Preface of How to Live On Twenty Four Hours a Day. This is a
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Twenty Four Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett Preface. This preface, though placed
at the beginning as a preface, must be, should be read at the
end of the book. I have received a large amount of correspondence concerning this
small work, and many reviews of it, some of them nearly as long
as the book itself have been printed, but scarcely any of the comment has
been adverse. Some people have objected to a frivolity of tone, but as
the tone is not, in my opinion at all frivolous, this objection did
not impress me, and had no weightier reproach been put forward, I might
almost have been persuaded that the volume was flawless. A more serious stricture has,
however, been offered, not in the press but by Sundry. Obviously
sincere correspondence, and I must deal with it. A reference to page forty
three will show that I anticipated and feared this disapprobation. The sentence against which
protests have been made is as follows. Quote. In the majority of instances,
he the typical man, does not precisely feel a passion for his business.
At best, he does not dislike it. He begins his business functions
with some reluctance as late as he can, and he ends them with joy
as early as he can, and his engines while he is engaged in his
business are seldom at their full HP close quote. I am assured, in
accents of unmistakable sincerity, that there are many business men, not merely those
in high positions or with fine prospects, but modest subordinates, with no hope
of ever being much better off, who do enjoy their business functions, who
do not shirk them, who do not arrive at the office as late as
possible and depart as early as possible, who in a word, put the
whole of their force into their day's work, and are genuinely fatigued at the
end thereof I am ready to believe it. I do believe it. I
know it. I always knew it, both in London and in the provinces.
It has been my lot to spend long years in subordinate situations of business,
and the fact did not escape me that a certain proportion of my peers
showed what amounted to an honest passion for their duties, and that while engaged
in those duties, they were really living to the fullest extent of which they
were capable. But I remain convinced that these fortunate and happy individuals, happier
perhaps than they guessed, did not and do not constitute a majority or anything
like a majority. I remain convinced that the majority of decent, average,
conscientious men of business, men with aspirations and ideals, do not, as
a rule, go home of a night genuinely tired. I remain convinced that
they put not as much but as little of themselves as they conscientiously can into
the earning of a livelihood, and that their vocation bores rather than interests them.
Nevertheless, I admit that the minority is of sufficient importance to merit attention,
and that I ought not to have ignored it so completely as I did.
So. The whole difficulty of the horty working minority was put in a
single colloquial sentence by one of my correspondents. He wrote, quote, I
am just as keen as anyone on doing something to exceed my program. But
allow me to tell you that when I get home at six point thirty PM,
I am not anything like so fresh as you seem to imagine. Close
quote. Now, I must point out that the case of the minority,
who throw themselves with passion and gusto into their daily business task, is infinitely
less deplorable than the case of the majority, who go half heartily and feebly
through their official day. The former or less in need of advice how to
live at any rate. During their official day of say, eight hours,
they are really alive. Their engines are giving the full indicated HP. The
other eight working hours of their day may be bad organized, or even frittered
away. But it is less dangerous to waste eight hours a day than sixteen
hours a day. It is better to have lived a bit than never to
have lived at all. The real tragedy is the tragedy of the man who
is braced to effort, neither in the office nor out of it. And
to this man this book is primarily addressed, But says the other and more
fortunate man, although my ordinary program is bigger than his, I want to
exceed my program too. I am living a bit, but I want to
live more. But I really can't do another day's work on the top of
my official day. The fact is I, the author, ought to have
foreseen that I should appeal most strongly to those who already had an interest in
existence. It is always the man who has taken listed life who demands more
of it, And it is always the man who never gets out of bed
who is the most difficult to rouse. Well, you of the minority.
Let us assume that the intensity of your daily mondey getting will not allow you
to carry out quite all the suggestions in the following pages. Some of the
suggestions may yet stand. I admit that you may not be able to use
the time spent on the journey home at night. But the suggestion for the
journey to the office in the morning is as practicable for you as for anybody.
And that weekly interval of forty hours from Saturday to Monday is yours just
as much as the other man's. Though a slight accumulation of fatigue may prevent
you from employing the whole of your HP upon it. There remains, then,
the important portion of the three or more evenings a week you tell me
flatly that you are too tired to do anything outside your program at night,
in reply to which I tell you flatly that if your ordinary day's work is
thus exhausting, then the balance of your life is wrong and must be adjusted.
A man's powers ought not to be monopolized by his ordinary day's work.
What then, is to be done? The obvious thing to do is to
circumvent your order for your ordinary day's work by a ruse. Employ your engines
in something beyond the program before, and not after you employ them on the
program itself. Briefly, get up earlier in the morning. You say you
cannot. You say it is impossible for you to go earlier to bed of
a night. To do so would have set the entire household. I do
not think it is quite impossible to go to bed earlier at night. I
think that if you persist in rising earlier, and the consequence is insufficiency of
sleep, you will soon find a way of going to bed earlier. But
my impression is that the consequence of rising earlier will not be an insufficiency of
sleep. My impression, growing stronger every year, is that sleep is partly
a matter of habit and of slackness. I am convinced that most people sleep
as long as they do because they are at a loss for any other diversion.
How much sleep do you think is daily obtained by the powerfully healthy man
who daily rattles up your street in charge of Carter Patterson's van. I have
consulted a doctor on this point. He is a doctor who for twenty four
years has had a large general practice and a large flourishing suburb of London inhabited
by exactly such people as you and me. He is a kurtman, and
his answer was, Kurt, most people sleep themselves stupid. He went on
to give his opinion that nine out of ten men would have better health and
more fun out of life if they spend less time in bed. Other doctors
have confirmed this judgment, which of course does not apply to growing youths.
Rise an hour, an hour and a half, or even two hours earlier,
and if you must retire earlier, when you can. In the matter
of exceeding programs, you will accomplish as much in one morning hour as in
two evening hours. But you say I couldn't begin without some food and servants.
Surely, my dear sir in an age when an excellent spirit lamp,
including a saucepan, can be bought for less than a shilling, you are
not going to allow your highest welfare to depend upon the precarious, immediate co
operation of a fellow creature. Instruct the fellow creature, whoever she may be
at night, Tell her to put a tray in a suitable position over night.
On that tray, two biscuits, a cup and saucer, a box
of matches, and a spirit lamp on the lamp, the saucepan. On
the saucepan the lid, but turn the wrong way up on the reversed lid.
The small teapot containing a minute quantity of tea leaves. You will then
have to strike a match. That is all, In three minutes, the
water boils and you pour it into the teapot, which is already warm.
In three more minutes the tea is infused. You can begin your day while
drinking it. These details may seem trivial to the foolish, but to the
thoughtful they would not seem trivial. The proper wise balancing of one's whole life
may depend upon the feasibility of a cup of tea at an unusual hour.
End of preface Chapter one of How to Live On Twenty four Hours a Day
by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter one,
The Daily Miracle. Yes, he's one of those men that don't know
how to manage good situation. Regular income, quite enough for luxuries as well
as needs, not really extravagant. And yet the fellow's always in difficulties.
Somehow he gets nothing out of his money. Excellent flat, half empty,
always looks as if he's had the broker's in new suit, old hat,
magnificent necktie, baggy trousers, asks you to dinner, cut glass, bad
mutton or turkish coffee cracked cup. He can't understand it. Explanation simply is
that he fritters his income away. Wish I had the half of it,
I'd show him. So we have most of us criticized at one time or
another. In our superior way. We are nearly all chancellors of the exchequer.
It is the pride of the moment. Newspapers are full of articles explaining
how to live on such and such a sum, And these articles provoke a
correspondence whose violence proves the interest they excite. Recently, in a daily organ
a battle raged round the question whether a woman can exist nicely in the country
on eighty five pounds a year. I have seen an essay how to live
on eight shillings a week, but I have never seen an essay how to
live on twenty four hours a day. Yet it has been said that time
is money. That proverb understates the case. Time is a great deal more
than money. If you have time, you can obtain money usually. But
though you have the wealth of a cloakroom attendant at the Carlton Hotel, you
cannot buy yourself a minute more time than I have or the cat by the
fire has. Philosophers have explained space, they have not explained time. It
is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible.
Without it nothing. The supply of time is truly a day daily miracle,
an affair genuinely astonishing. When one examines it. You wake up in the
morning and lo, your purse is magically filled with twenty four hours of the
unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life. It is yours. It is
the most precious of possessions. A highly singular commodity showered upon you in a
manner as singular as the commodity itself. For remark, no one can take
it from you. It is unstealable, and no one receives either more or
less than you receive. Talk about an ideal democracy. In the realm of
time, there is no aristocracy of wealth and no aristocracy of intellect. Genius
is never rewarded by even an extra hour a day, and there is no
punishment. Waste your infinitely precious commodity as much as you will, and the
supply will never be withheld from you. No mysterious power will say this man
is a fool, if not a knave, he does not deserve time.
He shall be cut off at the meter. It is more certain than consoles,
and payment of income is not affected by Sundays. Moreover, you cannot
draw on the future, impossible to get into debt. You can only waste
the passing moment. You cannot waste tomorrow. It is kept for you.
You cannot waste the next hour. It is kept for you. I said
the affair was a miracle, is it not. You have to live on
twenty four hours of daily time. Out of it, you have to spend,
health, pleasure, money, content, respect, and the evolution of
your immortal soul. Its right use, its most effective use, is a
matter of the highest urgency and of the most thrilling actuality. All depends on
that your happiness, the elusive prize that you are clutching for, my friends,
depends on that strange that the newspapers, so enterprising and up to date
as they are, are not full of how to live on a given income
of time instead of how to live on a given income of money. Money
is far commoner than time. When one reflects, one perceives that money is
just about the commonest thing there is. It encumbers the earth in gross heaps.
If one can't contrive to live on a certain income of money, one
earns a little more, or steals it, or advertises for it. One
doesn't necessarily muddle one's life because one can't quite manage on a thousand pounds a
year. One braces the muscles and makes it guineas and balances the budget.
But if one cannot arrange that an income of twenty four hours a day shall
exactly cover all proper items of expenditure, one does muddle one's life. Definitely.
The supply of time, though gloriously regular, is cruelly restricted. Which
of us lives on twenty four hours a day? And when I say lives,
I do not mean exists nor muddles through Which of us is free from
that uneasy feeling that the great spending departments of his daily life are not managed
as they ought to be. Which of us is quite sure that his fine
suit is not surmounted by a shameful hat, or that in attending to the
crockery he has forgotten the quality of the food. Which of us is not
saying to himself, which of us has not been saying to himself all his
life? I shall alter that when I have a little more time, we
never shall have any more time we have, and we have always had all
the time there is. It is the realization of this profound and neglected truth,
which, by the way, I have not discovered, that has led
me to the minute practical examination of daily time expenditure. End of chapter one,
Chapter two of How to Live On Twenty Four Hours a Day by Arnold
Bennett. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter two The desire
to exceed one's program. But someone may remark with the English disregard of everything
except the point. What is he driving at with his twenty four hours a
day? I have no difficulty in living on twenty four hours a day.
I do all that I want to do, and still find time to go
in for newspaper competitions. Surely it is a simple affair knowing that one has
only twenty four hours a day to content oneself with twenty four hours a day
to you, my dear sir, I present my excuses and apologies. You
are precisely the man that I have been wishing to meet for about forty years.
Will you kindly send me your name and address and state your charge for
telling me how you do it? Instead of me talking to you, you
are to be talking to me. Please come forward that you exist. I
am convinced, and that I have not yet encountered you is my loss.
Meanwhile, until you appear, I will continue to chat with my companions in
distress, that innumerable band of souls who are haunted more or less painfully by
the feeling that the years slip by and slip by and slip by, and
that they have not yet been able to get their lives into proper working order.
If we analyze that feeling, we shall perceive it to be primarily one
of uneasiness, of expectation, of looking forward, of aspiration. It is
a source of constant discomfort, for it behaves like a skeleton. At the
feast of all our enjoyments. We go to the theater and laugh, but
between the acts it raised a skinny finger at us. We rush violently for
the last train, And while we are cooling a long age on the platform
waiting for the last train, it promenades its bones up and down by our
side and inquires, O, man, what hast thou done with thy youth?
What art thou doing with thine age? You may urge that this feeling
of continuous looking forward, of aspiration is a part of life itself, and
inseparable from life itself. True, But there are degrees. A man may
desire to go to Mecca. His conscience tells him that he ought to go
to Mecca. He fares forth, either by the aid of cooks or unassisted.
He may probably never reach Mecca. He may drown before he gets to
Portsade. He may perish ingloriously on the coasts of the Red Sea. His
desire may remain eternally frustrate. Unfulfilled aspiration may always trouble him, but he
will not be tormented in the same way as the man who desiring to reach
Mecca, and harried by the desire to reach Mecca, never leaves Brixton.
It is something to have left Brixton. Most of us have not left Brixton.
We have not even taken a cab to Ludgate Circus and inquired from Cook's
the price of a conducted tour. And our excuse to ourselves is that there
are only twenty four hours in a day. If we further analyze our vague
and easy aspiration, we shall, I think, see that it springs from
a fixed idea that we ought to do something. In addition to those things
which we are loyally and morally obligated to do, we are obliged by various
codes, written and unwritten, to maintain ourselves and our families, if any,
in health and comfort, to pay our debts, to save, to
increase our prosperity by increasing our efficiency. A task sufficiently difficult, a task
which very few of us achieve, a task often beyond our skills. Yet
if we succeed in it, as we sometimes do we are not satisfied.
The skeleton is still with us. And even when we realize that the task
is beyond our skill, that our powers cannot cope with it, we feel
that we should be less discontented if we gave to our powers already overtaxed something
still further to do. And such is indeed the fact. The wish to
accomplish something outside their formal program is common to all men, who, in
the course of evolution, have risen past a certain level. Until an effort
is made to satisfy that wish, the sense of uneasy waiting for something to
start which has not started will remain to disturb the peace of the soul.
That wish has been called by many names. It is one form of the
universal desire for knowledge, and it is so strong that men whose whole lives
have been given to the systematic acquirement of knowledge have been driven by it to
overstep the limits of their program in search of still more knowledge. Even Herbert
Spencer, in my opinion, the greatest mind that ever lived, was often
forced by it into agreeable little backwaters of inquiry. I imagine that in the
majority of people who are conscious of the wish to live. That is to
say, people who have in intellectual curiosity the aspiration to exceed formal programs takes
a literary shape, they would like to embark on a course of reading.
Decidedly. The British people are becoming more and more literary. But I would
point out that literature, by no means comprises the whole feel of knowledge,
and that the disturbing thirst to improve oneself, to increase one's knowledge, may
well be slaked quite apart from literature, with the various ways of slaking I
shall deal later here, I merely point out to those who have no natural
sympathy with literature, that literature is not the only well. End of chapter
two, Chapter three of How to Live on Twenty four Hours a Day by
Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox records is in the public domain. Chapter three precautions
before beginning, now that I have succeeded. If succeeded, I have in
persuading you to admit to yourself that you are constantly haunted by a suppressed dissatisfaction
with your own arrangement of your daily life, and that the primal cause of
that inconvenient dissatisfaction is the feeling that you are every day leaving undone something which
you would like to do, and which indeed you are always hoping to do
when you have more time. And now that I have drawn your attention to
the glaring, dazzling truth that you never will have more time, since you
already have all the time there is, you expect me to let you into
some wonderful secret by which you may, at any rate approach the ideal of
a perfect arrangement of the day, and by which therefore that haunting, unpleasant,
daily disappointment of things left undone will be got rid of. I have
found no such wonderful secret, nor do I expect to find it, nor
do I expect that anyone else will ever find it. It is undiscovered.
When you first began to gather my drift, perhaps there was a resurrection of
hope in your breast. Perhaps you said to yourself, this man will show
me an easy, unfatiguing way of doing what I have so long, in
vain wished to do. Alas, no, the fact is that there is
no easy way, no royal road. The path to Mecca is extremely hard
and stony, and the worst of it is that you never quite get there.
After all. The most important preliminary to the task of arranging one's life
so that one may live fully and comfortably within one's daily budget of twenty four
hours is the calm realization of the extreme difficulty of the task, of the
sacrifices, and the endless effort which it demands. I cannot too strongly insist
on this. If you imagine that you will be able to achieve your ideal
by ingeniously planning out a timetable with a pen on a piece of paper,
you had better give up hope at once. If you are not prepared for
discouragements and dissolusions, if you will not be content with a small result for
a big effort, then do not begin lie down again and resume the uneasy
doze which you call your existence. It is very sad, is it not?
Very depressing and somber? And yet I think it is rather fine too,
this necessity for the tense bracing of the will before anything worth doing can
be done. I rather like it myself. I feel it to be the
chief thing that differentiates me from the cat by the fire. Well, you
say, assume that I embraced for the battle. Assume that I have carefully
waighed and comprehend your ponderous remarks, How do I begin, Dear sir,
you simply begin. There is no magic method of beginning. If a man
standing on the edge of a swimming bath and wanting to jump into the cold
water, should ask you, how do I begin to jump, you would
merely reply, just jump. Take hold of your nerves and jump. As
I have previously said, the chief beauty about the constant supply of time is
that you cannot waste it in advance. The next year, the next day,
the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect as unspoilt,
as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your career,
which fact is very gratifying and reassuring. You can turn over a new
leaf every hour if you choose. Therefore, no object is served in waiting
till next week, or even until tomorrow. You may fancy that the water
will be warmer next week. It won't, it will be colder. But
before you begin, let me murmur a few words of warning in your private
ear. Let me principally warn you against your own order. Order in well
doing is a misleading and a treacherous thing. It cries out loudly for employment.
You can't satisfy it. At first. It wants more and more.
It is eager to move mountains and divert the course of rivers. It is
in content till it perspires, and then too often, when it feels the
perspiration on its brow, it wearies all of a sudden and dies without even
putting itself to the trouble of saying I've had enough of this. Beware of
undertaking too much at the start, be content with quite a little. Allow
for accidents, allow for human nature, especially your own. A failure or
so in itself would not matter if it did not incur a loss of self
esteem and of self confidence. But just as nothing succeeds like success, so
nothing feels like failure. Most people who are ruined or ruined by attempting too
much. Therefore, in setting out on the immense enterprise of living fully and
comfortably within the narrow limits of twenty four hours a day, let us avoid,
at any cost the risk of an early failure. I will not agree
that in this business, at any rate, a glorious failure is better than
a petty success. I am all for the petty success. A glorious failure
leads to nothing. A petty success may lead to a success that is not
petty. So let us begin to examine the budget of a day's time.
You say your day is already full to overflowing. How you actually spend in
earning your livelihood? How much seven hours on the average and in actual sleep
seven I will add two hours and be generous, and I will defy you
to account to me, on the spur of the moment for the other eight
hours. End of chapter three, Chapter four of How to Live On Twenty
four Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox recording is in the public
domain. Chapter four The Cause of the Troubles. In order to come to
grips at once with the question of time expenditure in all its actuality, I
must choose an individual case for examination. I can only deal with one case,
and that case cannot be the average case, because there is no such
case as the average case, just as there is no such man as the
average man. Every man and every man's case is special. But if I
take the case of a Londoner who works in an office, whose office hours
are from ten to six, and who spends fifteen minutes morning and night,
in traveling between his house door and his office door, I shall have got
as near to the average as facts permit. There are men who have to
work longer for a living, but there are others who do not have to
work so long. Fortunately, the financial side of existence does not interest us
here for our present purpose. The clerk at a pound a week is exactly
as well off as the millionaire in Carlton House Terrace. Now, the great
and profound mistake which my typical man makes in regard to his day is a
mistake of general attitude, a mistake which vitiates and weakens two thirds of his
energies and interests. In the majority of instances, he does not precisely feel
a passion for his business. At best, he does not dislike it.
He begins his business functions with reluctance as late as he can, and he
ends them with joy as early as he can, And his engines while he
is engaged in his business are seldom at their full HP. I know that
I shall be accused by angry readers of producing the city worker. But I
am pretty thoroughly acquainted with the city, and I stick to what I say.
Yet In spite of all this, he persists in looking upon those hours
from ten to six as the day, to which the ten hours preceding them
and the six hours following them are nothing but a prologue and epilogue. Such
an attitude, unconscious though it be, of course, kills his interest in
the odd sixteen hours, with the result that even if he does not waste
them, he does not count them. He regards them simply as margin.
This general attitude is utterly illogical and unhealthy, since it formally gives the central
prominence to a patch of time and a bunch of activities which the man's one
idea is to get through and have done with. If a man makes two
thirds of his existence subservient to one third, for which admittedly he has no
absolute feverish zest, how can he hope to live fully and completely? He
cannot. If my typical man wishes to live fully and completely, he must
in his mind arrange a day within a day, and this inner day a
Chinese box in a larger Chinese box, must begin at six pm and end
at ten am. It is a day of sixteen hours, and during all
these sixteen hours he has nothing whatever to do. But cultivate his body and
his soul and his fellow men. During those sixteen hours. He is free.
He is not a wage earner. He is not preoccupied with monetary cares.
He is just as good as a man with a private income. This
must be his attitude, and his attitude is all important his success in life,
much more important than the amount of estate upon what his executors will have
to pay estate duty depends on it. What you say that full energy given
to those sixteen hours will lessen the value of the business. Eight. Not
so, on the contrary, it will assuredly increase the value of the business.
Eight. One of the chief things which my typical man has to learn
is that the mental faculties are capable of a continuous hard activity. They do
not tire like an arm or a leg. All they want is change,
not rest, except in sleep. I shall now examine the typical man's current
method of employing the sixteen hours that are entirely his beginning with his uprising.
I will merely indicate things which he does and which I think he ought not
to do, postponing my suggestions for planting the times which I shall have cleared
as a settler clear spaces in a forest. In justice to him, I
must say that he wastes very little time before he leaves the house in the
morning at nine ten. In too many houses, he gets up at nine
breakfasts between nine seven and nine nine and a half and then bolts. But
immediately he banks the front door. His mental faculties, which are tireless,
become idle. He walks to the station in a condition of mental coma.
Arrived there, he usually has to wait for the train. On hundreds of
suburban stations every morning, you see men calmly strolling up and down platforms,
while railway companies unblushingly rob them of time, which is more than money.
Hundreds of thousands of hours are thus lost every day, simply because my typical
man thinks so little time that it has never occurred to him to take quite
easy precautions against the risk of its loss. He has a solid coin of
time to spend every day. Call it a sovereign. He must get change
for it, and in getting change he is content to lose heavily, supposing
that in selling him a ticket, the company said, we will charge you
a sovereign, but we will charge you three halfpence for doing so. What
would my typical man exclaim? Yes, that is the equivalent of what the
company does when it robs him of five minutes twice a day. You say,
I am dealing with Manusha. I am, and later on I will
justify myself. Now, will you kindly buy your paper and step into the
train? End of chapter four Chapter five of How to Live On Twenty four
Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
Chapter five, Tennis and the Immortal Soul. You get into the morning
train with your newspaper, and you calmly and majestically give yourself up to your
newspaper. You do not harvey. You know you have at least half an
hour of security in front of you, as your glance lingers idly on the
advertisements of shipping and of songs on the outer pages. Your heir is the
air of a leisurejured man, wealthy in time, of a man from some
planet where there are a hundred and twenty four hours a day instead of twenty
four. I am an impassioned reader of newspapers. I read five English and
two French dailies, and the news agents alone know how many weeklies regularly.
I am obliged to mention this personal fact lest I should be accused of a
prejudice against newspapers when I say that I object to the reading of newspapers in
the morning train. Newspapers are produced with rapidity to be read with rapidity.
There is no place in my daily program for newspapers. I read them as
I may in odd moments, but I do read them. The idea of
devoting to them thirty or forty consecutive minutes of wonderful solitude, for nowhere can
one more perfectly immerse oneself in oneself than in a compartment full of silent withdrawn
smoking males, is to me repugnant. I cannot possibly allow you to scatter
priceless pearls of time with such oriental lavishness. You are not a shah of
time. Let me respectfully remind you that you have no more time than I
have. No newspaper reading and trains I have already put by about three quarters
of an hour for use. Now you reach your office and I abandon you
there till six o'clock. I am aware that you have nominally an hour,
often in reality an hour and a half in the midst of the day,
less than half of which time is given to eating. But I will leave
you all that to spend as you choose. You may read your newspapers.
Then I meet you again. As you emerge from your office. You are
pale and tid at any rate. Your wife says you are pale, and
you give her to understand that you are tired. During the journey home,
you have been gradually working up the tired feeling. The tired feeling hangs heavy
over the mighty suburbs of London, like a virtuous and melancholy cloud, particularly
in winter. You don't eat immediately on your arrival home, but in about
an hour or so you feel as if you could sit up and take a
little nourishment, and you do. Then you smoke seriously. You see friends,
You potter, you play cards, You flirt with a book. You
note that old age is creeping on. You take a stroll. You caress
the piano by jove a quarter past eleven. You then devote quite forty minutes
to thinking about going to bed, and it is conceivable that you are acquainted
with a genuinely good whiskey. At last, you go to bed, exhausted
by the day's work. Six hours probably more have gone since you left the
office, gone like a dream, gone, like magic, unaccountably gone.
That is a fair sample case. But you say it's all very well for
you to talk. A man is tired, a man must see his friends.
He can't always be on the stretch just so. But when you arrange
to go to the theater, especially with a pretty woman, what happens?
You rush to the suburbs, You spare no toil to make yourself glorious in
fine raiment. You rush back to town in another train. You keep yourself
on the stretch for four hours, if not five. You take her home,
You take yourself home. You don't spend three quarters of an hour in
thinking about going to bed. You go. Friends and fatigue have equally been
forgotten, and the evening has seemed so exquisitely long, or perhaps too short.
And do you remember that time when you were persuaded to sing in the
chorus of the Amateur Operatic Society and slaved two hours every other night for three
months? Can you deny that when you have something definite to look forward to
at evening tide, something that is to employ all your energy. The thought
of that something gives a glow and a more intense vitality to the whole day.
What I suggest is that at six o'clock you look facts in the face
and admit that you are not tired, because you are not, you know,
and that you arrange your evening so that it is not cut in the
middle by a meal. By so doing, you will have a clear expanse
of at least three hours. I do not suggest that you should employ three
hours every night of your life in using up your mental energy. But I
do suggest that you might, for a commencement, employ an hour and a
half every other evening in some important and consecutive cultivation of the mind. You
will still be left with three evenings for friends, bridge, tennis, domestic
scenes, odd reading, pipes, gardening, pottering, and prize competitions.
You will still have the terrific wealth of forty five hours between two p m.
Saturday and ten a m. Monday. If you persevere, you will
soon want to pass four evenings and perhaps five in some sustained endeavor to be
genuinely alive, and you will fall out of that habit of muttering yourself.
At eleven fifteen pm, time to be thinking about going to bed. The
man who begins to go to bed forty minutes before he opens his bedroom door
is bored. That is to say, he is not living. But remember
at the start, those ninety nocturnal minutes thrice a week must be the most
important minutes in the ten thousand and eighty They must be sacred, quite as
sacred as a dramatic rehearsal or a tennis match. Instead of saying, sorry,
I can't see you, old chap, but I have to run off
to the tennis club, you must say, but I have to work.
This, I admit, is intensely difficult to say. Tennis is so much
more urgent than the immortal soul. End of chapter five, Chapter six of
How to Live On Twenty four Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox
recording is in the public domain. Chapter six. Remember human nature. I
have incidentally mentioned the vast expanse of forty four hours between leaving business at two
p m. On Saturday and returning to business at ten a m. On
Monday. And here I must touch on the point whether the week should consist
of six days or of seven. For many years, in fact, until
I was approaching forty. My own week consisted of seven days. I was
constantly being informed by older and wiser people that more work, more genuine living,
could be got out of six days than out of seven. And it
is certainly true that now, with one day in seven, in which I
follow no program and make no effort save what the caprice of the moment dictates,
I appreciate intensely the moral value of a weekly rest. Nevertheless, had
I my life to arrange over again, I would do again as I have
done. Only those who have lived at the full stretch seven days a week
for a long time can appreciate the full beauty of a regular, recurring idleness.
Moreover, I am aging, and it is a question of age.
In cases of abounding youth and exceptional energy and desire for effort, I should
say unhesitatingly keep going day in, day out. But in the average case,
I should say, confine your formal program super program, I mean to
six days a week. If you find yourself wishing to extend it, extend
it, but only in proportion to your wish, and count the time extra
as a windfall, not as regular income, so that you can return to
a six day program without the sensation of being poorer, of being a backslider.
Let us now see where we stand. So far, we have marked
for saving out of the waste of days, half an hour at least on
six mornings a week, and one hour and a half on three evenings a
week, total seven hours and a half a week. I propose to be
content with that seven hours and a half for the present. What you cry,
You pretend to show us how to live, and you only deal with
seven hours and a half out of a hundred and sixty eight Are you going
to perform a miracle with your seven hours and a half? Well, not
to mince the matter, I am if you will kindly let me. That
is to say, I am going to ask you to attempt an experience which,
while perfectly natural and explicable, has all the air of a miracle.
My contention is that the full use of those seven and a half hours will
quicken the whole life of the week, add zest to it, and increase
the interest which you feel in even the most banal occupations. You practice physical
exercises for a mere ten minutes morning and evening, and yet you are not
astonished when your physical health and strength are beneficially affected every hour of the day,
and your whole physical outlook changed. Why should you be astonished that an
average of over an hour a day given to the mind should permanently and completely
enliven the whole activity of the mind. More time might assuredly be given to
the cultivation of oneself, and in proportion as the time was longer, the
results would be greater. But I prefer to begin with what looks like a
trifling effort. It is not really a trifling effort, as those will discover
who have yet to essay it. To clear even seven hours and a half
from the jungle is passibly difficult. For some sacrifice has to be made.
One may have spent one's time badly, but one did spend it, one
did do something with it. However, ill advised that something may have been
to do something else means a change of habits, and habits are the very
dickens to change further. Any change, even a change for the better,
is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts. If you imagine that you will be
able to devote seven hours and a half a week to serious, continuous effort
and still live your old life, you are mistaken. I repeat that some
sacrifice and an immense deal of volition will be necessary. And it is because
I know the difficulty. It is because I know the almost disastrous effect of
failure in such an enterprise, that I earnestly advise a very humble beginning,
you must safeguard your self respect. Self respect is at the root of all
purposefulness, and a failure in an enterprise deliberately planned deals a desperate wound at
one's self respect. Hence, I iterate and reiterate. Start quietly, unostentatiously.
When you have conscientiously given seven hours and a half a week to the
cultivation of your vitality for three months, then you may begin to sing louder
and tell yourself what wondrous things you are capable of doing. Before coming to
the method of using the indicated hours, I have one final suggestion to make.
That is, as regards the evenings, to allow much more than an
hour and a half in which to do the work of an hour and a
half. Remember the chance of accidents, remember human nature, and give yourself,
say, from nine to eleven thirty for your task of ninety minutes.
End of Chapter six, Chapter seven of How to Live on twenty four hours
a day by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
Chapter seven, Controlling the mind. People say one can't help one's thoughts,
but one can. The control of the thinking machine is perfectly possible. And
since nothing whatever happens to us outside our own brain, since nothing hurts us
or gives us pleasure except within the brain, the supreme import pertence of being
able to control what goes on in that mysterious brain is patent. The idea
is one of the oldest platitudes, but it is a platitude whose profound truth
and urgency. Most people live and die without realizing. People complain of the
lack of power to concentrate, not witting that they may acquire the power if
they choose, and without the power to concentrate, that is to say,
without the power to dictate to the brain its task and to ensure obedience,
true life is impossible. Mind control is the first element of a full existence.
Hence, it seems to me the first business of the day should be
to put the mind through its paces. You look after your body inside and
out. You run grave danger in hacking hairs off your face you employ a
whole army of individuals, from the milkman to the pig killer, to enable
you to bribe your stomach into decent behavior. Why not devote a little attention
to the far more delicate machinery of the mind, especially as you will require
no extraneous aid. It is for this portion of the art and craft of
living that I have reserved the time from the moment of quitting your door to
the moment of arriving at your office. What am I to cultivate my mind
in the street, on the platform, in the train, and in the
crowded street again, precisely, nothing simpler, No tools required, not even
a book. Nevertheless, the affair is not easy. When you leave your
house concentrate your mind on a subject, no matter what to begin with,
you will not have gone ten yards before your mind has skipped away under your
eyes and is larking round the corner with another subject. Bring it back by
the scruff of the neck. Ere you have reached the station, you will
have brought it back about forty times. Do not despair. Continue, keep
it up. You will succeed. You cannot, by any chance fail.
If you persevere. It is idle to pretend that your mind is incapable of
concentration. Do you remember that morning when you receive a disquieting letter which demanded
a very carefully worded answer, How you kept your mind steadily on the subject
of the answer, without a second's intermission, until you reached your office,
whereupon you instantly sat down and wrote the answer. That was a case in
which you were roused by circumstances to such a degree of vitality that you were
able to dominate your mind like a tyrant. You would have no trifling.
You insisted that its work should be done, and its work was done by
the regular practice of concentration, as to which there is no secret, save
the secret of perseverance. You can tyrannize over your mind, which is not
the highest part of you, every hour of the day, and in no
matter what place. The exercise is a very convenient one. If you get
into your morning train with a pair of dumb bells for your muscles, or
and encyclopedia in ten volumes for your learning, you would probably excite remark.
But as you walk in the street, or sit in the corner of the
compartment behind a pipe or strap hanging on the subterranean who wish to know that
you are engaged in the most important of daily acts. What Asenine Bore can
laugh at you. I do not care what you concentrate on soul. So
long as you concentrate it is the mere disciplining of the thinking machine that counts.
But still you may as well kill two birds with one stone and concentrate
on something useful. I suggest, it is only a suggestion, a little
chapter of Marcus Aurelius or Epetitis. Do not I beg shy at their names.
For myself, I know nothing more actual, more bursting with plain common
sense, applicable to the daily life of plain persons like you and me,
who hate airs, pose and nonsense than Marcus Aurelius or Apetitis. Read a
chapter and so short they are the chapters in the evening, and concentrate on
it the next morning. You will see. Yes, my friend, it
is useless for you to try to disguise the fact I can hear your brain
like a telephone at my ears, you are saying to yourself. This fellow
was doing pretty well up to his seventh chapter. He had begun to interest
me faintly. But what he says about thinking in trains and concentration and so
on. Is not for me. It may be well enough for some folks,
but it isn't in my line. It is for you. I passionately
repeat it is for you. Indeed you are the very man I am aiming
at. Throw away the suggestion, and you throw away the most precious suggestion
that was ever offered to you. It is not my suggestion. It is
the suggestion of the most sensible, practical, hard headed men who have walked
the earth. I only give it to you at second hand. Try it,
get your mind in hand, and see how the process cures. Half
the evils of life is actually worry, that miserable, avoidable, shameful disease.
Worry. End of chapter seven, Chapter eight of How to Live On
Twenty four Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett. This librevox recording is in the
public domain. Chapter eight. The reflective mood, the exercise of concentrating the
mind, to which at least half an hour a day should be given,
is a mere preliminary, Like scales on the piano. Having acquired power over
that most unruly member of one's complex organism, one has naturally to put it
to the yoke. Useless to possess an obedient mind unless one profits in the
furthest possible degree by its obedience. A prolonged primary course of study is indicated.
Now to what this course of study should be. There cannot be any
question. There never has been any question. All the sensible people of all
ages are agreed upon it. And it is not literature, nor is it
any other art, nor is it history, nor is it any science.
It is the study of one's self. Man, know thyself. These words
are so hackneyed that verily I blush to write them. Yet they must be
written, for they need to be written. I take back my blush,
being ashamed of it. Man know thyself, I say it out loud.
The phrase is one of those phrases with which everyone is familiar, of which
everyone acknowledges the value, and which only the most sagacious put into practice.
I don't know why. I am entirely convinced that what is, more than
anything else lacking in the life of the average well intentioned man of today is
the reflective mood. We do not reflect. I mean that we do not
reflect upon genuinely important things, upon the problem of our happiness, upon the
main direction in which we are going, upon what life is giving to us,
upon the share which reason has or has not in determining our actions,
and upon the relation between our principles and our conduct. And yet you are
in search of happiness? Are you not? Have you discovered it? The
chances are that you have not. The chances are that you have already come
to believe that happiness is unattainable. But men have attained it, and they
have attained it by realizing that happiness does not spring from the procuring of physical
or mental pleasure, but from the development of reason and the adjustment of conduct
to principles. I suppose that you will not have the audacity to deny this.
And if you admit it and still devote no part of your day to
the deliberate consideration of your reason, principles, and conduct, you admit also
that, while striving for a certain thing, you are regularly leaving undone the
one act which is necessary to the attainment of that thing. Now, shall
I blush or will you do not fear that I mean to thrust certain principles
upon your attention? I care not in this place what your principles are,
Your principles may induce you to believe in the righteousness of Burglary. I don't
mind. All I urge is that a life in which conduct does not fairly
well accord with principles is a silly life, and that conduct can only be
made to accord with principles by means of daily examination, reflection, and resolution.
What leads to the permanent sorrowfulness of burglars is that their principles are contrary
to Burglary. If they genuinely believed in the moral excellence of Burglary, penal
servitude would simply mean so many happy years for them. All mortars are happy
because their conduct and their principles agree. As for reason, which makes conduct
and is not unconnected with the making of principles, it plays a far smaller
part in our lives than we fancy. We are supposed to be reasonable,
but we are much more instinctive than reasonable, and the less we reflect,
the less reasonable we shall be. The next time you get cross with the
waiter because your stake is overcooked, ask a reason to step into the cabinet
room of your mind and consult her. She will probably tell you that the
waiter did not cook the steak, and has no control over the cooking of
the steak, and that even if he alone was to blame, you accomplished
nothing good By getting cross. You merely lost your dignity, looked a fool
in the eyes of sensible men, and soured the waiter, while producing no
effect whatever on the steak. The result of this consultation with Reason, for
which she makes no charge, will be that, when once more your steak
is overcooked, you will treat the waiter as a fellow creature, remain quite
calm, in a kindly spirit, and politely insist on having a fresh steak.
The gain will be obvious and solid. In the formation or modification of
principles and the practice of conduct. Much help can be derived from printed books
issued at sixpence each and upwards. I mentioned in my last chapter Marcus Aurelius
and Epetitus, Certain even more widely known works will occur at once to the
memory. I may also mention Pascal la Bruriere and Emerson. For myself.
You do not catch me traveling without my Marcus Aurelius. But reading of books
will not take the place of a daily, candid, honest examination of what
one has recently done, and what one is about to do of a steady
looking at oneself in the face. Disconcerting though the site may be, when
shall this important business be accomplished? The solitude of the evening journey home appears
to me to be suitable for it. A reflective mood naturally follows the exertion
of having earned the day's living. If instead of attending to an elementary and
profoundly important duty, you prefer to read the paper, which you might just
as well read while waiting for your dinner, I have nothing to say,
but attend to it some time of the day you must. I now come
to the evening hours. End of chapter eight, Chapter nine of How to
Live on Twenty four Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox recording is
in the public domain. Chapter nine. Interest in the arts. Many people
pursue a regular and uninterrupted course of idleness in the evenings because they think that
there is no alternative to idleness but the study of literature, and they do
not happen to have a taste for literature. This is a great mistake.
Of course. It is impossible, or at any rate very difficult, properly
to study anything whatever without the aid of printed books. But if you desire
to understand the deeper depths of bridge or of boat sailing, you would not
be deterred, by your lack of interest in literature, from reading the best
books on bridge or boat sailing. We must therefore distinguish between literature and books
treating of subjects not literary. I shall come to literature in due course.
Let me now remark to those who have never read Meredith, and who are
capable of being unmoved by a discussion as to whether mister Stephen Phillips is or
is not a true poet, that they are perfectly within their rights. It
is not a crime not to love literature. It is not a sign of
imbecility. The mandarins of literature will order out to instant execution the unfortunate individual
who does not comprehend, say, the influences of Wordsworth on Tennyson. But
that is only their impudence. Where would they be, I wonder if requested
to explain the influences that went to make Tchaikowsky's pathetic symphony. There are enormous
fields of knowledge quite outside literature, which will yield magnificent results to cultivators For
example, since I have just mentioned the most popular piece of high class music
in England to day, I am reminded that the promenade concerts begin in August.
You go to them, you smoke your cigar or cigarette, and I
regret to say that you strike your matches during the soft bars of the Loewengrin
overture, and you enjoy the music. But you say you cannot play the
piano or the fiddle or even the banjo, that you know nothing of music.
What does that matter? That you have a genuine taste for music is
proved by the fact that, in order to fill his haul with you and
your peers, the conductor is obliged to provide programs from which bad music is
almost entirely excluded, a change from the old COVID garden days. Now,
Surely, your inability to perform the Maiden's Prayer on a piano need not prevent
you from making yourself familiar with the construction of the orchestra to which you listen
a couple of nights a week during a couple of months. As things are,
you probably think of the orchestra as a heterogeneous mass of instruments producing a
confused agreeable mass of sound. You do not listen for details, because you
have never trained your ears to listen to details. If you were asked to
name the instruments which play the great theme at the beginning of the C.
Minor Symphony, you could not name them for your life's sake. Yet you
admire the C. Minor Symphony. It has thrilled you, it will thrill
you again. You have even talked about it in an expansive mood to that
lady you know whom I mean. And all you can positively state about the
C. Minor Symphony is that Beethoven composed it, and that it is a
jolly fine thing. Now, if you have read, say mister Kriebles,
How to Listen to Music, which can be got at any booksellers for less
than the price of a stall at the Alhambra, and which contains photographs of
all the orchestral instruments and plans of the arrangement of orchestras, you would next
go to a promenade concert with an astonishing intensification of interest in it. Instead
of a confused mass, the orchestra would appear to you as what it is
is a marvelously balanced organism whose various groups of members each have a different end
and indispensable function. You would spy out the instruments and listen for their respective
sounds. You would know the gulf that separates a French horn from an English
horn, and you would perceive why a player of the hate boy gets higher
wages than a fiddler, though the fiddle is the more difficult instrument. You
would live at a promenade concert, whereas previously you had merely existed there in
a state of beatific coma, like a baby gazing at a bright object,
the foundations of a genuine, systematic knowledge of music might be laid. You
might specialize your inquiries, either on a particular form of music, such as
the symphony, or on the works of a particular composer. At the end
of a year of forty eight weeks of three brief evenings, each combined with
a study of programs and attendances at concerts chosen out of your increasing knowledge,
you would really know something about music, even though you were as far off
as ever from jangling the Maiden's Prayer on the piano. But I hate music,
you say, my dear sir, I respect you. What applies to
music applies to the other arts. I might mention mister claremont Wits how to
look at pictures are mister Russell Sturgis's how to Judge Architecture as beginnings merely beginnings
of systematic, vitalizing knowledge in other arts, the materials for whose study abound
in London. I hate all the arts, you say, my dear sir,
I respect you more and more. Will deal with your case next before
coming to literature. End of chapter nine, Chapter ten of How to Live
On Twenty four Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox recording is in
the public domain. Chapter ten. Nothing in life is hum drum. Art
is a great thing, but it is not the greatest. The most important
of all perceptions is the continual perception of cause and effect, in other words,
the perception of the continuous development of the universe. In still other words,
the perception of the course of evolution. When one has thoroughly got imbued
into one's head the leading truth that nothing happens without a cause, one grows
not only large minded, but large hearted. It is hard to have one's
watch stolen, but one reflects that the thief of the watch became a thief
from causes of heredity and environment, which are as interesting as they are scientifically
comprehensible, and one buys another watch, if not with joy at any rate,
with a philosophy that makes bitterness impossible. One loses in the study of
cause and effect that absurd air which so many people have, of being always
shocked and pained by the curiousness of life. Such people live amid human nature
as if human nature were a foreign country full of awful foreign customs. But
having reached maturity, one ought surely to be ashamed of being a stranger in
a strain land. The study of cause and effect, while it lessens the
painfulness of life, adds to life's picturesqueness. The man to whom evolution is
but a name, looks at the sea as a grandiose, monotonous spectacle which
he can witness in August for three shillings third class return. The man,
who is imbued with the idea of development of continuous cause and effect, perceives
in the sea an element which in the day before yesterday of geology was vapor,
which yesterday was boiling, and which tomorrow will inevitably be ice. He
perceives that a liquid is merely something on its way to be solid, and
he is penetrated by a sense of the tremendous, changeful, picturesqueness of life.
Nothing will afford a more durable satisfaction than the constantly cultivated appreciation of this.
It is the end of all science. Cause and effect are to be
found everywhere. Rints went up in Shepherd's Bush. It was painful and shocking
that rints should go up in Shepherd's Bush. But to a certain point,
we are all scientific students of cause and effect. And there was not a
clerk lunching at Lion's Restaurant who did not scientifically put two and two together,
and see in the once two penny tube the cause of an excessive demand for
wigwams in Shepherd's Bush, and the excessive demand for wigwams the cause of the
increase in the price of wigwams. Simple, you say, disdainfully, everything,
the whole complex movement of the universe is as simple as that, when
you can sufficiently put two and two together. And my dear sir, perhaps
you happen to be an estate agent's clerk, and you hate the arts,
and you want to foster your immortal soul, and you can't be interested in
your business because it's so humdrum. Nothing is humdrum. The tremendous, changeful
picturesqueness of life is marvelously shown in anes state agent's office. What there was
a block of traffic in Oxford Street. To avoid the block, people actually
began to travel under the cellars and drains, and the result was a rise
of rents in Shepherd's Bush. And you say that isn't picturesque. Suppose you
were to study in this spirit the property question in London for an hour and
a half every other evening, would it not give zest to your business and
transform your whole life. You would arrive at more difficult problems, and you
would be able do tell us why, as the natural result of cause and
effect, the longest straight street in London is about a yard and a half
and left, while the longest absolutely straight street in Paris extends for miles.
I think you will admit that in an estate agent's clerk, I have not
chosen an example that especially favors my theories. You are a bank clerk,
and you have not read that breathless romance disguised as a scientific study. Walter
Begehot's Lombard Street. Ah, My dear sir, if you had begun with
that and followed it up for ninety minutes every other evening, how enthralling your
business would be to you, and how much more clearly you would understand human
nature. You are pinned in town, but you love excursions to the country,
and the observation of wild life certainly a hard enlarging diversion. Why don't
you walk out of your house door in your slippers to the nearest gas lamp
of a night with a butterfly net and observe the wild life of common and
rare moths that is beating about it, and co ordinate the knowledge thus obtained,
and build a superstructure on it, and at last get to know something
about something. You need not be devoted to the arts, not to literature,
in order to live fully. The whole field of daily habit and seen
is waiting to satisfy that curiosity which means life, and the satisfaction of which
means an understanding heart. I promised to deal with your case, o man
who hates art in literature, and I have dealt with it. I now
come to the case of the person happily very common who does like reading?
End of chapter ten chapter eleven of How to Live On Twenty four Hours a
Day by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter
eleven serious reading. Novels are excluded from serious reading, so that the man
who bent on self improvement has been deciding to devote ninety minutes three times a
week to a complete study of the works of Charles Dickens will be well advised
to alter his plans. The reason is not that novels are not serious.
Some of the great literature of the world is in the form of prose fiction.
The reason is that bad novels ought not to be read, and that
good novels never demand any appreciable mental application on the part of the reader.
It is only the bad parts of Meredith's novels that are difficult. Good novel
rushes you forward like a skiff down a stream, and you arrive at the
end, perhaps breathless but unexhausted. The best novels involve the least strain.
Now, in the cultivation of the mind, one of the most important factors
is precisely the feeling of strain, of difficulty, of a task which one
part of you is anxious to achieve, and another part of you is anxious
to shirk, and that feeling cannot be got in facing a novel. You
do not set your teeth in order to read on a karnina. Therefore,
though you should read novels, you should not read them in those ninety minutes.
Imaginative poetry produces a far greater mental strain than novels. It produces probably
the severest strain of any form of literature. It is the highest form of
literature. It yields the highest form of pleasure and teaches the highest form of
wisdom. In a word, there is nothing to compare with it. I
say this with sad consciousness of the fact that the majority of people do not
read poetry. I am persuaded that many excellent persons, if they were confronted
with the alternatives of reading Paradise Lost and going round Trafalga Square at noonday on
their knees in sackcloth, which choose the ordeal of public ridicule. Still I
will never cease advising my friends and enemies to read poetry before anything. If
poetry is what is called a sealed book, to you again by reading Haslet's
famous essay on the nature of poetry in general. It is the best thing
of its kind in English, and no one who has read it can possibly
be under the misapprehension that poetry is a medieval torture, or a mad elephant,
or a gun that will go off by itself and kill at forty paces.
Indeed, it is difficult to imagine the mental state of the man who,
after reading Hazlit's essay is not urgently desirous of reading some poetry before his
next meal. If the essay so inspires you, I would suggest that you
make a commencement with purely narrative poetry. There is an infinitely finer English novel
written by a woman than anything by George Eliot, or the Brontes, or
even Jane Austen, which perhaps you have not read. Its title is Aurora
Lee, and its author is E. B. Browning. It happens to
be written in verse and to contain a considerable amount of genuinely fine poetry.
Decide to read that book through, even if you die for it. Forget
that it is fine poetry. Read it simply for the story and the socialized
is. And when you have done, ask yourself, honestly whether you still
dislike poetry. I have known more than one person to whom Aurora Lee has
been the means of proving that, in assuming they hated poetry, they were
entirely mistaken. Of course, if after Hazlitt and such an experiment made in
the light of Haslet, you are finally assured that there is something in you
which is antagonistic to poetry, you must be content with history or philosophy.
I shall regret it, yet not inconsolably. The Decline and Fall is not
to be named in the same day with Paradise Lost, but it is a
vastly pretty thing, and Herbert Spencer's First Principles simply laughs at the claims of
poetry and refuses to be accepted as aught but the most majestic product of any
human mind. I do not suggest that either of these these works as suitable
for a trio in mental strains. But I see no reason why any man
of average intelligence should not, after a year of continuous reading, be fit
to assault the supreme masterpieces of history or philosophy. The great convenience of masterpieces
is that they are so astonishingly Lucid. I suggest no particular work as a
start. The attempt would be futile in the space of my command. But
I have two general suggestions of a certain importance. The first is to define
the direction and scope of your efforts. Choose a limited period, or a
limited subject, or a single author. Say to yourself, I will know
something about the French Revolution, or the rise of railroads, or the works
of John Keats, and during a given period to be settled before hand.
Confine yourself to your choice. There is much pleasure to be derived from being
a specialist. The second suggestion is to think as well as read. I
know people who read and read, and for all the good it does them,
they might just as well cut bread and butter. They take to reading
as better men take to drink. They fly through the shires of literature on
a motor car, their sole object being motion. They will tell you how
many books they have read in a year. Unless you give at least forty
five minutes too careful fatiguing reflection, it is an awful boar at first upon
what you are reading. Your ninety minutes of a night are chiefly wasted.
This means that your pace will be slow, never mind forget the goal,
think only of the surrounding country, and after a period, perhaps when you
least expect it, you will suddenly find yourself in a lovely town on a
hill. End of chapter eleven, Chapter twelve of How to Live On Twenty
four Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox recording is in the public
domain. Chapter twelve, Dangers to avoid. I cannot terminate these hints.
Often I fear too didactic and abrupt upon the full use of one's time to
the great end of living, as distinguished from vegetating, without briefly referring to
certain dangers which lie in wait for the sincere asperant towards life. The first
is the terrible danger of becoming the most odious and least supportable of persons.
A prig. Now a prig is a pert fellow who gives himself airs of
superior wisdom. A prig is a pompous fool who has gone out for a
ceremonial walk, and, without knowing it, has lost an important part of
his attire, namely his sense of humor. A prig is a tedious individual
who, having made a discovery, is so impressed by his discovery that he
is capable of being gravely displeased because the entire world is not also impressed by
it unconsciously. To become a prig is an easy and a fatal thing.
Hence, when one sets forth on the enterprise of using all one's time,
it is just as well to remember that one's own time, and not other
people's time, is the material with which one has to deal. That the
earth rolled on pretty comfortably before one began to balance a budget of the hours,
and that it will continue to roll on pretty comfortably whether or not one
succeeds in one's new role of chancellor of the Exchequer of time. It is
as well not to chatter too much about what one is doing, and not
to betray a too pained sadness at the spectacle of a whole world deliberately wasting
so many hours out of every day and therefore never really living. It will
be found ultimately that in taking care of oneself, one has quite all one
can do. Another danger is the danger of being tied to a program,
like a slave to a chariot. One's program must not be allowed to run
away with one. It must be respected, but it must not be worshiped
as a fetish. A program of daily employ is not a religion. This
seems obvious. Yet I know men whose lives are a burden to themselves and
a distressing burden to their relatives and friends, simply because they have failed to
appreciate the obvious. Oh no, I have heard the martyrer's wife exclaim,
Arthur always takes the dog out for exercise at eight o'clock, and he always
begins to read at a quarter to nine. So it's quite out of the
question that we should et cetera, et cetera. And the note of absolute
finality in that plaintive voice reveals the unsuspected and ridiculous tragedy of a career.
On the other hand, a program is a program, and unless it is
treated with deference, it ceases to be anything but a poor joke. To
treat one's program with exactly the right amount of deference, to live with not
too much and not too little elasticity is scarcely the simple affair, it may
appear to the inexperienced. And still another danger is the danger of developing a
policy of rush, of being gradually more and more obsessed by what one has
to do next. In this way, one may come to exist as in
a prison, and one's life may cease to be one's own. One may
take the dog out for a walk at eight o'clock and meditate the whole time
on the fact that one must begin to read at a quarter to nine,
and that one must not be late. And the occasional deliberate breaking of one's
program will not help to mend matters. The evil springs not from persisting without
elasticity in what one has attempted, but from originally attempting too much, from
filling one's program till it runs over. The only cure is to reconstitute the
program and to attempt less. But the appetite for knowledge grows by what it
feeds on, and there are men who come to like a constant, breathless
hurry of endeavor. Of them, it may be said that a constant,
breathless hurry is better than any eternal doze. In any case, if the
program exhibits a tendency to be oppressive, and yet one wishes not to modify
it, an excellent palliative is to pass with exaggerated deliberateness, from one portion
of it to another. For example, to spend five minutes in perfect mental
quiescence between chaining up the Saint Bernard and opening the book. In other words,
to waste five minutes with the entire consciousness of wasting them. The last
and chiefest danger which I would indicate is one to which I have already referred,
the risk of a failure at the commencement of the enterprise. I must
insist on it. A failure at the commencement may easily kill outright the newborn
impulse toward a complete vitality, and therefore every precaution should be observed to avoid
it. The impulse must not be over text. Let the pace of the
first lap be even absurdly slow, but let it be as regular as possible,
And, having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at
all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain is self confidence of having accomplished
a tiresome labor is immense. Finally, in choosing the first occupations of those
evening hours, be guided by nothing whatever but your taste and natural inclination.
It is a fine thing to be a walking encyclopedia of philosophy. But if
you happen to have no liking for philosophy and to have a like for the
natural history of street cries. Much better leave philosophy alone and take two street
cries. End of chapter twelve, end of How to Live On Twenty four
Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett. This book recorded by Phil Shinever.