand at once : " What shall we will ? 
 TeU us what we must will." Some seem to think 
 that they have solved the difficulty when they have 
 advocated certain systems of memory and mind-train- 
 ing. Such systems may be in themselves useful or 
 useless — the evidence furnished to me is contradictory 
 — but were they perfect systems, a man cannot be 
 intellectually bom again merely by joining a memory- 
 class. The best system depends utterly on the man's 
 power of resolution. And what really counts is^not 
 
1 6 THE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
 the system, but the spirit in which the man handles 
 it. Now, the proper spirit can only be induced by a 
 careful consideration and realization of the man's con- 
 ditions — the limitations of his temperament, the strength 
 of adverse influences, and the lessons of his past. 
 
 Let me take an average case. Let me take your 
 case, man or woman of thirty, living in comfort, 
 with some cares, and some responsibilities, and 
 some pretty hard daily work, but not too much of 
 any ! The question of mental efficiency is in the air. 
 It interests you. It touches you nearly. Your con- 
 science teUs you that your mind is less active and less 
 informed than it might be. You suddenly spring up 
 from the garden-seat, and you say to yourself that you 
 will take your mind in hand and do something with it. 
 Wait a moment. Be so good as to sink back into that 
 garden-seat and clutch that tennis racket a little 
 longer. You have had these " hours of insight " 
 before, you know. You have not arrived at the age 
 of thirty without having tried to carry out noble 
 resolutions — and failed. What precautions are you 
 going to take against failure this time ? For your 
 will is probably no stronger now than it was aforetime. 
 You have admitted and accepted failure in the past. 
 And no wound is more cruel to the spirit of resolve than 
 that dealt by failure. You fancy the wound closed, 
 but just at the critical moment it may reopen and 
 mortally bleed you. What are your precautions ? 
 Have you thought of them ? No. You have not. 
 
 ■^■^ ""^i ""^i 
 
 I have not the pleasure of your acquaintance. But 
 I know you because I know myself. Your failure in 
 the past was due to one or more of three causes. And 
 the first was that you undertook too much at the begin- 
 ning. You started off with a magnificent programme. 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 17 
 
 You are something of an expert in physical exercises — 
 you would be ashamed not to be, in these physical days 
 — and so you would never attempt a hurdle race or 
 an uninterrupted hour's club-whirling without some 
 preparation. The analogy between the body and the 
 mind ought to have struck you. This time, please do 
 not form an elaborate programme. Do not form 
 any programme. Simply content yourself with a 
 preliminary canter, a ridiculously easy preliminary 
 canter. For example (and I give this merely as an 
 example), you might say to yourself : " Within one 
 month from this date I wiU read twice Herbert Spencer's 
 little book on ' Education ' — sixpence — and will make 
 notes in pencil inside the back cover of the things 
 that particularly strike me." You remark that that 
 is nothing, that you can do it " on your head," and so 
 on. Well, do it. When it is done you will at any rate 
 possess the satisfaction of having resolved to do some- 
 thing and having done it. Your mind will have gained 
 tone and healthy pride. You wiU be even justified in 
 setting yourself some kind of a simple programme to 
 extend over three months. And you will have acquired 
 some general principles by the light of which to con- 
 struct the programme. But best of all, you will have 
 avoided failure, that dangerous wound. 
 
 ""^i ""^i -^"^ 
 
 The second possible cause of previous failure was 
 the disintegrating effect on the will-power of the ironic, 
 superior smile of friends. Whenever a man " turns 
 over a new leaf " he has this inane giggle to face. The 
 drunkard may be less ashamed of getting drunk than 
 of breaking to a crony the news that he has signed the 
 pledge. Strange, but true ! And human nature must 
 be counted with. Of course, on a few stem spirits the 
 effect of that smile is merely to harden the resolution. 
 But on the majority its influence is deleterious. There- 
 
 B 
 
1 8 THE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
 fore don't go and nail your flag to the mast. Don't 
 raise any flag. Say nothing. Work as unobtrusively 
 as you can. When you have won a battle or two you 
 can begin to wave the banner, and then you will find 
 that that miserable, pitiful, ironic, superior smile will 
 die away ere it is bom. 
 
 •"^^ -"^l ""^h 
 
 The third possible cause was that you did not re- 
 arrange your day. Idler and time-waster though you 
 had been, still you had done something during the 
 twenty-four hours. You went to work with a kind of 
 dim idea that there were twenty-six hours in every 
 day. Something large and definite has to be dropped. 
 Some space in the rank jungle of the day has to be cleared 
 and swept up for the new operations. Robbing your- 
 self of sleep won't help you, nor trying to " squeeze 
 in" a time for study between two other times. Use 
 the knife, and use it freely. If you mean to read 
 or think half an hour a day, arrange for an hour. A 
 hundred per cent, margin is not too much for a begin- 
 ner. Do you ask me where the knife is to be used ? I 
 should say that in nine cases out of ten the rites of the 
 cult of the body might be abbreviated. I recently 
 spent a week-end in a London suburb, and I was stag- 
 gered by the wholesale attention given to physical 
 recreation in aU its forms. It was a gigantic debauch 
 of the muscles on every side. It shocked me. " Poor 
 withering mind ! " I thought. " Cricket, and football, 
 and boating, and golf, and tennis have their ' seasons,' 
 but not thou ! " These considerations are general 
 and prefatory. Now I must come to detail. 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 19 
 
 IV. Mind Calisthenics 
 
 I HAVE dealt with the state of mind in which 
 one should begin a serious effort towards mental 
 efficiency, and also with the probable causes of failure 
 in previous efforts. We come now to what I may call 
 the calisthenics of the business, exercises which may 
 be roughly compared to the technical exercises neces- 
 sary in learning to play a musical instrument. It is 
 curious that a person studying a musical instrument 
 will have no false shame whatever in doing mere exer- 
 cises for the fingers and wrists, while a person who 
 is trying to get his mind into order will almost cer- 
 tainly experience a false shame in going through per- 
 formances which are undoubtedly good for him. 
 Herein lies one of the great obstacles to mental effici- 
 ency. Tell a man that he should join a memory class, 
 and he will hum and haw, and say, as I have already 
 remarked, that memory isn't everything ; and, in 
 short, he won't join the memory class, partly from 
 indolence, I grant, but more from false shame. (Is 
 not this true ?) He will even hesitate about learning 
 things by heart. Yet there are few mental exercises 
 better than learning great poetry or prose by heart. 
 Twenty lines a week for six months : what a " cure " 
 for debility ! The chief, but not the only, merit of 
 learning by heart as an exercise is that it compels 
 the mind to concentrate. And the most important 
 preliminary to self-development is the faculty of con- 
 centrating at will. Another excellent exercise is to 
 read a page of no-matter-what, and then immediately 
 to write down — in one's own words or in the author's — 
 one's full recollection of it. A quarter of an hour a 
 day ! No more ! And it works like magic. 
 
 ■"•^ ""^ ^^ 
 
 This brings me to the department of writing. I 
 
20 THE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
 am a writer by profession ; but I do not think I have 
 any prejudices in favour of the exercise of writing. 
 Indeed, I say to myself every morning that if there 
 is one exercise in the world which I hate, it is the 
 exercise of writing. But I must assert that in my 
 opinion the exercise of writing is an indispensable part 
 of any genuine effort towards mental efficiency. I 
 don't care much what you write, so long as you com- 
 pose sentences and achieve continuity. There are 
 forty ways of writing in an unprofessional manner, 
 and they are all good. You may keep " a full diary," 
 as Mr. Arthur Christopher Benson says he does. This 
 is one of the least good ways. Diaries, save in experi- 
 enced hands like those of Mr. Benson, are apt to get 
 themselves done with the very minimum of mental 
 effort. They also tend to an exaggeration of egotism, 
 and if they are left lying about they tend to strife. 
 Further, one never knows when one may not be com- 
 pelled to produce them in a court of law. A journal 
 is better. Do not ask me to define the difference be- 
 tween a journal and a diary. I will not and I cannot. 
 It is a difference that one feels instinctively. A diary 
 treats exclusively of one's self and one's doings ; a 
 journal roams wider, and notes whatever one has ob- 
 served of interest. A diary relates that one had lobster 
 mayonnaise for dinner and rose the next morning with 
 a headache, doubtless attributable to mental strain. 
 
 A journal relates that Mrs. , whom one took into 
 
 dinner, had brown eyes, and an agreeable trick of throw- 
 ing back her head after asking a question, and gives 
 her account of her husband's strange adventures in 
 Colorado, etc. A diary is 
 
 All I, I, I, I, itself I 
 
 (to quote a line of the transcendental poetry of Mary 
 Baker G. Eddy). A journal is the large spectacle of life. 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 21 
 
 A journal may be special or general. I know a man 
 who keeps a journal of all cases of current superstition 
 which he actually encounters. He began it without 
 the slightest suspicion that he was beginning a docu- 
 ment of astounding interest and real scientific value ; 
 but such was the fact. In default of a diary or a 
 journal, one may write essays (provided one has the 
 moral courage) ; or one may simply make notes on the 
 books one reads. Or one may construct anthologies 
 of passages which have made an individual and parti- 
 cular appeal to one's tastes. Anthology construction 
 is one of the pleasantest hobbies that a person who is 
 not mad about golf and bridge — that is to say, a think- 
 ing person — can possibly have ; and I recommend it to 
 those who, discreetly mistrusting their power to keep 
 up a fast pace from start to finish, are anxious to begin 
 their intellectual course gently and mildly. In any 
 event, writing — the act of writing — is vital to almost 
 any scheme. I would say it was vital to every scheme, 
 without exception, were I not sure that some kind 
 correspondent would instantly point out a scheme to 
 which writing was obviously not vital. 
 
 After writing comes thinking. (The sequence may 
 be considered odd, but I adhere to it.) In this con- 
 nexion I cannot do better than quote an admirable 
 letter which I have received from a correspondent who 
 wishes to be known only as " An Oxford Lecturer." 
 The italics (except the last) are mine, not his. He 
 says : " Till a man has got his physical brain com- 
 pletely under his control — suppressing its too-great 
 receptivity, its tendencies to reproduce idly the thoughts 
 of others, and to he swayed by every passing gust of 
 emotion — I hold that he cannot do a tenth part of the 
 work that he would then be able to perform with little 
 or no effort. Moreover, work apart, he has not en- 
 
22 THE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
 tered upon his kingdom, and unlimited possibilities 
 of future development are barred to him. Mental 
 efficiency can be gained by constant practice in medi- 
 tation — i.e., by concentrating the mind, say, for but 
 ten minutes daily, but with absolute regularity, on 
 some of the highest thoughts of which it is capable. 
 Failures will be frequent, but they must be regarded 
 with simple indifference and dogged perseverance in 
 the path chosen. If that path be followed without 
 intermission even for a few weeks the results will speak 
 for themselves." I thoroughly agree with what this 
 correspondent says, and am obliged to him for having 
 so ably stated the case. But I regard such a practice 
 of meditation as he indicates as being rather an " ad- 
 vanced " exercise for a beginner. After the beginner 
 has got under way, and gained a little confidence in his 
 strength of purpose, and acquired the skill to define 
 his thoughts sufficiently to write them down — then 
 it would be time enough, in my view, to undertake 
 what " An Oxford Lecturer " suggests. By the way, 
 he highly recommends Mrs. Annie Besant's book. 
 Thought Power : Its Control and Culture. He says that 
 it treats the subject with scientific clearness, and gives 
 a practical method of training the mind. I endorse 
 the latter part of the statement. 
 
 •"^i ''^ -"^ 
 
 So much for the more or less technical processes 
 of stirring the mind from its sloth and making it ex- 
 actly obedient to the aspirations of the soul. Aiid here 
 I close. Numerous correspondents have asked me to 
 outline a course of reading for them. In other words, 
 they have asked me to particularize for them* the 
 aspirations of their souls. My subject, however, was 
 not self -development . My sub j ect was mental efficiency 
 as a means to self -development. Of course, one can 
 only acquire mental efficiency in the actual effort of 
 
MENTAL EFFICIENCY 23 
 
 self -development. But I was concerned, not with the 
 choice of route ; rather with the manner of following the 
 route. You say to me that I am busying myself with 
 the best method of walking, and refusing to discuss 
 where to go. Precisely. One man cannot tell an- 
 other man where the other man wants to go. 
 
 ""^h '"^ "'^ 
 
 If he can't himself decide on a goal he may as well 
 curl up and expire, for the root of the matter is not in 
 him. I will content myself with pointing out that 
 the entire universe is open for inspection. Too many 
 people fancy that self -development means literature. 
 They associate the higher life with an intimate know- 
 ledge of the life of Charlotte Bronte, or the order of 
 the plays of Shakespeare. The higher life may just 
 as well be butterflies, or funeral customs, or county 
 boundaries, or street names, or mosses, or stars, or slugs, 
 as Charlotte Bronte or Shakespeare. Choose what 
 interests you. Lots of finely-organized, mentally- 
 efhcient persons can't read Shakespeare at any price, 
 and if you asked them who was the author of The 
 Tenant of Wildfell Hall they might proudly answer 
 Emily Bronte, if they didn't say they had never heard 
 of it. An accurate knowledge of any subject, coupled 
 with a carefully nurtured sense of the relativity of that 
 subject to other subjects, implies an enormous self- 
 development. With this hint I conclude. 
 
EXPRESSING ONE'S INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 A MOST curious and useful thing to realize is that 
 one never knows the impression one is creating 
 on other people. One may often guess pretty accur- 
 ately whether it is good, bad, or indifferent — some 
 people render it unnecessary for one to guess, they 
 practically inform one — but that is not what I mean. 
 I mean much more than that. I mean that one has 
 one's self no mental picture corresponding to the men- 
 tal picture which one's personality leaves in the minds 
 of one's friends. Has it ever struck you that there 
 is a mysterious individual going around, walking the 
 streets, calling at houses for tea, chatting, laughing, 
 grumbling, arguing, and that all your friends know 
 him and have long since added him up and come to a 
 definite conclusion about him — without saying more 
 than a chance, cautious word to you ; and that 
 that person is you ? Supposing that you came into 
 a drawing-room where you were having tea, do you 
 think you would recognize yourself as an individuality ? 
 I think not. You would be apt to say to yourself, as 
 guests do when disturbed in drawing-rooms by other 
 guests : " Who's this chap ? Seems rather queer. I 
 hope he won't be a bore." And your first feeling would 
 be slightly hostile. Why, even when you meet your- 
 self in an unsuspected mirror in the very clothes that 
 you have put on that very day amd that you know 
 by heart, you are almost always shocked by the realiza- 
 
EXPRESSING ONE'S INDIVIDUALITY 25 
 
 tion that you are you. And now and then, when 
 you have gone to the glass to arrange your hair in the 
 full sobriety of early morning, have you not looked on 
 an absolute stranger, and has not that stranger piqued 
 your curiosity ? And if it is thus with precise ex- 
 ternal details of form, colour, and movement, what 
 may it not be with the vague complex effect of the 
 mental and moral individuality ? 
 ^^i ^9i ''^ 
 A man honestly tries to make a good impression. 
 What is the result ? The result merely is that his 
 friends, in the privacy of their minds, set him down as 
 a man who tries to make a good impression. If much 
 depends on the result of a single interview, or a couple 
 of interviews, a man may conceivably force another 
 to accept an impression of himself which he would like 
 to convey. But if the receiver of the impression is 
 to have time at his disposal, then the giver of the im- 
 pression may just as well sit down and put his hands 
 in his pockets, for nothing that he can do will modify 
 or influence in any way the impression that he will 
 ultimately give. The real impress is, in the end, given 
 unconsciously, not consciously ; and further, it is re- 
 ceived unconsciously, not consciously. It depends 
 partly on both persons. And it is immutably fixed be- 
 forehand. There can be no final deception. Take 
 the extreme case, that of the mother and her son. 
 One hears that the son hoodwinks his mother. Not 
 he ! If he is cruel, neglectful, overbearing, she is 
 perfectly aware of it. He does not deceive her, and 
 she does not deceive herself. I have often thought : 
 If a son could look into a mother's heart, what an eye- 
 opener he would have ! " What ! " he would cry. 
 " This cold, impartial judgment, this keen vision for 
 my faults, this implacable memory of little slights, and 
 injustices, and callousnesses committed long ago, in 
 
26 THE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
 the breast of my mother ! " Yes, my friend, in the 
 breast of your mother. The only difference between 
 your mother and another person is that she takes you 
 as you are, and loves you for what you are. She 
 isn't blind : do not imagine it. 
 
 The marvel is, not that people are such bad judges 
 of character, but that they are such good judges, 
 especially of what I may call fundamental character. 
 The wiliest person cannot for ever conceal his funda- 
 mental character from the simplest. And people are 
 very stem judges, too. Think of your best friends — 
 are you oblivious of their defects ? On the contrary, 
 you are perhaps too conscious of them. When you 
 summon them before your mind's eye, it is no ideal 
 creation that you see. When you meet them and talk 
 to them you are constantly making reservations in their 
 disfavour — unless, of course, you happen to be a 
 schoolgirl gushing over like a fountain with enthusiasm. 
 It is well, when one is judging a friend, to remember 
 that he is judging you with the same godlike and 
 superior impartiality. It is well to grasp the fact 
 that you are going through life under the scrutiny of 
 a band of acquaintances who are subject to very few 
 illusions about you, whose views of you are, indeed, 
 apt to be harsh and even cruel. Above all it is advis- 
 able to comprehend thoroughly that the things in your 
 individuality which annoy your friends most are the 
 things of which you are completely unconscious. 
 It is not until years have passed that one begins to be 
 able to form a dim idea of what one has looked like 
 to one's friends. At forty one goes back ten years, and 
 one says sadly, but with a certain amusement : "I 
 must have been pretty blatant then. I can see how 
 I must have exasperated 'em. And yet I hadn't the 
 faintest notion of it at the time. My intentions were 
 of the best. Only I didn't know enough." And one 
 
EXPRESSING ONE'S INDIVIDUALITY 27 
 
 recollects some particularly crude action, and kicks 
 one's self. . . . Yes, that is all very well ; and the 
 enlightenment which has come with increasing age is 
 exceedingly satisfactory. But you are forty now. 
 What' shall you be saying of yourself at fifty ? Such 
 reflections foster humility, and they foster also a 
 reluctance, which it is impossible to praise too highly, 
 to tread on other people's toes. 
 
 ""Wi ""^i ""Wi 
 
 A moment ago I used the phrase " fundamental 
 character." It is a reminiscence of Stevenson's phrase 
 " fundamental decency." And it is the final test by 
 which one judges one's friends. " After all, he's a 
 decent fellow." We must be able to use that formula 
 concerning our friends. Kindliness of heart is not 
 the greatest of human qualities — and its general effect 
 on the progress of the world is not entirely beneficent — 
 but it is the greatest of human qualities in friendship. 
 It is the least dispensable quality. We come back to 
 it with relief from more brilliant qualities. And it has 
 the great advantage of always going with a broad 
 mind. Narrow-minded people are never kind-hearted. 
 You may be inclined to dispute this statement : please 
 think it over ; I am inclined to uphold it. 
 
 -"^ '■'^i '^Wi 
 
 We can forgive the absence of any quality except 
 kindliness of heart. And when a man lacks that, we 
 blame him, we will not forgive him. This is, of course, 
 scandalous. A man is bom as he is born. And he can 
 as easily add a cubit to his stature as add kindliness to 
 his heart. The feat never has been done, and never will 
 be done. And yet we blame those who have not kind- 
 liness. We have the incredible, insufferable, and odious 
 audacity to blame them. We think of them as though 
 they had nothing to do but go into a shop and buy 
 kindliness. I hear you say that kindliness of heart can 
 
28 THE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
 be " cultivated." Well, I hate to have even the ap- 
 pearance of contradicting you, but it can only be culti- 
 vated in the botanical sense. You can't cultivate 
 violets on a nettle. A philosopher has enjoined us to 
 suffer fools gladly. He had more usefully enjoined us 
 to suffer ill-natured persons gladly. ... I see that in 
 a fit of absentmindedness I have strayed into the pulpit. 
 I descend. 
 
BREAKING WITH THE PAST 
 
 ON that dark morning we woke up, and it instantly 
 occurred to us — or at any rate to those of us 
 who have preserved some of our illusions and our 
 naivete — that we had something to be cheerful about, 
 some cause for a gay and strenuous vivacity ; and 
 then we remembered that it was New Year's Day, and 
 there were those Resolutions to put into force ! Of 
 course, we all smile in a superior manner at the very 
 mention of New Year's Resolutions ; we pretend they 
 are toys for children, and that we have long since 
 ceased to regard them seriously as a possible aid to con- 
 duct. But we are such deceivers, such miserable, moral 
 cowards, in such terror of appearing naive, that I for 
 one am not to be taken in by that smile and that 
 pretence. The individual who scoffs at New Year's 
 Resolutions resembles the woman who says she doesn't 
 look under the bed at nights ; the truth is not in him, 
 and in the very moment of his lying, could his cranium 
 suddenly become transparent, we should see Resolu- 
 tions burning brightly in his brain like lamps in Trafal- 
 gar Square. Of this I am convinced, that nineteen- 
 twentieths of us got out of bed that morning animated 
 by that special feeling of gay and strenuous vivacity 
 which Resolutions alone can produce. And nineteen- 
 twentieths of us were also conscious of a high virtue, 
 forgetting that it is not the making of Resolutions, but 
 the keeping of them, which renders pardonable the 
 consciousness of virtue. 
 
 29 
 
30 THE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
 And at this hour, while the activity of the Resolu- 
 tions is yet in full blast, I would wish to insist on the 
 truism, obvious perhaps, but apt to be overlooked, 
 that a man cannot go forward and stand still at the 
 same time. Just as moralists have often animadverted 
 upon the tendency to live in the future, so I would 
 animadvert upon the tendency to live in the past. 
 Because all around me I see men carefully tying them- 
 selves with an unbreakable rope to an immovable 
 post at the bottom of a hill and then struggling to 
 climb the hill. If there is one Resolution more impor- 
 tant than another it is the Resolution to break with the 
 past. If life is not a continual denial of the past, then 
 it is nothing. This may seem a hard and callous doc- 
 trine, but you know there are aspects of common sense 
 which decidedly are hard and callous. And one finds 
 constantly in plain common-sense persons (O rare 
 and select band !) a surprising quality of ruthlessness 
 mingled with softer traits. Have you not noticed it ? 
 The past is absolutely intractable. One can't do any- 
 thing with it. And an exaggerated attention to it is 
 like an exaggerated attention to sepulchres— a sign of 
 barbarism. Moreover, the past is usually the enemy 
 of cheerfulness, and cheerfulness is a most precious 
 attainment. 
 
 -^^ '"^ '^^i 
 
 Personally, I could even go so far as to exhibit 
 hostihty towards grief, and a marked hostility towards 
 remorse — two states of mind which feed on the past 
 instead of on the present. Remorse, which is not the 
 same thing as repentance, serves no purpose that I have 
 ever been able to discover. What one has done, one 
 has done, and there's an end of it. As a great prelate 
 unforgettably said : " Things are what they are, and 
 the consequences of them will be what they will be. 
 Why, then, attempt to deceive ourselves " — that re- 
 
BREAKING WITH THE PAST 31 
 
 morse for wickedness is a useful and praiseworthy 
 exercise ? Much better to forget. As a matter of 
 fact, people " indulge " in remorse ; it is a somewhat 
 vicious form of spiritual pleasure. Grief, of course, is 
 different, and it must be handled with delicate consider- 
 ation. Nevertheless, when I see, as one does see, a 
 man or a woman dedicating existence to sorrow for the 
 loss of a beloved creature, and the world tacitly ap- 
 plauding, my feeling is certainly inimical. To my 
 idea, that man or woman is not honouring, but dis- 
 honouring, the memory of the departed ; society suffers, 
 the individual suffers, and no earthly or heavenly good 
 is achieved. Grief is of the past ; it mars the pre- 
 sent ; it is a form of indulgence, and it ought to be 
 bridled much more than it often is. The human heart 
 is so large that mere remembrance should not be al- 
 lowed to tyrannize over every part of it. 
 
 ""^n -"^i ■"^^ 
 
 But cases of remorse and absorbing grief are com- 
 paratively rare. What is not rare is that misguided 
 loyalty to the past which dominates the lives of so 
 many of us. I do not speak of leading principles, which 
 are not likely to incommode us by changing ; I speak of 
 secondary yet still important things. We will not do 
 so-and-so because we have never done it — as if that 
 was a reason ! Or we have always done so-and-so, 
 therefore we must always do it — as if that was logic ! 
 This disposition to an irrational Toryism is curiously 
 discoverable in advanced Radicals, and it will show 
 itself in the veriest trifles. I remember such a man 
 whose wife objected to his form of hat (not that I 
 would caU so crowning an affair as a hat a trifle !). 
 " My dear," he protested, " I have always worn this 
 sort of hat. It may not smt me, but it is absolutely 
 impossible for me to alter it now." However, she 
 took him by means of an omnibus to a hat shop 
 
32 THE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
 and bought him another hat and put it on his head, 
 and made a present of the old one to the shop assis- 
 tant, and marched him out of the shop. " There ! " 
 she said, " you see how impossible it is." This is a 
 parable. And I will not insult your intelligence by 
 applying it. 
 
 -"^ ""^i ^"Wi 
 
 The faculty that we chiefly need when we are in the 
 resolution-making mood is the faculty of imagination, 
 the faculty of looking at our lives as though we had 
 never looked at them before — freshly, with a new eye. 
 Supposing that you had been bom mature and full of 
 experience, and that yesterday had been the first day 
 of your life, you would regard it to-day as an experi- 
 ment, you would challenge each act in it, and you 
 would probably arrange to-morrow in a manner that 
 showed a healthy disrespect for yesterday. You 
 certainly would not say : " I have done so-and-so once, 
 therefore I must keep on doing it." The past is never 
 more than an experiment. A genuine appreciation of 
 this fact will make our new Resolutions more valuable 
 and drastic than they usually are. I have a dim 
 notion that the most useful Resolution for most of us 
 would be to break quite fifty per cent, of all the vows 
 we have ever made. " Do not accustom yourself to 
 enchain your volatility with vows. . . . Take this 
 warning ; it is of great importance." (The wisdom is 
 Johnson's, but I flatter myself on the italics.) 
 
SETTLING DOWN IN LIFE 
 
 THE other day a well-known English novelist 
 asked me how old I thought she was, really. 
 " Well," I said to myself, " since she has asked for it, 
 she shall have it ; I will be as true to life as her novels." 
 So I replied audaciously : " Thirty-eight." I fancied 
 I was erring, if at aU, on the side of " really," and I 
 trembled. She laughed triumphantly. " I am forty- 
 three," she said. The incident might have passed off 
 entirely to my satisfaction had she not proceeded : 
 " And now tell me how old you are." That was like 
 a woman. Women imagine that men have no reti- 
 cences, no pretty little vanities. What an error ! 
 Of course I could not be beaten in candour by a woman. 
 I had to offer myself a burnt sacrifice to her curiosity, 
 and I did it, bravely but not unflinchingly. And then 
 afterwards the fact of my age remained with me, 
 worried me, obsessed me. I saw more clearly than 
 ever before that age was telling on me. I could not 
 be blind to the deliberation of my movements in 
 climbing stairs and in dressing. Once upon a time 
 the majority of persons I met in the street seemed 
 much older than myself. It is different now. The 
 change has come unperceived. There is a generation 
 younger than mine that smokes cigars and falls in 
 love. Astounding ! Once I could play left-wing for- 
 ward for an hour and a half without dropping down 
 dead. Once I could swim a hundred and fifty feet 
 submerged at the bottom of a swimming-bath. In- 
 
 3» 
 
34 THE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
 credible ! Simply incredible ! . . . Can it be that I 
 have already lived ? 
 
 "'^ -"^ "'^ 
 
 And lo ! I, at the age of nearly forty, am putting to 
 myself the old questions concerning the intrinsic 
 value of Ufe, the fundamentally important questions : 
 What have I got out of it ? What am I likely to get 
 out of it ? In a word, what's it worth ? If a man 
 can ask himself a question more momentous, radical, 
 and critical than these questions, I would like to know 
 what it is. Innumerable philosophers have tried to 
 answer these questions in a general way for the average 
 individual, and possibly they have succeeded pretty 
 well. Possibly I might derive benefit from a perusal 
 of their answers. But do you suppose I am going to 
 read them ? Not I ! Do you suppose that I can 
 recall the wisdom that I happen already to have read ? 
 Not I ! My mind is a perfect blank at this moment 
 in regard to the wisdom of others on the essential 
 question. Strange, is it not ? But quite a common 
 experience, I believe. Besides, I don't actually care 
 twopence what any other philosopher has replied to 
 my question. In this, each man must be his own 
 philosopher. There is an instinct in the profound 
 egoism of human nature which prevents us from 
 accepting such ready-made answers. What is it to 
 us what Plato thought ? Nothing. And thus the 
 question remains ever new, and ever unanswered, and 
 ever of dramatic interest. The singular, the highly 
 singular thing is — and here I arrive at my point — that 
 so few people put the question to themselves in time, 
 that so many put it too late, or even die without 
 putting it. 
 
 -"^ '-^ -^9^ 
 
 I am firmly convinced that an immense proportion 
 of my instructed fellow-creatures do not merely omit 
 
SETTLING DOWN IN LIFE 35 
 
 to strike the balance-sheet of their Uves, they omit 
 even the prehminary operation of taking stock. They 
 go on, and on, and on, buying and selling they know 
 not what, at unascertained prices, dropping money 
 into the till and taking it out. They don't know what 
 goods are in the shop, nor what amount is in the till, 
 but they have a clear impression that the living-room 
 behind the shop is by no means as luxurious and as 
 well- ventilated as they would like it to be. And the 
 years pass, and that beautiful furniture and that 
 system of ventilation are not achieved. And then one 
 day they die, and friends come to the funeral and 
 remark : " Dear me ! How stuffy this room is, and 
 the shop's practically full of trash ! " Or, some little 
 time before they are dead, they stay later than usual 
 in the shop one evening, and make up their minds to 
 take stock and count the till, and the disillusion lays 
 them low, and they struggle into the living-room and 
 murmur : " t shall never have that beautiful furniture, 
 and I shall never have that system of ventilation. If 
 I had known earlier, I would have at least got a few 
 inexpensive cushions to go on with, and I would have 
 put my fist through a pane in the window. But it's 
 too late now. I'm used to Windsor chairs, and I 
 should feel the draught horribly." 
 
 -'Wi W^ '"^ 
 
 If I were a preacher, and if I hadn't got more than 
 enough to do in minding my own affairs, and if I could 
 look any one in the face and deny that I too had pur- 
 sued for nearly forty years the great British policy of 
 muddling through and hoping for the best — in short, 
 if things were not what they are, I would hire the 
 Alhambra Theatre or Exeter Hall of a Sunday night — 
 preferably the Alhambra, because more people would 
 come to my entertainment — and I would invite all men 
 and women over twenty-six. I would supply the 
 
36 THE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
 seething crowd with what they desired in the way of 
 bodily refreshment (except spirits — I would draw the 
 line at poisons), and having got them and myself into 
 a nice amiable expansive frame of mind, I would thus 
 address them — of course in ringing eloquence that John 
 Bright might have envied : 
 
 -'^ *'Wi ■"'Wi 
 
 Men and women (I would say), companions in the 
 universal pastime of hiding one's head in the sand, — I 
 am about to impart to you the very essence of human 
 wisdom. It is not abstract. It is a principle of daily 
 application, affecting the daily round in its entirety, 
 from the straphanging on the District Railway in the 
 morning to the straphanging on the District Railway 
 the next morning. Beware of hope, and beware of 
 ambition ! Each is excellently tonic, like German 
 competition, in moderation. But all of you are'&uffering 
 from self-indulgence in the first, and very many of you 
 are ruining your constitutions with the second. Be 
 it known unto you, my dear men and women, that 
 existence rightly considered is a fair compromise 
 between two instincts — the instinct of hoping one day 
 to live, and the instinct to live here and now. In most 
 of you the first instinct has simply got the other by 
 the throat and is throttling it. Prepare to live by all 
 means, but for heaven's sake do not forget to live. 
 You will never have a better chance than you have at 
 present. You may think you will have, but you are 
 mistaken. Pardon this bluntness. Surely you are 
 not so naive as to imagine that the road on the other 
 side of that hiU there is more beautiful than the piece 
 you are now traversing ! Hopes are never realized ; 
 for in the act of realization they become something 
 else. Ambitions may be attained, but ambitions 
 attained are rather like burnt coal, ninety per cent, of 
 the heat generated has gone up the chimney instead of 
 
SETTLING DOWN IN LIFE 37 
 
 into the room. Nevertheless, indulge in hopes and 
 ambitions, which, though deceiving, are agreeable 
 deceptions ; let them cheat you a little, a lot. But do 
 not let them cheat you too much. This that you are 
 living now is life itself — it is much more life itself than 
 that which you will be living twenty years hence. 
 Grasp that truth. Dwell on it. Absorb it. Let it 
 influence your conduct, to the end that neither the 
 present nor the future be neglected. You search for 
 happiness ? Happiness is chiefly a matter of tempera- 
 ment. It is exceedingly improbable that you wiU by 
 struggling gain more happiness than you already possess. 
 In fine, settle down at once into life. (Loud cheers.) 
 The cheers would of course be for the refreshments. 
 
 ""^i -"^ ""^i 
 
 There is no doubt that the mass of the audience 
 would consider that I had missed my vocation, and 
 ought to have been a caterer instead of a preacher. 
 But, once started, I would not be discouraged. I would 
 keep on, Sunday night after Sunday night. Our lead- 
 ing advertisers have richly proved that the public will 
 believe anything if they are told of it often enough. 
 I would practise iteration, always with refreshments. 
 In the result, it would dawn upon the corporate mind 
 that there was some glimmering of sense in my doc- 
 trine, and people would at last begin to perceive the 
 folly of neglecting to savour the present, the folly of 
 assuming that the future can be essentially different 
 from the present, the fatuity of dying before they have 
 begun to live. ] 
 
SUCCESS 
 I. Candid Remarks 
 
 THERE are times when the whole free and en- 
 Hghtened Press of the United Kingdom seems to 
 become strangely interested in the subject of " success," 
 of getting on in life. We are passing through such a 
 period now. It would be difficult to name the promi- 
 nent journalists who have not lately written, in some 
 form or another, about success. Most singular pheno- 
 menon of all. Dr. Emil Reich has left Plato, duchesses, 
 and Claridge's Hotel, in order to instruct the million 
 readers of a morning paper in the principles of success ! 
 What the million readers thought of the Doctor's 
 stirring and strenuous sentences I will not imagine ; 
 but I know what I thought, as a plain man. After 
 taking due cognizance of his airy play with the " con- 
 stants " and " variables " of success, after watching 
 him treat " energetics " (his wonderful new name for 
 the " science "of success) as though because he had 
 made it end in " ics " it resembled mathematics, I 
 thought that the sublime and venerable art of mysti- 
 fication could no further go. If my fellow-pilgrim 
 through this vale of woe, the average young man who 
 arrives at Waterloo at 9.40 every morning with a 
 cigarette in his mouth and a second-class season over 
 his heart and vague aspirations in his soul, was half as 
 mystified as I was, he has probably ere this decided 
 that the science of success has all the disadvantages 
 
 38 
 
SUCCESS 39 
 
 of algebra without any of the advantages of cricket, 
 and that he may as well leave it alone lest evU should 
 befall him. On the off-chance that he has come as 
 yet to no decision about the science of success, I am 
 determined to deal with the subject in a disturbiagly 
 candid manner. I feel that it is as dangerous to teU 
 the truth about success as it is to tell the truth about 
 the United States ; but being thoroughly accustomed 
 to the whistle of bullets round my head, I will never- 
 theless try. 
 
 -"^ -"^ ^^ 
 
 Most writers on success are, through sheer goodness 
 of heart, wickedly disingenuous. For the basis of 
 their argument is that nearly any one who gives his 
 mind to it can achieve success. This is, to put it 
 briefly, untrue. The very central idea of success is 
 separation from the multitude of plain men ; it is 
 perhaps the only idea common to all the various sorts 
 of success— differentiation from the crowd. To address 
 the population at large, and tell it how to separate 
 itself from itself, is merely silly. I am now, of course, 
 using the word success in its ordinary sense. If human 
 nature were more perfect than it is, success in hfe 
 would mean an intimate knowledge of one's self and 
 the achievement of a philosophic inward calm, and 
 such a goal might well be reached by the majority of 
 mortals. But to us success signifies something else. 
 It may be divided into four branches : (i) Distinction 
 in pure or applied science. This is the least gross of 
 all forms of success as we regard it, for it frequently 
 implies poverty, and it does not by any means always 
 imply fame. (2) Distinction in the arts. Fame and 
 adulation are usually implied in this, though they do 
 not commonly bring riches with them. (3) Direct 
 influence and power over the material lives of other 
 men ; that is to say, distinction in politics, national or 
 
40 THE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
 local. (4) Success in amassing money. This last is 
 the commonest and easiest. Most forms of success 
 will fall under one of these heads. Are they possible 
 to that renowned and much-flattered person, the man 
 in the street ? They are not, and well you know it, 
 all you professors of the science of success ! Only a 
 small minority of us can even become rich. 
 
 ■"^ "-^ --Wi 
 
 Happily, while it is true that success in its common 
 acceptation is, by its very essence, impossible to the 
 majority, there is an accompanying truth which ad- 
 justs the balance ; to wit, that the majority do not 
 desire success. This may seem a bold saying, but it 
 is in accordance with the facts. Conceive the man in 
 the street suddenly, by some miracle, invested with 
 political power, and, of course, under the obligation 
 to use it. He would be so upset, worried, wearied, 
 and exasperated at the end of a week that he would 
 be ready to give the eyes out of his head in order to 
 get rid of it. As for success in science or in art, the 
 average person's interest in such matters is so slight, 
 compared with that of the man of science or the artist, 
 that he cannot be said to have an interest in them. 
 And supposing that distinction in them were thrust 
 upon him he would rapidly lose that distinction by 
 simple indifference and neglect. The average person 
 certainly wants some money, and the average person 
 does not usually rest until he has got as much as is 
 needed for the satisfaction of his instinctive needs. 
 He will move the heaven and earth of his environment 
 to earn sufficient money for marriage in the " station " 
 to which he has been accustomed ; and precisely at 
 that point his genuine desire for money will cease to 
 be active. The average man has this in common 
 with the most exceptional genius, that his career in 
 its main contours is governed by his instincts. The 
 
SUCCESS 41 
 
 average man flourishes and finds his ease in an at- 
 mosphere of peaceful routine. Men destined for success 
 flourish and find their ease in an atmosphere of collision 
 and disturbance. The two temperaments are diverse. 
 Naturally the average man dreams vaguely, upon 
 occasion ; he dreams how nice it would be to be famous 
 and rich. We all dream vaguely upon such things. 
 But to dream vaguely is not to desire. I often tell 
 myself that I would give anything to be the equal of 
 Cinquevalli, the juggler, or to be the captain of the 
 largest Atlantic liner. But the reflective part of me 
 tells me that my yearning to emulate these astonishing 
 personages is not a genuine desire, and that its reali- 
 zation would not increase my happiness. 
 
 ""^i -"Wi -"Wi 
 
 To obtain a passably true notion of what happens to 
 the mass of mankind in its progress from the cradle 
 to the grave, one must not attempt to survey a whole 
 nation, nor even a great metropolis, nor even a very 
 big city like Manchester or Liverpool. These pano- 
 ramas are so immense and confusing that they defeat 
 the observing eye. It is better to take a small town 
 of, say, twenty or thirty thousand inhabitants — such 
 a town as most of us know, more or less intimately. 
 The extremely few individuals whose instincts mark 
 them out to take part in the struggle for success can 
 be identified at once. For the first thing they do is 
 to leave the town. The air of the town is not bracing 
 enough for them. Their nostrils dilate for something 
 keener. Those who are left form a microcosm which 
 is representative enough of the world at large. Be- 
 tween the ages of thirty and forty they begin to sort 
 themselves out. In their own sphere they take their 
 places. A dozen or so politicians form the town 
 council and rule the town. Half a dozen business men 
 stand for the town's commercial activity and its wealth. 
 
42 THE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
 A few others teach science and art, or are locally 
 known as botanists, geologists, amateurs of music, or 
 amateurs of some other art. These are the distin- 
 guished, and it will be perceived that they cannot be 
 more numerous than they are. What of the rest ? 
 Have they struggled for success and been beaten ? 
 Not they. Do they, as they grow old, resemble dis- 
 appointed men ? Not they. They have fulfilled 
 themselves modestly. They have got what they 
 genuinely tried to get. They have never even gone 
 near the outskirts of the battle for success. But they 
 have not failed. The number of failures is surprisingly 
 small. You see a shabby, disappointed, ageing man 
 flit down the main street, and someone replies to your 
 inquiry : " That's So-and-so, one of life's failures, 
 poor fellow ! " And the very tone in which the words 
 are uttered proves the excessive rarity of the real 
 failure. It goes without saying that the case of the 
 handful who have left the town in search of the Success 
 with the capital S has a tremendous interest of curiosity 
 for the mass who remain. I will consider it. 
 
 II. The Successful and the Unsuccessful 
 
 HAVING boldly stated that success is not, and 
 cannot be, within grasp of the majority, I now 
 proceed to state, as regards the minority, that they 
 do not achieve it in the manner in which they are 
 commonly supposed to achieve it. And I may add an 
 expression of my thankfulness that they do not. The 
 popular delusion is that success is attained by what I 
 may call the " Benjamin Franklin " method. Frank- 
 lin was a very great man ; he united in his character 
 a set of splendid qualities as various, in their different 
 ways, as those possessed by Leonardo da Vinci. I 
 have an immense admiration for him. But his Auto- 
 
SUCCESS 43 
 
 biography does make me angry. His Autobiography 
 is understood to be a classic, and if you say a word 
 against it in the United States you are apt to get 
 killed. I do not, however, contemplate an immediate 
 visit to the United States, and I shall venture to assert 
 that Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography is a detest- 
 able book and a misleading book. I can recall only 
 two other volumes which I would more willingly 
 revile. One is Samuel Budgett : The Successful 
 Merchant, and the other is From Log Cabin to 
 White House, being the history of President Garfield. 
 Such books may impose on boys, and it is conceivable 
 that they do not harm boys (Franklin, by the way, 
 began his Autobiography in the form of a letter to 
 his son), but the grown man who can support them 
 without nausea ought to go and see a doctor, for there 
 is something wrong with him. 
 
 ^■^ ""^ ■"'^ 
 
 " I began now," blandly remarks Franklin, " to 
 have some acquaintance among the young people of 
 the town that were lovers of reading, with whom I 
 spent my evenings very pleasantly ; and gained money 
 by my industry and frugality.'" Or again : " It was 
 about this time I conceived the bold and arduous 
 project of arriving at moral perfection ... I made a 
 little book, in which I allotted a page for each of the 
 virtues. I ruled each page with red ink, so as to 
 have seven columns, one for each day of the week . . . 
 I crossed these columns with thirteen red lines, marking 
 the beginning of each line with the first letter of one 
 of the virtues ; on which line, and in its proper column, 
 I might mark, by a little black spot, every fault I 
 found upon examination to have been committed 
 respecting that virtue, upon that day." Shade of 
 Franklin, where'er thou art, this is really a little bit 
 stiff ! A man may be excused even such infamies 
 
44 THE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
 of priggishness, but truly he ought not to go and write 
 them down, especially to his son. And why the 
 detail about red ink ? If Franklin's son was not 
 driven to evil courses by the perusal of that monstrous 
 Autobiography, he must have been a man almost as 
 astounding as his father. Now Franklin could only 
 have written his " immortal classic " from one of 
 three motives : (i) Sheer conceit. He was a prig, 
 but he was not conceited. (2) A desire that others 
 should profit by his mistakes. He never made any 
 mistakes. Now and again he emphasizes some trifling 
 error, but that is " only his fun." (3) A desire that 
 others should profit by the recital of his virtuous 
 sagacity to reach a similar success. The last was 
 undoubtedly his principal motive. Honest fellow, who 
 happened to be a genius ! But the point is that his 
 success was in no way the result of his virtuous sagacity. 
 I would go further, and say that his dreadful virtuous 
 sagacity often hindered his success. 
 
 •"Wi -"^ -""Wi 
 
 No one is a worse guide to success than your typical 
 successful man. He seldom understands the reasons 
 of his own success ; and when he is asked by a popular 
 magazine to give his experiences for the benefit of the 
 youth of a whole nation, it is impossible for him to 
 be natural and sincere. He knows the kind of thing 
 that is expected from him, and if he didn't come to 
 London with half a crown in his pocket he probably 
 did something equally silly, and he puts that down, and 
 the note of the article or interview is struck, and good- 
 bye to genuine truth ! There recently appeared in a 
 daily paper an autobiographic-didactic article by one 
 of the world's richest men which was the most " in- 
 adequate " article of the sort that I have ever come 
 across. Successful men forget so much of their lives ! 
 Moreover, nothing is easier than to explain an accom- 
 
SUCCESS 45 
 
 plished fact in a nice, agreeable, conventional way. 
 The entire business of success is a gigantic tacit con- 
 spiracy on the part of the minority to deceive the 
 majority. 
 
 "•^ '"^ -"^i 
 
 Are successful men more industrious, frugal, and 
 inteUigent than men who are not successful ? I 
 maintain that they are not, and I have studied successful 
 men at close quarters. One of the commonest char- 
 acteristics of the successful man is his idleness, his 
 immense capacity for wasting time. I stoutly assert 
 that as a rule successful men are by habit comparatively 
 idle. As for frugality, it is practically unknown 
 among the successful classes : this statement applies 
 with particular force to financiers. As for intelligence, 
 I have over and over again been startled by the lack 
 of intelligence in successful men. They are, indeed, 
 capable of stupidities that would be the ruin of a 
 plain clerk. And much of the talk in those circles 
 which surround the successful man is devoted to the 
 enumeration of instances of his lack of intelligence. 
 Another point : successful men seldom succeed as 
 the result of an ordered arrangement of their lives ; 
 they are the least methodical of creatures. Naturally 
 when they have " arrived " they amuse themselves 
 and impress the majority by being convinced that 
 right from the start, with a steady eye on the goal, 
 they had carefully planned every foot of the route. 
 
 '-^h •"^^ '"^^ 
 
 No ! Great success never depends on the practice 
 of the humbler virtues, though it may occasionally 
 depend on the practice of the prouder vices. Use 
 industry, frugality, and common sense by all means, 
 but do not expect that they will help you to success. 
 Because they will not. I shall no doubt be told that 
 what I have just written has an immoral tendency. 
 
46 THE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
 and is a direct encouragement to sloth, thriftlessness, 
 etc. One of our chief national faults is our hypocritical 
 desire to suppress the truth on the pretext that to 
 admit it would encourage sin, whereas the real ex- 
 planation is that we are afraid of the truth. I will 
 not be guilty of that fault. I do like to look a fact 
 in the face without blinking. I am fully persuaded 
 that, per head, there is more of the virtues in the 
 unsuccessful majority than in the successful minority. 
 In London alone are there not hundreds of miles of 
 streets crammed with industry, frugality, and pru- 
 dence ? Some of the most brilliant men I have known 
 have been failures — and not through lack of character 
 either. And some of the least gifted have been mar- 
 vellously successful. It is impossible to point to 
 a single branch of human activity in which success 
 can be explained by the conventional principles that 
 find general acceptance. I hear you, O reader, mur- 
 muring to yourself : " This is all very well, but he is 
 simply being paradoxical for his own diversion." I 
 would that I could persuade you of my intense serious- 
 ness ! I have endeavoured to show what does not 
 make success. I will next endeavour to show what 
 does make it. But my hope is forlorn. 
 
 III. The Inwardness of Success 
 
 OF course, one can no more explain success than 
 one can explain Beethoven's C minor symphony. 
 One may state what key it is written in, and make 
 expert reflections upon its form, and catalogue its 
 themes, and relate it to symphonies that preceded it 
 and symphonies that followed it, but in the end one 
 is reduced to saying that the C minor symphony is 
 beautiful — because it is. In the same manner one is 
 reduced to saying that the sole real difference between 
 
SUCCESS 47 
 
 success and failure is that success succeeds. This being 
 frankly admitted at the outset, I wUl allow myself to 
 assert that there are three sorts of success. Success 
 A is the accidental sort. It is due to the thing we 
 call chance, and to nothing else. We are all of us still 
 very superstitious, and the caprices of chance have a 
 singular effect upon us. Suppose that I go to Monte 
 Carlo and announce to a friend my firm conviction that 
 red will turn up next time, and I back red for the 
 maximum and red does turn up ; my friend, in spite 
 of his intellect, will vaguely attribute to me a mysteri- 
 ous power. Yet chance alone would be responsible. 
 If I did that six times running all the players at the 
 table would be interested in me. If I did it a dozen 
 times all the players in the Casino would regard me 
 with awe. Yet chance alone would be responsible. 
 If I did it eighteen times my name would be in every 
 newspaper in Europe. Yet chance alone would be 
 responsible. I should be, in that department of human 
 activity, an extremely successful man, and the vast 
 majority of people would instinctively credit me with 
 gifts that I do not possess. 
 
 -"^ -"^^ "-^i 
 
 If such phenomena of superstition can occur in an 
 affair where the agency of chance is open and avowed, 
 how much more probable is it that people should refuse 
 to be satisfied with the explanation of " sheer acci- 
 dent " in affairs where it is to the interest of the prin- 
 cipal actors to conceal the role played by chance ! 
 Nevertheless, there can be no doubt in the minds of 
 persons who have viewed success at close quarters that 
 a proportion of it is due solely and utterly to chance. 
 Successful men flourish to-day, and have flourished 
 in the past, who have no quality whatever to differen- 
 tiate them from the multitude. Red has turned up 
 for them a sufficient number of times, and the universal 
 
48 THE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
 superstitious instinct not to believe in chance has 
 accordingly surrounded them with a halo. It is merely 
 ridiculous to say, as some do say, that success is never 
 due to chance alone. Because nearly everybody is 
 personally acquainted with reasonable proof, on a 
 great or a small scale, to the contrary. 
 
 -"^ -"^ -"Wi 
 
 The second sort of success, B, is that made by men 
 who, while not gifted with first-class talents, have, 
 beyond doubt, the talent to succeed. I should describe 
 these men by saying that, though they deserve some- 
 thing, they do not deserve the dazzling reward known 
 as success. They strike us as overpaid. We meet 
 them in all professions and trades, and we do not 
 really respect them. They excite our curiosity, and 
 perhaps our envy. They may rise very high indeed, 
 but they must always be unpleasantly conscious of a 
 serious reservation in our attitude towards them. And 
 if they could read their obituary notices they would 
 assuredly discern therein a certain chilliness, however 
 kindly we acted up to our great national motto of De 
 mortuis nil nisi bunkum. It is this class of success 
 which puzzles the social student. How comes it that 
 men without any other talent possess a mysterious 
 and indefinable talent to succeed ? Well, it seems to 
 me that such men always display certain characteris- 
 tics. And the chief of these characteristics is the con- 
 tinual, insatiable wish to succeed. They are preoccu- 
 pied with the idea of succeeding. We others are not 
 so preoccupied. We dream of success at intervals, 
 but we have not the passion for success. We don"'t 
 lie awake at nights pondering upon it. 
 
 -•• --♦l ^»s 
 
 The second characteristic of these men springs natur- 
 ally from the first. They are always on the look-out. 
 This does not mean that they are industrious. I 
 stated in a previousarticle my belief that as a rule 
 
SUCCESS 49 
 
 successful men are not particularly industrious . A man 
 on a raft with his shirt for a signal cannot be termed 
 industrious, but he will keep his eyes open for a sail 
 on the horizon. If he simply lies down and goes to 
 sleep he may miss the chance of his life, in a very 
 special sense. The man with the talent to succeed is 
 the man on the raft who never goes to sleep. His 
 indefatigable orb sweeps the main from sunset to sun- 
 set. Having sighted a sail, he gets up on his hind 
 legs and waves that shirt in so determined a manner 
 that the ship is bound to see him and take him off. 
 Occasionally he plunges into the sea, risking sharks 
 and other perils. If he doesn't " get there," we hear 
 nothing of him. If he does, some person will ulti- 
 mately multiply by ten the number of sharks that he 
 braved : that person is called a biographer. 
 
 ^Wi •"Wi ""^ 
 
 Let me drop the metaphor. Another characteristic 
 of these men is that they seem to have the exact con- 
 trary of what is known as common sense. They will 
 become enamoured of some enterprise which infallibly 
 impresses the average common-sense person as a mad 
 and hopeless enterprise. The average common-sense 
 person will demolish the hopes of that enterprise by 
 incontrovertible argument. He will point out that 
 it is fooHsh on the face of it, that it has never been 
 attempted before, and that it responds to no need of 
 humanity. He will say to himself : " This fellow 
 with his precious enterprise has a twist in his brain. 
 He can't reply to my arguments, and yet he obstinately 
 persists in going on." And the man destined to success 
 does go on. Perhaps the enterprise fails ; it often 
 fails ; and then the average common-sense person 
 expends much breath in " I told you so's." But the 
 man continues to be on the look-out. His thirst is 
 unassuaged ; his taste for enterprises foredoomed to 
 
 D 
 
50 THE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
 failure is incurable. And one day some enterprise 
 foredoomed to failure develops into a success. We all 
 hear of it. We all open our mouths and gape. Of 
 the failures we have heard nothing. Once the man 
 has achieved success, the thing becomes a habit with 
 him. The difference between a success and a failure 
 is often so slight that a reputation for succeeding will 
 ensure success, and a reputation for failing will ensure 
 failure. Chance plays an important part in such 
 careers, but not a paramount part. One can only say 
 that it is more useful to have luck at the beginning 
 than later on. These " men of success " generally 
 have pliable temperaments. They are not frequently 
 un-moral, but they regard a conscience as a good ser- 
 vant and a bad master. They live in an atmosphere 
 of compromise. 
 
 ■""^i ""^^ "^i 
 
 There remains class C of success — the class of sheer 
 high merit. I am not a pessimist, nor am I an opti- 
 mist. I try to arrive at the truth, and I should say 
 that in putting success C at ten per cent, of the sum 
 total of aU successes, I am being generous to class C. 
 Not that I believe that vast quantities of merit go 
 unappreciated. My reason for giving to class C only 
 a modest share is the fact that there is so httle sheer 
 high merit. And does it not stand to reason that high 
 merit must be very exceptional ? This sort of suc- 
 cess needs no explanation, no accounting for. It is 
 the justification of our singular belief in the principle 
 of the triumph of justice, and it is among natural 
 phenomena perhaps the only justification that can be 
 advanced for that belief. And certainly when we 
 behold the spectacle of genuine distinguished merit 
 gaining, without undue delay and without the sacri- 
 fice of dignity or of conscience, the applause of the 
 kind-hearted but obtuse and insensible majority of the 
 human race, we have fair reason to hug ourselves. 
 
THOSE PETTY ARTIFICIALITIES 
 
 THE phrase " petty artificialities," employed by 
 one of the correspondents in the great Simple 
 Life argument, has stuck in my mind, although I gave 
 it a plain intimation that it was no longer wanted 
 there. Perhaps it sheds more light than I had at 
 first imagined on the mental state of the persons who 
 use it when they wish to arraign the conditions of 
 " modern life." A vituperative epithet is capable of 
 making a big show. " Artificialities " is a sufficiently 
 scornful word, but when you add " petty " you some- 
 how give the quietus to the pretensions of modern 
 life. Modem life had better hide its diminished head, 
 after that. Modem life is settled and done for — in 
 the opinion of those who have thrown the dart. Only 
 it isn't done for, really, you know. " Petty," after 
 all, means nothing in that connexion. Are there, 
 then, artificialities which are not " petty," which are 
 noble, large, and grand ? " Petty " means merely 
 that the users of the word are just a little cross and 
 out of temper. What they think they object to is 
 artificialities of any kind, and so to get rid of their 
 spleen they refer to " petty " artificialities. The 
 device is a common one, and as brilliant as it is futile. 
 Rude adjectives are like blank cartridge. They im- 
 press a vain people, including the birds of the air, 
 but they do no execution. 
 
 At the same time, let me admit that I deeply sym- 
 
52 THE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
 pathize with the irritated users of the impohte phrase 
 " petty artificialities." For it does at any rate show 
 a " divine discontent " ; it does prove a high dissatis- 
 faction with conditions which at best are not the final 
 expression of the eternal purpose. It does make for 
 a sort of crude and churlish righteousness. I well 
 know that f eehng which induces one to spit out savagely 
 the phrase " petty artificialities of modem life." One 
 has it usually either on getting up or on going to bed. 
 What a petty artificial business it is, getting up, even 
 for a male ! Shaving ! Why shave ? And then 
 going to a drawer and choosing a necktie. Fancy an 
 immortal soul, fancy a fragment of the eternal and 
 indestructible energy, which exists from everlasting 
 to everlasting, deliberately expending its activity on 
 the choice of a necktie ! Why a necktie ? Then one 
 goes downstairs and exchanges banal phrases with 
 other immortals. And one can't start breakfast im- 
 mediately, because some sleepy mortal is late. 
 
 Why babble ? Why wait ? Why not say straight 
 out : " Go to the deuce, all of you ! Here it's nearly 
 ten o'clock, and me anxious to begin living the higher 
 life at once instead of fiddling around in petty artificia- 
 lities. Shut up, every one of you. Give me my bacon 
 instantly, and let me gobble it down quick and be 
 off. I'm sick of your ceremonies ! " This would at 
 any rate not be artificial. It would save time. And 
 if a similar policy were strictly applied through the 
 day, one could retire to a well-earned repose in the 
 full assurance that the day had been simplified. The 
 time for living the higher life, the time for pushing 
 forward those vast schemes of self-improvement which 
 we all cherish, would decidedly have been increased. 
 One would not have that maddening feeling, which 
 one so frequently does have when the shades of night 
 
THOSE PETTY ARTIFICIALITIES 53 
 
 are falling fast, that the day had been " frittered away." 
 And yet — and yet — I gravely doubt whether this 
 wholesale massacre of those poor petty artificialities 
 would bring us appreciably nearer the millennium. 
 
 For there is one thing, and a thing of fundamental 
 importance, which the revolutionists against petty 
 artificialities always fail to appreciate, and that is 
 the necessity and the value of convention. I cannot 
 in a paragraph deal effectively with this most difficult 
 and complex question. I can only point the reader 
 to analogous phenomena in the arts. All the arts are 
 a conventionalization, an ordering of nature. Even 
 in a garden you put the plants in rows, and you sub- 
 ordinate the well-being of one to the general well- 
 being. The sole difference between a garden and the 
 wild woods is a petty artificiality. In writing a sonnet 
 you actually cramp the profoundest emotional con- 
 ceptions into a length and a number of lines and a 
 jingling of like sounds arbitrarily fixed beforehand ! 
 Wordsworth's " The world is too much with us " is a 
 solid, horrid mass of petty artificiality. Why couldn't 
 the fellow say what he meant and have done with it, 
 instead of making " powers " rhyme with " ours," 
 and worrying himself to use exactly a hundred and 
 forty syllables ? As for music, the amount of time 
 that must have been devoted to petty artificiality in 
 the construction of an affair like Bach's Chaconne is 
 simply staggering. Then look at pictures, absurdly 
 confined in frames, with their ingenious contrasts of 
 light and shade and mass against mass. Nothing but 
 petty artificiahty ! In other words, nothing but 
 " form " — " form " which is the basis of aU beauty, 
 whether material or otherwise. 
 
 •^9i ^Wi ""^ 
 
 Now, what form is in art, conventions (petty arti- 
 
54 THE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
 ficialities) are in life. Just as you can have too much 
 form in art, so you can have too much convention in 
 hfe. But no art that is not planned in form is worth 
 consideration, and no life that is not planned in con- 
 vention can ever be satisfactory. Convention is not 
 the essence of hfe, but it is the protecting garment 
 and preservative of life, and it is also one very valuable 
 means by which life can express itself. It is largely 
 symbolic ; and symbols, while being expressive, are 
 also great time-savers. The despisers of petty arti- 
 ficialities should think of this. Take the striking 
 instance of that pettiest artificiality, leaving cards. 
 Well, searchers after the real, what would you substi- 
 tute for it ? If you dropped it and substituted no- 
 thing, the result would tend towards a loosening of 
 the bonds of society, and it would tend towards the 
 diminution of the number of your friends. And if 
 you dropped it and tried to substitute something less 
 artificial and more real, you would accomplish no 
 more than you accomplish with cards, you would 
 inconvenience everybody, and waste a good deal of 
 your own time. I cannot too strongly insist that the 
 basis of convention is a symbolism, primarily meant 
 to display a regard for the feelings of other people. 
 If you do not display a regard for the feelings of other 
 people, you may as well go and live on herbs in the 
 desert. And if you are to display such a regard you 
 cannot do it more expeditiously, at a smaller outlay 
 of time and brains, than by adopting the code of 
 convention now generally practised. It comes to this 
 — that you cannot have aU the advantages of living 
 in the desert while you are living in a society. It would 
 be delightful for you if you could, but you can't. 
 
 '-^ -"^ -"^ 
 
 There are two further reasons for the continuance 
 of conventionality. And one is the mysterious but 
 
THOSE PETTY ARTIFICIALITIES 55 
 
 indisputable fact that the full beauty of an activity 
 is never brought out until it is subjected to discipline 
 and strict ordering and nice balancing. A life without 
 petty artificiality would be the life of a tiger in the 
 forest. A beautiful life, perhaps, a life of " burning 
 bright," but not reaching the highest ideal of beauty ! 
 Laws and rules, forms and ceremonies, are good in 
 themselves, from a merely esthetic point of view, 
 apart from their social value and necessity. 
 
 ""^i "'^i -"^ 
 
 And the other reason is that one cannot always be at 
 the full strain of " self -improvement," and " evolution- 
 ary progress," and generally beating the'^big drum. 
 Human nature will not stand it. There is, if we 
 will only be patient, ample time for the " artificial " 
 as well as for the " real." Those persons who think 
 that there isn't, ought to return to school and learn 
 arithmetic. Supposing that all " petty artificialities " 
 were suddenly swept away, and we were able to show 
 our regard and consideration for our fellow creatures 
 by the swift processes of thought alone, we should find 
 ourselves with a terrible lot of time hanging heavy on 
 our hands. We can no more spend all our waking 
 hours in consciously striving towards higher things 
 than we can dine exclusively off jam. What frightful 
 prigs we should become if we had nothing to do but 
 cultivate our noblest faculties ! I beg the despisers 
 of artificiality to reflect upon these observations, how- 
 ever incomplete these observations may be, and to 
 consider whether they would be quite content if they 
 got what they are crying out for. 
 
THE SECRET OF CONTENT 
 
 I HAVE said lightly a propos of the conclusion 
 arrived at by several correspondents and by 
 myself that the cry for the simple life was merely a 
 new form of the old cry for happiness, that I would 
 explain what it was that made life worth living for 
 me. The word has gone forth, and I must en- 
 deavour to redeem my promise. But I do so with 
 qualms and with diffidence. First, there is the natural 
 instinct against speaking of that which is in the core 
 of one's mind. Second, there is the fear, nearly amount- 
 ing to certainty, of being misunderstood or not com- 
 prehended at all. And third, there is the absurd 
 insufficiency of space. However ! . . . For me, 
 spiritual content (I will not use the word " happi- 
 ness," which implies too much) springs essentially from 
 no mental or physical facts. It springs from the spirit- 
 ual fact that there is something higher in man than the 
 mind, and that that something can control the mind. 
 Call that something the soul, or what you will. My 
 sense of security amid the collisions of existence lies 
 in the firm consciousness that just as my body is the 
 servant of my mind, so is my mind the servant of me. 
 An unruly servant, but a servant — and possibly getting 
 less unruly every day ! Often have I said to that 
 restive brain : " Now, mind, sole means of com- 
 munication between the divine me and all external 
 phenomena, you are not a free agent ; you are a sub- 
 
THE SECRET OF CONTENT 57 
 
 ordinate ; you are nothing but a piece of machinery ; 
 and obey me you shall." 
 
 '"^ -"^ -"^^ 
 
 The mind can only be conquered by regular medi- 
 tation, by deciding beforehand what direction its 
 activity ought to take, and insisting that its activity 
 takes that direction ; also by never leaving it idle, 
 undirected, masterless, to play at random like a child 
 in the streets after dark. This is extremely difficult, 
 but it can be done, and it is marvellously well worth 
 doing. The fault of the epoch is the absence of medi- 
 tativeness. A sagacious man will strive to correct in 
 himself the faults of his epoch. In some deep ways 
 the twelfth century had advantages over the twentieth. 
 It practised meditation. The twentieth does Sandow 
 exercises. Meditation (I speak only for myself) is 
 the least dispensable of the day's doings. What do I 
 force my mind to meditate upon ? Upon various 
 things, but chiefly upon one. 
 
 ''^ -"^ -"^ 
 
 Namely, that Force, Energy, Life — the Incompre- 
 hensible has many names — is indestructible, and that, 
 in the last analysis, there is only one single, unique 
 Force, Energy, Life. Science is gradually reducing 
 all elements to' one element. Science is making it 
 increasingly difficult to conceive matter apart from 
 spirit. Everything lives. Even my razor gets " tired." 
 And the fatigue of my razor is no more nor less explic- 
 able than my fatigue after a passage of arms with 
 my mind. The Force in it, and in me, has been trans- 
 formed, not lost. All Force is the same force. Science 
 just now has a tendency to call it electricity ; but I 
 am indifferent to such baptisms. The same Force 
 pervades my razor, my cow in my field, and the central 
 me which dominates my mind : the same force in 
 different stages of evolution. And that Force persists 
 
58 THE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
 for ever. In such paths do I compel my mind to walk 
 daily. Daily it has to recognize that the mysterious 
 Ego controlling it is a part of that divine Force which 
 exists from everlasting to everlasting, and which, in 
 its ultimate atoms, nothing can harm. By such a 
 course of training, even the mind, the coarse, practical 
 mind, at last perceives that worldly accidents don't 
 count. 
 
 •""^h -"^ -"^ 
 
 " But," you will exclaim, " this is nothing but the 
 immortality of the soul over again ! " WeU, in a 
 slightly more abstract form, it is. (I never said I 
 had discovered anything new.) I do not permit my- 
 self to be dogmatic about the persistence of personality, 
 or even of individuality after death. But, in basing 
 my physical and mental life on the assumption that 
 there is something in me which is indestructible and 
 essentially changeless, I go no further than science 
 points. Yes, if it gives you pleasure, let us call it the 
 immortality of the soul. If I miss my train, or my 
 tailor disgraces himself, or I lose that earthly mani- 
 festation of Force that happens to be dearest to me, 
 I say to my mind : " Mind, concentrate your powers 
 upon the full realization of the fact that I, your master, 
 am immortal and beyond the reach of accidents." 
 And my mind, knowing by this time that I am a hard 
 master, obediently does so. Am I, a portion of the 
 Infinite Force that existed biUions of years ago, and 
 which will exist billions of years hence, going to allow 
 myself to be worried by any terrestrial physical or 
 mental event ? I am not. As for the vicissitudes of 
 my body, that servant of my servant, it had better 
 keep its place, and not make too much fuss. Not that 
 any fuss occurring in either of these outward envelopes 
 of the eternal me could really disturb me. The eternal 
 is calm ; it has the best reason for being so. 
 
THE SECRET OF CONTENT 59 
 
 So you say to yourselves : " Here is a man in a 
 penny weekly paper advocating daily meditation upon 
 the immortality of the soul as a cure for discontent 
 and unhappiness ! A strange phenomenon ! " That 
 it should be strange is an indictment of the epoch. 
 My only reply to you is this : Try it. Of course, I 
 freely grant that such meditation, while it " casts out 
 fear," slowly kills desire and makes for a certain high 
 indifference ; and that the extinguishing of desire, 
 with an accompanying indifference, be it high or low, 
 is bad for youth. But I am not a youth, and to-day 
 I am writing for those who have tasted disillusion : 
 which youth has not. Yet I would not have you be- 
 lieve that I scorn the brief joys of this world. My 
 attitude towards them would fain be that of Socrates, 
 as stated by the incomparable Marcus Aurelius : " He 
 knew how to lack, and how to enjoy, those things in 
 the lack whereof most men show themselves weak ; 
 and in the fruition, intemperate." 
 
 -"^ ""^i '"^i 
 
 Besides commanding my mind to dwell upon the 
 indestructibility and final omnipotence of the Force 
 which is me, I command it to dwell upon the logical 
 consequence of that unity of force which science is 
 now beginning to teach. The same essential force 
 that is me is also you. Says the Indian proverb : "I 
 met a hundred men on the road to Delhi, and they were 
 all my brothers." Yes, and they were all my twin 
 brothers, if I may so express it, and a thousand times 
 closer to me even than the common conception of 
 twin brothers. We are all of us the same in essence ; 
 what separates us is merely differences in our respec- 
 tive stages of evolution. Constant reflection upon this 
 fact must produce that universal sympathy which alone 
 can produce a positive content. It must do away 
 with such ridiculous feelings as blame, irritation, 
 
6o THE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
 anger, resentment. It must establish in the mind an 
 all-embracing tolerance. Until a man can look upon 
 the drunkard in his drunkenness, and upon the wife- 
 beater in his brutality, with pure and calm compas- 
 sion ; until his heart goes out instinctively to every 
 other manifestation of the unique Force ; until he is 
 surcharged with -an eager and unconquerable benevo- 
 lence towards everything that lives ; until he has utterly 
 abandoned the presumptuous practice of judging and 
 condemning — he will never attain real content. " Ah ! " 
 you exclaim again, " he has nothing newer to tell us 
 than that ' the greatest of these is charity ' ! " I have 
 not. It may strike you as excessively funny, but 
 I have discovered nothing newer than that. I merely 
 remind you of it. Thus it is, twins on the road to 
 Delhi, by continual meditation upon the indestructi- 
 bility of Force, that I try to cultivate calm, and by 
 continual meditation upon the oneness of Force that 
 I try to cultivate charity, being fully convinced that 
 in calmness and in charity lies the secret of a placid 
 if not ecstatic happiness. It is often said that no 
 thinking person can be happy in this world. My view 
 is that the more a man thinks the more happy he is 
 likely to be. I have spoken. I am overwhelmingly 
 aware that I have spoken crudely, abruptly, inade- 
 quately, confusedly. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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 THE REASONABLE 
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