WEBVTT

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Preface of How to Live On Twenty
Four Hours a Day. This is a

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LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are
in the public domain. For more information,

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nor to volunteer, please visit LibriVox
dot org. How to Live On

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Twenty Four Hours a Day by Arnold
Bennett Preface. This preface, though placed

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at the beginning as a preface,
must be, should be read at the

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end of the book. I have
received a large amount of correspondence concerning this

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small work, and many reviews of
it, some of them nearly as long

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as the book itself have been printed, but scarcely any of the comment has

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been adverse. Some people have objected
to a frivolity of tone, but as

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the tone is not, in my
opinion at all frivolous, this objection did

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not impress me, and had no
weightier reproach been put forward, I might

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almost have been persuaded that the volume
was flawless. A more serious stricture has,

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however, been offered, not in
the press but by Sundry. Obviously

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sincere correspondence, and I must deal
with it. A reference to page forty

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three will show that I anticipated and
feared this disapprobation. The sentence against which

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protests have been made is as follows. Quote. In the majority of instances,

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he the typical man, does not
precisely feel a passion for his business.

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At best, he does not dislike
it. He begins his business functions

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with some reluctance as late as he
can, and he ends them with joy

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as early as he can, and
his engines while he is engaged in his

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business are seldom at their full HP
close quote. I am assured, in

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accents of unmistakable sincerity, that there
are many business men, not merely those

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in high positions or with fine prospects, but modest subordinates, with no hope

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of ever being much better off,
who do enjoy their business functions, who

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do not shirk them, who do
not arrive at the office as late as

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possible and depart as early as possible, who in a word, put the

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whole of their force into their day's
work, and are genuinely fatigued at the

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end thereof I am ready to believe
it. I do believe it. I

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know it. I always knew it, both in London and in the provinces.

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It has been my lot to spend
long years in subordinate situations of business,

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and the fact did not escape me
that a certain proportion of my peers

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showed what amounted to an honest passion
for their duties, and that while engaged

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in those duties, they were really
living to the fullest extent of which they

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were capable. But I remain convinced
that these fortunate and happy individuals, happier

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perhaps than they guessed, did not
and do not constitute a majority or anything

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like a majority. I remain convinced
that the majority of decent, average,

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conscientious men of business, men with
aspirations and ideals, do not, as

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a rule, go home of a
night genuinely tired. I remain convinced that

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they put not as much but as
little of themselves as they conscientiously can into

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the earning of a livelihood, and
that their vocation bores rather than interests them.

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Nevertheless, I admit that the minority
is of sufficient importance to merit attention,

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and that I ought not to have
ignored it so completely as I did.

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So. The whole difficulty of the
horty working minority was put in a

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single colloquial sentence by one of my
correspondents. He wrote, quote, I

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am just as keen as anyone on
doing something to exceed my program. But

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allow me to tell you that when
I get home at six point thirty PM,

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I am not anything like so fresh
as you seem to imagine. Close

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quote. Now, I must point
out that the case of the minority,

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who throw themselves with passion and gusto
into their daily business task, is infinitely

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less deplorable than the case of the
majority, who go half heartily and feebly

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through their official day. The former
or less in need of advice how to

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live at any rate. During their
official day of say, eight hours,

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they are really alive. Their engines
are giving the full indicated HP. The

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other eight working hours of their day
may be bad organized, or even frittered

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away. But it is less dangerous
to waste eight hours a day than sixteen

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hours a day. It is better
to have lived a bit than never to

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have lived at all. The real
tragedy is the tragedy of the man who

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is braced to effort, neither in
the office nor out of it. And

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to this man this book is primarily
addressed, But says the other and more

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fortunate man, although my ordinary program
is bigger than his, I want to

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exceed my program too. I am
living a bit, but I want to

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live more. But I really can't
do another day's work on the top of

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my official day. The fact is
I, the author, ought to have

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foreseen that I should appeal most strongly
to those who already had an interest in

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existence. It is always the man
who has taken listed life who demands more

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of it, And it is always
the man who never gets out of bed

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who is the most difficult to rouse. Well, you of the minority.

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Let us assume that the intensity of
your daily mondey getting will not allow you

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to carry out quite all the suggestions
in the following pages. Some of the

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suggestions may yet stand. I admit
that you may not be able to use

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the time spent on the journey home
at night. But the suggestion for the

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journey to the office in the morning
is as practicable for you as for anybody.

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And that weekly interval of forty hours
from Saturday to Monday is yours just

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as much as the other man's.
Though a slight accumulation of fatigue may prevent

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you from employing the whole of your
HP upon it. There remains, then,

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the important portion of the three or
more evenings a week you tell me

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flatly that you are too tired to
do anything outside your program at night,

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in reply to which I tell you
flatly that if your ordinary day's work is

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thus exhausting, then the balance of
your life is wrong and must be adjusted.

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A man's powers ought not to be
monopolized by his ordinary day's work.

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What then, is to be done? The obvious thing to do is to

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circumvent your order for your ordinary day's
work by a ruse. Employ your engines

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in something beyond the program before,
and not after you employ them on the

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program itself. Briefly, get up
earlier in the morning. You say you

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cannot. You say it is impossible
for you to go earlier to bed of

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a night. To do so would
have set the entire household. I do

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not think it is quite impossible to
go to bed earlier at night. I

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think that if you persist in rising
earlier, and the consequence is insufficiency of

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sleep, you will soon find a
way of going to bed earlier. But

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my impression is that the consequence of
rising earlier will not be an insufficiency of

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sleep. My impression, growing stronger
every year, is that sleep is partly

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a matter of habit and of slackness. I am convinced that most people sleep

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as long as they do because they
are at a loss for any other diversion.

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How much sleep do you think is
daily obtained by the powerfully healthy man

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who daily rattles up your street in
charge of Carter Patterson's van. I have

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consulted a doctor on this point.
He is a doctor who for twenty four

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years has had a large general practice
and a large flourishing suburb of London inhabited

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by exactly such people as you and
me. He is a kurtman, and

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his answer was, Kurt, most
people sleep themselves stupid. He went on

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to give his opinion that nine out
of ten men would have better health and

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more fun out of life if they
spend less time in bed. Other doctors

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have confirmed this judgment, which of
course does not apply to growing youths.

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Rise an hour, an hour and
a half, or even two hours earlier,

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and if you must retire earlier,
when you can. In the matter

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of exceeding programs, you will accomplish
as much in one morning hour as in

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two evening hours. But you say
I couldn't begin without some food and servants.

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Surely, my dear sir in an
age when an excellent spirit lamp,

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including a saucepan, can be bought
for less than a shilling, you are

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not going to allow your highest welfare
to depend upon the precarious, immediate co

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operation of a fellow creature. Instruct
the fellow creature, whoever she may be

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at night, Tell her to put
a tray in a suitable position over night.

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On that tray, two biscuits,
a cup and saucer, a box

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of matches, and a spirit lamp
on the lamp, the saucepan. On

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the saucepan the lid, but turn
the wrong way up on the reversed lid.

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The small teapot containing a minute quantity
of tea leaves. You will then

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have to strike a match. That
is all, In three minutes, the

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water boils and you pour it into
the teapot, which is already warm.

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In three more minutes the tea is
infused. You can begin your day while

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drinking it. These details may seem
trivial to the foolish, but to the

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thoughtful they would not seem trivial.
The proper wise balancing of one's whole life

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may depend upon the feasibility of a
cup of tea at an unusual hour.

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End of preface Chapter one of How
to Live On Twenty four Hours a Day

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by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox recording
is in the public domain. Chapter one,

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The Daily Miracle. Yes, he's
one of those men that don't know

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how to manage good situation. Regular
income, quite enough for luxuries as well

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as needs, not really extravagant.
And yet the fellow's always in difficulties.

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Somehow he gets nothing out of his
money. Excellent flat, half empty,

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always looks as if he's had the
broker's in new suit, old hat,

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magnificent necktie, baggy trousers, asks
you to dinner, cut glass, bad

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mutton or turkish coffee cracked cup.
He can't understand it. Explanation simply is

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that he fritters his income away.
Wish I had the half of it,

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I'd show him. So we have
most of us criticized at one time or

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another. In our superior way.
We are nearly all chancellors of the exchequer.

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It is the pride of the moment. Newspapers are full of articles explaining

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how to live on such and such
a sum, And these articles provoke a

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correspondence whose violence proves the interest they
excite. Recently, in a daily organ

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a battle raged round the question whether
a woman can exist nicely in the country

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on eighty five pounds a year.
I have seen an essay how to live

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on eight shillings a week, but
I have never seen an essay how to

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live on twenty four hours a day. Yet it has been said that time

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is money. That proverb understates the
case. Time is a great deal more

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than money. If you have time, you can obtain money usually. But

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though you have the wealth of a
cloakroom attendant at the Carlton Hotel, you

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cannot buy yourself a minute more time
than I have or the cat by the

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fire has. Philosophers have explained space, they have not explained time. It

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is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible.

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Without it nothing. The supply of
time is truly a day daily miracle,

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an affair genuinely astonishing. When one
examines it. You wake up in the

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morning and lo, your purse is
magically filled with twenty four hours of the

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unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your
life. It is yours. It is

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the most precious of possessions. A
highly singular commodity showered upon you in a

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manner as singular as the commodity itself. For remark, no one can take

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it from you. It is unstealable, and no one receives either more or

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less than you receive. Talk about
an ideal democracy. In the realm of

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time, there is no aristocracy of
wealth and no aristocracy of intellect. Genius

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is never rewarded by even an extra
hour a day, and there is no

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punishment. Waste your infinitely precious commodity
as much as you will, and the

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supply will never be withheld from you. No mysterious power will say this man

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is a fool, if not a
knave, he does not deserve time.

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He shall be cut off at the
meter. It is more certain than consoles,

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and payment of income is not affected
by Sundays. Moreover, you cannot

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draw on the future, impossible to
get into debt. You can only waste

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the passing moment. You cannot waste
tomorrow. It is kept for you.

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You cannot waste the next hour.
It is kept for you. I said

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the affair was a miracle, is
it not. You have to live on

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twenty four hours of daily time.
Out of it, you have to spend,

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health, pleasure, money, content, respect, and the evolution of

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your immortal soul. Its right use, its most effective use, is a

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matter of the highest urgency and of
the most thrilling actuality. All depends on

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that your happiness, the elusive prize
that you are clutching for, my friends,

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depends on that strange that the newspapers, so enterprising and up to date

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as they are, are not full
of how to live on a given income

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of time instead of how to live
on a given income of money. Money

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is far commoner than time. When
one reflects, one perceives that money is

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just about the commonest thing there is. It encumbers the earth in gross heaps.

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If one can't contrive to live on
a certain income of money, one

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earns a little more, or steals
it, or advertises for it. One

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doesn't necessarily muddle one's life because one
can't quite manage on a thousand pounds a

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year. One braces the muscles and
makes it guineas and balances the budget.

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But if one cannot arrange that an
income of twenty four hours a day shall

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exactly cover all proper items of expenditure, one does muddle one's life. Definitely.

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The supply of time, though gloriously
regular, is cruelly restricted. Which

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of us lives on twenty four hours
a day? And when I say lives,

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I do not mean exists nor muddles
through Which of us is free from

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that uneasy feeling that the great spending
departments of his daily life are not managed

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as they ought to be. Which
of us is quite sure that his fine

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suit is not surmounted by a shameful
hat, or that in attending to the

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crockery he has forgotten the quality of
the food. Which of us is not

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saying to himself, which of us
has not been saying to himself all his

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life? I shall alter that when
I have a little more time, we

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never shall have any more time we
have, and we have always had all

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the time there is. It is
the realization of this profound and neglected truth,

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which, by the way, I
have not discovered, that has led

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me to the minute practical examination of
daily time expenditure. End of chapter one,

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Chapter two of How to Live On
Twenty Four Hours a Day by Arnold

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Bennett. This LibriVox recording is in
the public domain. Chapter two The desire

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to exceed one's program. But someone
may remark with the English disregard of everything

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except the point. What is he
driving at with his twenty four hours a

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day? I have no difficulty in
living on twenty four hours a day.

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I do all that I want to
do, and still find time to go

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in for newspaper competitions. Surely it
is a simple affair knowing that one has

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only twenty four hours a day to
content oneself with twenty four hours a day

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to you, my dear sir,
I present my excuses and apologies. You

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are precisely the man that I have
been wishing to meet for about forty years.

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Will you kindly send me your name
and address and state your charge for

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telling me how you do it?
Instead of me talking to you, you

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are to be talking to me.
Please come forward that you exist. I

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am convinced, and that I have
not yet encountered you is my loss.

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Meanwhile, until you appear, I
will continue to chat with my companions in

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distress, that innumerable band of souls
who are haunted more or less painfully by

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the feeling that the years slip by
and slip by and slip by, and

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that they have not yet been able
to get their lives into proper working order.

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If we analyze that feeling, we
shall perceive it to be primarily one

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of uneasiness, of expectation, of
looking forward, of aspiration. It is

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a source of constant discomfort, for
it behaves like a skeleton. At the

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feast of all our enjoyments. We
go to the theater and laugh, but

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between the acts it raised a skinny
finger at us. We rush violently for

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the last train, And while we
are cooling a long age on the platform

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waiting for the last train, it
promenades its bones up and down by our

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side and inquires, O, man, what hast thou done with thy youth?

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What art thou doing with thine age? You may urge that this feeling

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of continuous looking forward, of aspiration
is a part of life itself, and

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inseparable from life itself. True,
But there are degrees. A man may

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desire to go to Mecca. His
conscience tells him that he ought to go

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to Mecca. He fares forth,
either by the aid of cooks or unassisted.

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He may probably never reach Mecca.
He may drown before he gets to

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Portsade. He may perish ingloriously on
the coasts of the Red Sea. His

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desire may remain eternally frustrate. Unfulfilled
aspiration may always trouble him, but he

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will not be tormented in the same
way as the man who desiring to reach

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Mecca, and harried by the desire
to reach Mecca, never leaves Brixton.

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It is something to have left Brixton. Most of us have not left Brixton.

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We have not even taken a cab
to Ludgate Circus and inquired from Cook's

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the price of a conducted tour.
And our excuse to ourselves is that there

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are only twenty four hours in a
day. If we further analyze our vague

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and easy aspiration, we shall,
I think, see that it springs from

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a fixed idea that we ought to
do something. In addition to those things

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which we are loyally and morally obligated
to do, we are obliged by various

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codes, written and unwritten, to
maintain ourselves and our families, if any,

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in health and comfort, to pay
our debts, to save, to

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increase our prosperity by increasing our efficiency. A task sufficiently difficult, a task

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which very few of us achieve,
a task often beyond our skills. Yet

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if we succeed in it, as
we sometimes do we are not satisfied.

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The skeleton is still with us.
And even when we realize that the task

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is beyond our skill, that our
powers cannot cope with it, we feel

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that we should be less discontented if
we gave to our powers already overtaxed something

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still further to do. And such
is indeed the fact. The wish to

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accomplish something outside their formal program is
common to all men, who, in

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the course of evolution, have risen
past a certain level. Until an effort

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is made to satisfy that wish,
the sense of uneasy waiting for something to

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start which has not started will remain
to disturb the peace of the soul.

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That wish has been called by many
names. It is one form of the

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universal desire for knowledge, and it
is so strong that men whose whole lives

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have been given to the systematic acquirement
of knowledge have been driven by it to

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overstep the limits of their program in
search of still more knowledge. Even Herbert

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Spencer, in my opinion, the
greatest mind that ever lived, was often

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forced by it into agreeable little backwaters
of inquiry. I imagine that in the

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majority of people who are conscious of
the wish to live. That is to

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say, people who have in intellectual
curiosity the aspiration to exceed formal programs takes

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00:25:04.759 --> 00:25:10.039
a literary shape, they would like
to embark on a course of reading.

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00:25:10.920 --> 00:25:17.319
Decidedly. The British people are becoming
more and more literary. But I would

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point out that literature, by no
means comprises the whole feel of knowledge,

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and that the disturbing thirst to improve
oneself, to increase one's knowledge, may

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well be slaked quite apart from literature, with the various ways of slaking I

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shall deal later here, I merely
point out to those who have no natural

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sympathy with literature, that literature is
not the only well. End of chapter

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00:25:45.799 --> 00:25:56.880
two, Chapter three of How to
Live on Twenty four Hours a Day by

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Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox records is
in the public domain. Chapter three precautions

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before beginning, now that I have
succeeded. If succeeded, I have in

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00:26:15.720 --> 00:26:22.359
persuading you to admit to yourself that
you are constantly haunted by a suppressed dissatisfaction

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00:26:22.599 --> 00:26:26.440
with your own arrangement of your daily
life, and that the primal cause of

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00:26:26.440 --> 00:26:33.119
that inconvenient dissatisfaction is the feeling that
you are every day leaving undone something which

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00:26:33.119 --> 00:26:37.160
you would like to do, and
which indeed you are always hoping to do

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when you have more time. And
now that I have drawn your attention to

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the glaring, dazzling truth that you
never will have more time, since you

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00:26:48.720 --> 00:26:52.680
already have all the time there is, you expect me to let you into

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some wonderful secret by which you may, at any rate approach the ideal of

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a perfect arrangement of the day,
and by which therefore that haunting, unpleasant,

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00:27:03.720 --> 00:27:11.200
daily disappointment of things left undone will
be got rid of. I have

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00:27:11.359 --> 00:27:17.480
found no such wonderful secret, nor
do I expect to find it, nor

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00:27:17.519 --> 00:27:22.680
do I expect that anyone else will
ever find it. It is undiscovered.

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00:27:22.400 --> 00:27:27.599
When you first began to gather my
drift, perhaps there was a resurrection of

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00:27:27.680 --> 00:27:33.880
hope in your breast. Perhaps you
said to yourself, this man will show

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00:27:33.960 --> 00:27:37.279
me an easy, unfatiguing way of
doing what I have so long, in

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00:27:37.400 --> 00:27:42.839
vain wished to do. Alas,
no, the fact is that there is

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no easy way, no royal road. The path to Mecca is extremely hard

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00:27:51.000 --> 00:27:53.759
and stony, and the worst of
it is that you never quite get there.

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00:27:53.799 --> 00:28:02.119
After all. The most important preliminary
to the task of arranging one's life

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00:28:02.640 --> 00:28:07.119
so that one may live fully and
comfortably within one's daily budget of twenty four

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00:28:07.119 --> 00:28:14.720
hours is the calm realization of the
extreme difficulty of the task, of the

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00:28:14.799 --> 00:28:22.759
sacrifices, and the endless effort which
it demands. I cannot too strongly insist

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00:28:22.039 --> 00:28:27.160
on this. If you imagine that
you will be able to achieve your ideal

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00:28:27.279 --> 00:28:33.559
by ingeniously planning out a timetable with
a pen on a piece of paper,

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00:28:33.359 --> 00:28:38.000
you had better give up hope at
once. If you are not prepared for

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00:28:38.119 --> 00:28:45.519
discouragements and dissolusions, if you will
not be content with a small result for

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00:28:45.599 --> 00:28:52.839
a big effort, then do not
begin lie down again and resume the uneasy

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00:28:52.960 --> 00:28:57.319
doze which you call your existence.
It is very sad, is it not?

297
00:28:57.720 --> 00:29:04.319
Very depressing and somber? And yet
I think it is rather fine too,

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00:29:04.480 --> 00:29:10.759
this necessity for the tense bracing of
the will before anything worth doing can

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00:29:10.799 --> 00:29:15.119
be done. I rather like it
myself. I feel it to be the

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00:29:15.240 --> 00:29:21.279
chief thing that differentiates me from the
cat by the fire. Well, you

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00:29:21.319 --> 00:29:26.039
say, assume that I embraced for
the battle. Assume that I have carefully

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00:29:26.200 --> 00:29:32.240
waighed and comprehend your ponderous remarks,
How do I begin, Dear sir,

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00:29:32.319 --> 00:29:37.119
you simply begin. There is no
magic method of beginning. If a man

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00:29:37.240 --> 00:29:41.000
standing on the edge of a swimming
bath and wanting to jump into the cold

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00:29:41.000 --> 00:29:45.240
water, should ask you, how
do I begin to jump, you would

306
00:29:45.319 --> 00:29:52.119
merely reply, just jump. Take
hold of your nerves and jump. As

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00:29:52.160 --> 00:29:56.880
I have previously said, the chief
beauty about the constant supply of time is

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00:29:56.920 --> 00:30:03.279
that you cannot waste it in advance. The next year, the next day,

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00:30:03.440 --> 00:30:10.160
the next hour are lying ready for
you, as perfect as unspoilt,

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00:30:10.480 --> 00:30:15.680
as if you had never wasted or
misapplied a single moment in all your career,

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00:30:15.680 --> 00:30:22.119
which fact is very gratifying and reassuring. You can turn over a new

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00:30:22.240 --> 00:30:27.640
leaf every hour if you choose.
Therefore, no object is served in waiting

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00:30:27.759 --> 00:30:33.400
till next week, or even until
tomorrow. You may fancy that the water

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00:30:33.480 --> 00:30:38.720
will be warmer next week. It
won't, it will be colder. But

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00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:44.839
before you begin, let me murmur
a few words of warning in your private

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00:30:44.880 --> 00:30:51.640
ear. Let me principally warn you
against your own order. Order in well

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00:30:51.680 --> 00:30:57.559
doing is a misleading and a treacherous
thing. It cries out loudly for employment.

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00:30:59.480 --> 00:31:03.200
You can't satisfy it. At first. It wants more and more.

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00:31:04.079 --> 00:31:10.079
It is eager to move mountains and
divert the course of rivers. It is

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00:31:10.119 --> 00:31:15.039
in content till it perspires, and
then too often, when it feels the

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00:31:15.119 --> 00:31:22.480
perspiration on its brow, it wearies
all of a sudden and dies without even

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00:31:22.559 --> 00:31:27.039
putting itself to the trouble of saying
I've had enough of this. Beware of

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00:31:27.200 --> 00:31:33.160
undertaking too much at the start,
be content with quite a little. Allow

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00:31:33.240 --> 00:31:40.720
for accidents, allow for human nature, especially your own. A failure or

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00:31:40.759 --> 00:31:44.519
so in itself would not matter if
it did not incur a loss of self

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00:31:44.640 --> 00:31:51.000
esteem and of self confidence. But
just as nothing succeeds like success, so

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00:31:51.319 --> 00:31:56.880
nothing feels like failure. Most people
who are ruined or ruined by attempting too

328
00:31:56.920 --> 00:32:02.519
much. Therefore, in setting out
on the immense enterprise of living fully and

329
00:32:02.559 --> 00:32:08.119
comfortably within the narrow limits of twenty
four hours a day, let us avoid,

330
00:32:08.200 --> 00:32:14.200
at any cost the risk of an
early failure. I will not agree

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00:32:14.240 --> 00:32:17.880
that in this business, at any
rate, a glorious failure is better than

332
00:32:17.960 --> 00:32:24.000
a petty success. I am all
for the petty success. A glorious failure

333
00:32:24.279 --> 00:32:30.960
leads to nothing. A petty success
may lead to a success that is not

334
00:32:30.319 --> 00:32:35.559
petty. So let us begin to
examine the budget of a day's time.

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00:32:36.400 --> 00:32:42.960
You say your day is already full
to overflowing. How you actually spend in

336
00:32:43.039 --> 00:32:47.839
earning your livelihood? How much seven
hours on the average and in actual sleep

337
00:32:49.119 --> 00:32:54.359
seven I will add two hours and
be generous, and I will defy you

338
00:32:54.640 --> 00:32:59.839
to account to me, on the
spur of the moment for the other eight

339
00:33:00.279 --> 00:33:10.279
hours. End of chapter three,
Chapter four of How to Live On Twenty

340
00:33:10.319 --> 00:33:15.480
four Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox recording is in the public

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00:33:15.640 --> 00:33:22.279
domain. Chapter four The Cause of
the Troubles. In order to come to

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00:33:22.359 --> 00:33:28.440
grips at once with the question of
time expenditure in all its actuality, I

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00:33:28.559 --> 00:33:35.079
must choose an individual case for examination. I can only deal with one case,

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00:33:35.519 --> 00:33:38.759
and that case cannot be the average
case, because there is no such

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00:33:38.880 --> 00:33:44.279
case as the average case, just
as there is no such man as the

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00:33:44.319 --> 00:33:50.160
average man. Every man and every
man's case is special. But if I

347
00:33:50.200 --> 00:33:54.039
take the case of a Londoner who
works in an office, whose office hours

348
00:33:54.079 --> 00:33:59.279
are from ten to six, and
who spends fifteen minutes morning and night,

349
00:33:59.319 --> 00:34:02.839
in traveling between his house door and
his office door, I shall have got

350
00:34:02.880 --> 00:34:07.400
as near to the average as facts
permit. There are men who have to

351
00:34:07.440 --> 00:34:12.599
work longer for a living, but
there are others who do not have to

352
00:34:12.679 --> 00:34:17.400
work so long. Fortunately, the
financial side of existence does not interest us

353
00:34:17.480 --> 00:34:22.360
here for our present purpose. The
clerk at a pound a week is exactly

354
00:34:22.440 --> 00:34:28.679
as well off as the millionaire in
Carlton House Terrace. Now, the great

355
00:34:28.719 --> 00:34:34.639
and profound mistake which my typical man
makes in regard to his day is a

356
00:34:34.679 --> 00:34:39.639
mistake of general attitude, a mistake
which vitiates and weakens two thirds of his

357
00:34:39.840 --> 00:34:46.280
energies and interests. In the majority
of instances, he does not precisely feel

358
00:34:46.320 --> 00:34:51.880
a passion for his business. At
best, he does not dislike it.

359
00:34:52.039 --> 00:34:58.599
He begins his business functions with reluctance
as late as he can, and he

360
00:34:58.719 --> 00:35:02.880
ends them with joy as early as
he can, And his engines while he

361
00:35:02.960 --> 00:35:08.480
is engaged in his business are seldom
at their full HP. I know that

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00:35:08.599 --> 00:35:15.440
I shall be accused by angry readers
of producing the city worker. But I

363
00:35:15.480 --> 00:35:20.119
am pretty thoroughly acquainted with the city, and I stick to what I say.

364
00:35:21.119 --> 00:35:23.800
Yet In spite of all this,
he persists in looking upon those hours

365
00:35:23.800 --> 00:35:29.480
from ten to six as the day, to which the ten hours preceding them

366
00:35:29.599 --> 00:35:35.760
and the six hours following them are
nothing but a prologue and epilogue. Such

367
00:35:35.800 --> 00:35:39.880
an attitude, unconscious though it be, of course, kills his interest in

368
00:35:39.920 --> 00:35:45.639
the odd sixteen hours, with the
result that even if he does not waste

369
00:35:45.679 --> 00:35:51.039
them, he does not count them. He regards them simply as margin.

370
00:35:52.079 --> 00:36:00.440
This general attitude is utterly illogical and
unhealthy, since it formally gives the central

371
00:36:00.519 --> 00:36:05.559
prominence to a patch of time and
a bunch of activities which the man's one

372
00:36:05.719 --> 00:36:09.719
idea is to get through and have
done with. If a man makes two

373
00:36:09.840 --> 00:36:15.480
thirds of his existence subservient to one
third, for which admittedly he has no

374
00:36:15.719 --> 00:36:22.239
absolute feverish zest, how can he
hope to live fully and completely? He

375
00:36:22.719 --> 00:36:30.280
cannot. If my typical man wishes
to live fully and completely, he must

376
00:36:30.519 --> 00:36:36.679
in his mind arrange a day within
a day, and this inner day a

377
00:36:36.800 --> 00:36:42.599
Chinese box in a larger Chinese box, must begin at six pm and end

378
00:36:42.639 --> 00:36:47.440
at ten am. It is a
day of sixteen hours, and during all

379
00:36:47.559 --> 00:36:52.679
these sixteen hours he has nothing whatever
to do. But cultivate his body and

380
00:36:52.719 --> 00:36:59.679
his soul and his fellow men.
During those sixteen hours. He is free.

381
00:37:00.599 --> 00:37:05.480
He is not a wage earner.
He is not preoccupied with monetary cares.

382
00:37:06.400 --> 00:37:09.159
He is just as good as a
man with a private income. This

383
00:37:09.480 --> 00:37:15.920
must be his attitude, and his
attitude is all important his success in life,

384
00:37:16.599 --> 00:37:22.360
much more important than the amount of
estate upon what his executors will have

385
00:37:22.400 --> 00:37:29.000
to pay estate duty depends on it. What you say that full energy given

386
00:37:29.039 --> 00:37:32.920
to those sixteen hours will lessen the
value of the business. Eight. Not

387
00:37:34.320 --> 00:37:38.960
so, on the contrary, it
will assuredly increase the value of the business.

388
00:37:38.960 --> 00:37:44.599
Eight. One of the chief things
which my typical man has to learn

389
00:37:45.440 --> 00:37:51.519
is that the mental faculties are capable
of a continuous hard activity. They do

390
00:37:51.559 --> 00:37:55.440
not tire like an arm or a
leg. All they want is change,

391
00:37:55.719 --> 00:38:01.599
not rest, except in sleep.
I shall now examine the typical man's current

392
00:38:01.639 --> 00:38:08.039
method of employing the sixteen hours that
are entirely his beginning with his uprising.

393
00:38:09.000 --> 00:38:14.199
I will merely indicate things which he
does and which I think he ought not

394
00:38:14.440 --> 00:38:19.679
to do, postponing my suggestions for
planting the times which I shall have cleared

395
00:38:20.079 --> 00:38:24.519
as a settler clear spaces in a
forest. In justice to him, I

396
00:38:24.599 --> 00:38:29.880
must say that he wastes very little
time before he leaves the house in the

397
00:38:29.920 --> 00:38:34.800
morning at nine ten. In too
many houses, he gets up at nine

398
00:38:35.280 --> 00:38:40.480
breakfasts between nine seven and nine nine
and a half and then bolts. But

399
00:38:40.599 --> 00:38:45.559
immediately he banks the front door.
His mental faculties, which are tireless,

400
00:38:45.960 --> 00:38:52.199
become idle. He walks to the
station in a condition of mental coma.

401
00:38:52.800 --> 00:38:57.480
Arrived there, he usually has to
wait for the train. On hundreds of

402
00:38:57.519 --> 00:39:02.880
suburban stations every morning, you see
men calmly strolling up and down platforms,

403
00:39:02.920 --> 00:39:08.280
while railway companies unblushingly rob them of
time, which is more than money.

404
00:39:09.199 --> 00:39:15.639
Hundreds of thousands of hours are thus
lost every day, simply because my typical

405
00:39:15.679 --> 00:39:22.400
man thinks so little time that it
has never occurred to him to take quite

406
00:39:22.480 --> 00:39:28.920
easy precautions against the risk of its
loss. He has a solid coin of

407
00:39:28.960 --> 00:39:34.719
time to spend every day. Call
it a sovereign. He must get change

408
00:39:34.760 --> 00:39:39.559
for it, and in getting change
he is content to lose heavily, supposing

409
00:39:39.760 --> 00:39:44.599
that in selling him a ticket,
the company said, we will charge you

410
00:39:44.679 --> 00:39:50.119
a sovereign, but we will charge
you three halfpence for doing so. What

411
00:39:50.159 --> 00:39:54.119
would my typical man exclaim? Yes, that is the equivalent of what the

412
00:39:54.199 --> 00:40:00.960
company does when it robs him of
five minutes twice a day. You say,

413
00:40:00.039 --> 00:40:05.239
I am dealing with Manusha. I
am, and later on I will

414
00:40:05.360 --> 00:40:09.800
justify myself. Now, will you
kindly buy your paper and step into the

415
00:40:09.840 --> 00:40:21.920
train? End of chapter four Chapter
five of How to Live On Twenty four

416
00:40:21.920 --> 00:40:27.760
Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

417
00:40:30.199 --> 00:40:37.599
Chapter five, Tennis and the Immortal
Soul. You get into the morning

418
00:40:37.639 --> 00:40:43.119
train with your newspaper, and you
calmly and majestically give yourself up to your

419
00:40:43.159 --> 00:40:47.239
newspaper. You do not harvey.
You know you have at least half an

420
00:40:47.239 --> 00:40:52.559
hour of security in front of you, as your glance lingers idly on the

421
00:40:52.679 --> 00:40:58.960
advertisements of shipping and of songs on
the outer pages. Your heir is the

422
00:40:59.000 --> 00:41:02.559
air of a leisurejured man, wealthy
in time, of a man from some

423
00:41:02.840 --> 00:41:08.039
planet where there are a hundred and
twenty four hours a day instead of twenty

424
00:41:08.039 --> 00:41:15.119
four. I am an impassioned reader
of newspapers. I read five English and

425
00:41:15.280 --> 00:41:21.679
two French dailies, and the news
agents alone know how many weeklies regularly.

426
00:41:22.639 --> 00:41:25.800
I am obliged to mention this personal
fact lest I should be accused of a

427
00:41:25.920 --> 00:41:31.360
prejudice against newspapers when I say that
I object to the reading of newspapers in

428
00:41:31.440 --> 00:41:38.079
the morning train. Newspapers are produced
with rapidity to be read with rapidity.

429
00:41:38.920 --> 00:41:45.000
There is no place in my daily
program for newspapers. I read them as

430
00:41:45.039 --> 00:41:49.800
I may in odd moments, but
I do read them. The idea of

431
00:41:49.880 --> 00:41:55.320
devoting to them thirty or forty consecutive
minutes of wonderful solitude, for nowhere can

432
00:41:55.360 --> 00:42:02.159
one more perfectly immerse oneself in oneself
than in a compartment full of silent withdrawn

433
00:42:02.400 --> 00:42:08.599
smoking males, is to me repugnant. I cannot possibly allow you to scatter

434
00:42:08.760 --> 00:42:15.960
priceless pearls of time with such oriental
lavishness. You are not a shah of

435
00:42:16.079 --> 00:42:22.800
time. Let me respectfully remind you
that you have no more time than I

436
00:42:22.880 --> 00:42:30.079
have. No newspaper reading and trains
I have already put by about three quarters

437
00:42:30.079 --> 00:42:35.480
of an hour for use. Now
you reach your office and I abandon you

438
00:42:35.599 --> 00:42:39.360
there till six o'clock. I am
aware that you have nominally an hour,

439
00:42:39.559 --> 00:42:44.239
often in reality an hour and a
half in the midst of the day,

440
00:42:44.880 --> 00:42:47.519
less than half of which time is
given to eating. But I will leave

441
00:42:47.559 --> 00:42:52.119
you all that to spend as you
choose. You may read your newspapers.

442
00:42:52.159 --> 00:42:58.960
Then I meet you again. As
you emerge from your office. You are

443
00:42:59.079 --> 00:43:02.679
pale and tid at any rate.
Your wife says you are pale, and

444
00:43:02.719 --> 00:43:07.360
you give her to understand that you
are tired. During the journey home,

445
00:43:07.599 --> 00:43:14.960
you have been gradually working up the
tired feeling. The tired feeling hangs heavy

446
00:43:15.119 --> 00:43:21.159
over the mighty suburbs of London,
like a virtuous and melancholy cloud, particularly

447
00:43:21.239 --> 00:43:24.960
in winter. You don't eat immediately
on your arrival home, but in about

448
00:43:24.960 --> 00:43:29.360
an hour or so you feel as
if you could sit up and take a

449
00:43:29.559 --> 00:43:36.639
little nourishment, and you do.
Then you smoke seriously. You see friends,

450
00:43:37.159 --> 00:43:40.920
You potter, you play cards,
You flirt with a book. You

451
00:43:42.000 --> 00:43:45.880
note that old age is creeping on. You take a stroll. You caress

452
00:43:45.960 --> 00:43:53.119
the piano by jove a quarter past
eleven. You then devote quite forty minutes

453
00:43:53.159 --> 00:43:59.239
to thinking about going to bed,
and it is conceivable that you are acquainted

454
00:43:59.280 --> 00:44:04.920
with a genuinely good whiskey. At
last, you go to bed, exhausted

455
00:44:05.000 --> 00:44:09.000
by the day's work. Six hours
probably more have gone since you left the

456
00:44:09.039 --> 00:44:16.079
office, gone like a dream,
gone, like magic, unaccountably gone.

457
00:44:19.079 --> 00:44:22.920
That is a fair sample case.
But you say it's all very well for

458
00:44:23.000 --> 00:44:29.079
you to talk. A man is
tired, a man must see his friends.

459
00:44:29.800 --> 00:44:36.280
He can't always be on the stretch
just so. But when you arrange

460
00:44:36.440 --> 00:44:40.480
to go to the theater, especially
with a pretty woman, what happens?

461
00:44:42.679 --> 00:44:47.000
You rush to the suburbs, You
spare no toil to make yourself glorious in

462
00:44:47.119 --> 00:44:52.480
fine raiment. You rush back to
town in another train. You keep yourself

463
00:44:52.519 --> 00:44:57.960
on the stretch for four hours,
if not five. You take her home,

464
00:44:58.519 --> 00:45:02.559
You take yourself home. You don't
spend three quarters of an hour in

465
00:45:02.760 --> 00:45:09.239
thinking about going to bed. You
go. Friends and fatigue have equally been

466
00:45:09.280 --> 00:45:16.320
forgotten, and the evening has seemed
so exquisitely long, or perhaps too short.

467
00:45:16.760 --> 00:45:22.639
And do you remember that time when
you were persuaded to sing in the

468
00:45:22.719 --> 00:45:29.360
chorus of the Amateur Operatic Society and
slaved two hours every other night for three

469
00:45:29.480 --> 00:45:34.599
months? Can you deny that when
you have something definite to look forward to

470
00:45:34.679 --> 00:45:38.639
at evening tide, something that is
to employ all your energy. The thought

471
00:45:38.679 --> 00:45:44.079
of that something gives a glow and
a more intense vitality to the whole day.

472
00:45:45.280 --> 00:45:50.559
What I suggest is that at six
o'clock you look facts in the face

473
00:45:51.039 --> 00:45:53.960
and admit that you are not tired, because you are not, you know,

474
00:45:54.800 --> 00:45:58.880
and that you arrange your evening so
that it is not cut in the

475
00:45:58.920 --> 00:46:02.599
middle by a meal. By so
doing, you will have a clear expanse

476
00:46:02.639 --> 00:46:07.920
of at least three hours. I
do not suggest that you should employ three

477
00:46:07.960 --> 00:46:13.960
hours every night of your life in
using up your mental energy. But I

478
00:46:14.039 --> 00:46:19.400
do suggest that you might, for
a commencement, employ an hour and a

479
00:46:19.440 --> 00:46:25.480
half every other evening in some important
and consecutive cultivation of the mind. You

480
00:46:25.519 --> 00:46:30.039
will still be left with three evenings
for friends, bridge, tennis, domestic

481
00:46:30.119 --> 00:46:36.880
scenes, odd reading, pipes,
gardening, pottering, and prize competitions.

482
00:46:37.079 --> 00:46:43.320
You will still have the terrific wealth
of forty five hours between two p m.

483
00:46:43.440 --> 00:46:47.679
Saturday and ten a m. Monday. If you persevere, you will

484
00:46:47.760 --> 00:46:53.639
soon want to pass four evenings and
perhaps five in some sustained endeavor to be

485
00:46:53.800 --> 00:47:00.440
genuinely alive, and you will fall
out of that habit of muttering yourself.

486
00:47:00.480 --> 00:47:05.760
At eleven fifteen pm, time to
be thinking about going to bed. The

487
00:47:05.800 --> 00:47:08.840
man who begins to go to bed
forty minutes before he opens his bedroom door

488
00:47:09.280 --> 00:47:16.159
is bored. That is to say, he is not living. But remember

489
00:47:16.280 --> 00:47:22.360
at the start, those ninety nocturnal
minutes thrice a week must be the most

490
00:47:22.440 --> 00:47:30.119
important minutes in the ten thousand and
eighty They must be sacred, quite as

491
00:47:30.159 --> 00:47:35.639
sacred as a dramatic rehearsal or a
tennis match. Instead of saying, sorry,

492
00:47:35.679 --> 00:47:37.079
I can't see you, old chap, but I have to run off

493
00:47:37.119 --> 00:47:40.960
to the tennis club, you must
say, but I have to work.

494
00:47:43.000 --> 00:47:49.039
This, I admit, is intensely
difficult to say. Tennis is so much

495
00:47:49.119 --> 00:48:00.400
more urgent than the immortal soul.
End of chapter five, Chapter six of

496
00:48:00.480 --> 00:48:07.159
How to Live On Twenty four Hours
a Day by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox

497
00:48:07.199 --> 00:48:15.840
recording is in the public domain.
Chapter six. Remember human nature. I

498
00:48:15.920 --> 00:48:21.800
have incidentally mentioned the vast expanse of
forty four hours between leaving business at two

499
00:48:21.840 --> 00:48:24.440
p m. On Saturday and returning
to business at ten a m. On

500
00:48:24.559 --> 00:48:30.280
Monday. And here I must touch
on the point whether the week should consist

501
00:48:30.320 --> 00:48:34.880
of six days or of seven.
For many years, in fact, until

502
00:48:34.920 --> 00:48:39.159
I was approaching forty. My own
week consisted of seven days. I was

503
00:48:39.280 --> 00:48:45.639
constantly being informed by older and wiser
people that more work, more genuine living,

504
00:48:45.719 --> 00:48:50.719
could be got out of six days
than out of seven. And it

505
00:48:50.800 --> 00:48:53.760
is certainly true that now, with
one day in seven, in which I

506
00:48:53.880 --> 00:49:00.480
follow no program and make no effort
save what the caprice of the moment dictates,

507
00:49:00.639 --> 00:49:07.639
I appreciate intensely the moral value of
a weekly rest. Nevertheless, had

508
00:49:07.679 --> 00:49:10.920
I my life to arrange over again, I would do again as I have

509
00:49:12.079 --> 00:49:16.199
done. Only those who have lived
at the full stretch seven days a week

510
00:49:16.280 --> 00:49:22.559
for a long time can appreciate the
full beauty of a regular, recurring idleness.

511
00:49:23.079 --> 00:49:28.199
Moreover, I am aging, and
it is a question of age.

512
00:49:29.039 --> 00:49:34.199
In cases of abounding youth and exceptional
energy and desire for effort, I should

513
00:49:34.239 --> 00:49:40.480
say unhesitatingly keep going day in,
day out. But in the average case,

514
00:49:40.519 --> 00:49:46.159
I should say, confine your formal
program super program, I mean to

515
00:49:46.320 --> 00:49:52.559
six days a week. If you
find yourself wishing to extend it, extend

516
00:49:52.559 --> 00:49:57.119
it, but only in proportion to
your wish, and count the time extra

517
00:49:57.480 --> 00:50:01.000
as a windfall, not as regular
income, so that you can return to

518
00:50:01.039 --> 00:50:07.599
a six day program without the sensation
of being poorer, of being a backslider.

519
00:50:07.480 --> 00:50:12.280
Let us now see where we stand. So far, we have marked

520
00:50:12.320 --> 00:50:15.119
for saving out of the waste of
days, half an hour at least on

521
00:50:15.280 --> 00:50:20.719
six mornings a week, and one
hour and a half on three evenings a

522
00:50:20.760 --> 00:50:25.000
week, total seven hours and a
half a week. I propose to be

523
00:50:25.079 --> 00:50:30.920
content with that seven hours and a
half for the present. What you cry,

524
00:50:30.719 --> 00:50:36.599
You pretend to show us how to
live, and you only deal with

525
00:50:36.679 --> 00:50:40.159
seven hours and a half out of
a hundred and sixty eight Are you going

526
00:50:40.159 --> 00:50:45.360
to perform a miracle with your seven
hours and a half? Well, not

527
00:50:45.480 --> 00:50:50.119
to mince the matter, I am
if you will kindly let me. That

528
00:50:50.239 --> 00:50:53.960
is to say, I am going
to ask you to attempt an experience which,

529
00:50:54.440 --> 00:51:00.760
while perfectly natural and explicable, has
all the air of a miracle.

530
00:51:01.000 --> 00:51:07.840
My contention is that the full use
of those seven and a half hours will

531
00:51:07.920 --> 00:51:10.800
quicken the whole life of the week, add zest to it, and increase

532
00:51:10.840 --> 00:51:17.280
the interest which you feel in even
the most banal occupations. You practice physical

533
00:51:17.320 --> 00:51:22.440
exercises for a mere ten minutes morning
and evening, and yet you are not

534
00:51:22.519 --> 00:51:28.639
astonished when your physical health and strength
are beneficially affected every hour of the day,

535
00:51:29.159 --> 00:51:34.559
and your whole physical outlook changed.
Why should you be astonished that an

536
00:51:34.599 --> 00:51:39.079
average of over an hour a day
given to the mind should permanently and completely

537
00:51:39.199 --> 00:51:45.480
enliven the whole activity of the mind. More time might assuredly be given to

538
00:51:45.519 --> 00:51:51.599
the cultivation of oneself, and in
proportion as the time was longer, the

539
00:51:51.719 --> 00:51:54.719
results would be greater. But I
prefer to begin with what looks like a

540
00:51:54.840 --> 00:52:01.199
trifling effort. It is not really
a trifling effort, as those will discover

541
00:52:01.280 --> 00:52:07.920
who have yet to essay it.
To clear even seven hours and a half

542
00:52:07.960 --> 00:52:14.480
from the jungle is passibly difficult.
For some sacrifice has to be made.

543
00:52:14.519 --> 00:52:19.559
One may have spent one's time badly, but one did spend it, one

544
00:52:19.599 --> 00:52:23.400
did do something with it. However, ill advised that something may have been

545
00:52:24.480 --> 00:52:30.559
to do something else means a change
of habits, and habits are the very

546
00:52:30.760 --> 00:52:37.159
dickens to change further. Any change, even a change for the better,

547
00:52:37.920 --> 00:52:44.039
is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts. If you imagine that you will be

548
00:52:44.079 --> 00:52:47.559
able to devote seven hours and a
half a week to serious, continuous effort

549
00:52:49.159 --> 00:52:54.280
and still live your old life,
you are mistaken. I repeat that some

550
00:52:54.480 --> 00:53:01.039
sacrifice and an immense deal of volition
will be necessary. And it is because

551
00:53:01.159 --> 00:53:07.199
I know the difficulty. It is
because I know the almost disastrous effect of

552
00:53:07.360 --> 00:53:13.840
failure in such an enterprise, that
I earnestly advise a very humble beginning,

553
00:53:14.960 --> 00:53:21.320
you must safeguard your self respect.
Self respect is at the root of all

554
00:53:21.440 --> 00:53:28.360
purposefulness, and a failure in an
enterprise deliberately planned deals a desperate wound at

555
00:53:28.400 --> 00:53:36.920
one's self respect. Hence, I
iterate and reiterate. Start quietly, unostentatiously.

556
00:53:37.960 --> 00:53:43.559
When you have conscientiously given seven hours
and a half a week to the

557
00:53:43.599 --> 00:53:49.039
cultivation of your vitality for three months, then you may begin to sing louder

558
00:53:49.159 --> 00:53:54.440
and tell yourself what wondrous things you
are capable of doing. Before coming to

559
00:53:54.480 --> 00:54:00.280
the method of using the indicated hours, I have one final suggestion to make.

560
00:54:00.840 --> 00:54:05.039
That is, as regards the evenings, to allow much more than an

561
00:54:05.119 --> 00:54:07.719
hour and a half in which to
do the work of an hour and a

562
00:54:07.800 --> 00:54:13.920
half. Remember the chance of accidents, remember human nature, and give yourself,

563
00:54:14.079 --> 00:54:17.559
say, from nine to eleven thirty
for your task of ninety minutes.

564
00:54:20.360 --> 00:54:29.960
End of Chapter six, Chapter seven
of How to Live on twenty four hours

565
00:54:29.960 --> 00:54:34.840
a day by Arnold Bennett. This
LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

566
00:54:36.000 --> 00:54:43.519
Chapter seven, Controlling the mind.
People say one can't help one's thoughts,

567
00:54:43.960 --> 00:54:50.519
but one can. The control of
the thinking machine is perfectly possible. And

568
00:54:50.639 --> 00:54:54.599
since nothing whatever happens to us outside
our own brain, since nothing hurts us

569
00:54:54.679 --> 00:55:00.719
or gives us pleasure except within the
brain, the supreme import pertence of being

570
00:55:00.840 --> 00:55:06.960
able to control what goes on in
that mysterious brain is patent. The idea

571
00:55:07.159 --> 00:55:12.519
is one of the oldest platitudes,
but it is a platitude whose profound truth

572
00:55:12.559 --> 00:55:16.960
and urgency. Most people live and
die without realizing. People complain of the

573
00:55:17.039 --> 00:55:22.000
lack of power to concentrate, not
witting that they may acquire the power if

574
00:55:22.079 --> 00:55:27.519
they choose, and without the power
to concentrate, that is to say,

575
00:55:27.639 --> 00:55:31.280
without the power to dictate to the
brain its task and to ensure obedience,

576
00:55:31.920 --> 00:55:38.920
true life is impossible. Mind control
is the first element of a full existence.

577
00:55:40.280 --> 00:55:44.159
Hence, it seems to me the
first business of the day should be

578
00:55:44.239 --> 00:55:49.280
to put the mind through its paces. You look after your body inside and

579
00:55:49.320 --> 00:55:53.920
out. You run grave danger in
hacking hairs off your face you employ a

580
00:55:54.039 --> 00:55:59.960
whole army of individuals, from the
milkman to the pig killer, to enable

581
00:56:00.280 --> 00:56:06.360
you to bribe your stomach into decent
behavior. Why not devote a little attention

582
00:56:06.480 --> 00:56:12.280
to the far more delicate machinery of
the mind, especially as you will require

583
00:56:12.519 --> 00:56:16.400
no extraneous aid. It is for
this portion of the art and craft of

584
00:56:16.440 --> 00:56:22.360
living that I have reserved the time
from the moment of quitting your door to

585
00:56:22.440 --> 00:56:29.639
the moment of arriving at your office. What am I to cultivate my mind

586
00:56:29.719 --> 00:56:34.079
in the street, on the platform, in the train, and in the

587
00:56:34.079 --> 00:56:42.280
crowded street again, precisely, nothing
simpler, No tools required, not even

588
00:56:42.400 --> 00:56:47.199
a book. Nevertheless, the affair
is not easy. When you leave your

589
00:56:47.199 --> 00:56:52.840
house concentrate your mind on a subject, no matter what to begin with,

590
00:56:53.800 --> 00:57:00.199
you will not have gone ten yards
before your mind has skipped away under your

591
00:57:00.320 --> 00:57:06.440
eyes and is larking round the corner
with another subject. Bring it back by

592
00:57:06.480 --> 00:57:10.159
the scruff of the neck. Ere
you have reached the station, you will

593
00:57:10.199 --> 00:57:16.360
have brought it back about forty times. Do not despair. Continue, keep

594
00:57:16.440 --> 00:57:21.840
it up. You will succeed.
You cannot, by any chance fail.

595
00:57:22.000 --> 00:57:28.239
If you persevere. It is idle
to pretend that your mind is incapable of

596
00:57:28.280 --> 00:57:35.400
concentration. Do you remember that morning
when you receive a disquieting letter which demanded

597
00:57:35.440 --> 00:57:39.920
a very carefully worded answer, How
you kept your mind steadily on the subject

598
00:57:39.960 --> 00:57:45.519
of the answer, without a second's
intermission, until you reached your office,

599
00:57:45.920 --> 00:57:51.320
whereupon you instantly sat down and wrote
the answer. That was a case in

600
00:57:51.360 --> 00:57:55.800
which you were roused by circumstances to
such a degree of vitality that you were

601
00:57:55.840 --> 00:58:01.199
able to dominate your mind like a
tyrant. You would have no trifling.

602
00:58:01.719 --> 00:58:07.079
You insisted that its work should be
done, and its work was done by

603
00:58:07.119 --> 00:58:12.760
the regular practice of concentration, as
to which there is no secret, save

604
00:58:12.800 --> 00:58:17.519
the secret of perseverance. You can
tyrannize over your mind, which is not

605
00:58:17.559 --> 00:58:22.239
the highest part of you, every
hour of the day, and in no

606
00:58:22.280 --> 00:58:28.280
matter what place. The exercise is
a very convenient one. If you get

607
00:58:28.400 --> 00:58:32.519
into your morning train with a pair
of dumb bells for your muscles, or

608
00:58:32.559 --> 00:58:38.079
and encyclopedia in ten volumes for your
learning, you would probably excite remark.

609
00:58:38.960 --> 00:58:43.280
But as you walk in the street, or sit in the corner of the

610
00:58:43.320 --> 00:58:47.800
compartment behind a pipe or strap hanging
on the subterranean who wish to know that

611
00:58:47.920 --> 00:58:53.920
you are engaged in the most important
of daily acts. What Asenine Bore can

612
00:58:54.000 --> 00:59:00.039
laugh at you. I do not
care what you concentrate on soul. So

613
00:59:00.159 --> 00:59:06.800
long as you concentrate it is the
mere disciplining of the thinking machine that counts.

614
00:59:07.280 --> 00:59:12.559
But still you may as well kill
two birds with one stone and concentrate

615
00:59:12.599 --> 00:59:17.239
on something useful. I suggest,
it is only a suggestion, a little

616
00:59:17.400 --> 00:59:23.199
chapter of Marcus Aurelius or Epetitis.
Do not I beg shy at their names.

617
00:59:24.159 --> 00:59:30.159
For myself, I know nothing more
actual, more bursting with plain common

618
00:59:30.239 --> 00:59:35.559
sense, applicable to the daily life
of plain persons like you and me,

619
00:59:36.039 --> 00:59:42.280
who hate airs, pose and nonsense
than Marcus Aurelius or Apetitis. Read a

620
00:59:42.400 --> 00:59:46.920
chapter and so short they are the
chapters in the evening, and concentrate on

621
00:59:47.000 --> 00:59:52.440
it the next morning. You will
see. Yes, my friend, it

622
00:59:52.519 --> 00:59:58.400
is useless for you to try to
disguise the fact I can hear your brain

623
00:59:58.639 --> 01:00:04.280
like a telephone at my ears,
you are saying to yourself. This fellow

624
01:00:04.400 --> 01:00:07.840
was doing pretty well up to his
seventh chapter. He had begun to interest

625
01:00:07.880 --> 01:00:14.360
me faintly. But what he says
about thinking in trains and concentration and so

626
01:00:14.440 --> 01:00:17.639
on. Is not for me.
It may be well enough for some folks,

627
01:00:17.679 --> 01:00:24.119
but it isn't in my line.
It is for you. I passionately

628
01:00:24.199 --> 01:00:30.719
repeat it is for you. Indeed
you are the very man I am aiming

629
01:00:30.760 --> 01:00:36.599
at. Throw away the suggestion,
and you throw away the most precious suggestion

630
01:00:36.760 --> 01:00:42.119
that was ever offered to you.
It is not my suggestion. It is

631
01:00:42.199 --> 01:00:46.480
the suggestion of the most sensible,
practical, hard headed men who have walked

632
01:00:46.559 --> 01:00:52.400
the earth. I only give it
to you at second hand. Try it,

633
01:00:52.320 --> 01:00:57.920
get your mind in hand, and
see how the process cures. Half

634
01:00:58.039 --> 01:01:04.559
the evils of life is actually worry, that miserable, avoidable, shameful disease.

635
01:01:05.320 --> 01:01:15.599
Worry. End of chapter seven,
Chapter eight of How to Live On

636
01:01:15.679 --> 01:01:21.400
Twenty four Hours a Day by Arnold
Bennett. This librevox recording is in the

637
01:01:21.440 --> 01:01:29.719
public domain. Chapter eight. The
reflective mood, the exercise of concentrating the

638
01:01:29.760 --> 01:01:31.960
mind, to which at least half
an hour a day should be given,

639
01:01:32.639 --> 01:01:38.480
is a mere preliminary, Like scales
on the piano. Having acquired power over

640
01:01:38.519 --> 01:01:45.719
that most unruly member of one's complex
organism, one has naturally to put it

641
01:01:45.840 --> 01:01:51.559
to the yoke. Useless to possess
an obedient mind unless one profits in the

642
01:01:51.639 --> 01:01:58.519
furthest possible degree by its obedience.
A prolonged primary course of study is indicated.

643
01:01:59.320 --> 01:02:02.639
Now to what this course of study
should be. There cannot be any

644
01:02:02.719 --> 01:02:08.079
question. There never has been any
question. All the sensible people of all

645
01:02:08.119 --> 01:02:14.719
ages are agreed upon it. And
it is not literature, nor is it

646
01:02:14.760 --> 01:02:19.239
any other art, nor is it
history, nor is it any science.

647
01:02:20.559 --> 01:02:28.079
It is the study of one's self. Man, know thyself. These words

648
01:02:28.119 --> 01:02:31.760
are so hackneyed that verily I blush
to write them. Yet they must be

649
01:02:31.800 --> 01:02:37.159
written, for they need to be
written. I take back my blush,

650
01:02:37.280 --> 01:02:42.840
being ashamed of it. Man know
thyself, I say it out loud.

651
01:02:43.920 --> 01:02:49.559
The phrase is one of those phrases
with which everyone is familiar, of which

652
01:02:49.599 --> 01:02:54.119
everyone acknowledges the value, and which
only the most sagacious put into practice.

653
01:02:54.960 --> 01:03:00.119
I don't know why. I am
entirely convinced that what is, more than

654
01:03:00.159 --> 01:03:05.880
anything else lacking in the life of
the average well intentioned man of today is

655
01:03:06.039 --> 01:03:10.440
the reflective mood. We do not
reflect. I mean that we do not

656
01:03:10.480 --> 01:03:17.039
reflect upon genuinely important things, upon
the problem of our happiness, upon the

657
01:03:17.079 --> 01:03:22.280
main direction in which we are going, upon what life is giving to us,

658
01:03:23.239 --> 01:03:28.960
upon the share which reason has or
has not in determining our actions,

659
01:03:29.480 --> 01:03:35.480
and upon the relation between our principles
and our conduct. And yet you are

660
01:03:35.519 --> 01:03:39.119
in search of happiness? Are you
not? Have you discovered it? The

661
01:03:39.239 --> 01:03:45.559
chances are that you have not.
The chances are that you have already come

662
01:03:45.599 --> 01:03:51.960
to believe that happiness is unattainable.
But men have attained it, and they

663
01:03:51.960 --> 01:03:57.559
have attained it by realizing that happiness
does not spring from the procuring of physical

664
01:03:57.679 --> 01:04:02.800
or mental pleasure, but from the
development of reason and the adjustment of conduct

665
01:04:02.920 --> 01:04:09.159
to principles. I suppose that you
will not have the audacity to deny this.

666
01:04:10.440 --> 01:04:14.920
And if you admit it and still
devote no part of your day to

667
01:04:15.079 --> 01:04:19.559
the deliberate consideration of your reason,
principles, and conduct, you admit also

668
01:04:19.679 --> 01:04:26.239
that, while striving for a certain
thing, you are regularly leaving undone the

669
01:04:26.519 --> 01:04:31.360
one act which is necessary to the
attainment of that thing. Now, shall

670
01:04:31.360 --> 01:04:38.920
I blush or will you do not
fear that I mean to thrust certain principles

671
01:04:39.000 --> 01:04:44.920
upon your attention? I care not
in this place what your principles are,

672
01:04:45.079 --> 01:04:50.079
Your principles may induce you to believe
in the righteousness of Burglary. I don't

673
01:04:50.119 --> 01:04:55.880
mind. All I urge is that
a life in which conduct does not fairly

674
01:04:55.920 --> 01:05:01.280
well accord with principles is a silly
life, and that conduct can only be

675
01:05:01.360 --> 01:05:08.840
made to accord with principles by means
of daily examination, reflection, and resolution.

676
01:05:09.880 --> 01:05:15.320
What leads to the permanent sorrowfulness of
burglars is that their principles are contrary

677
01:05:15.360 --> 01:05:23.159
to Burglary. If they genuinely believed
in the moral excellence of Burglary, penal

678
01:05:23.239 --> 01:05:29.119
servitude would simply mean so many happy
years for them. All mortars are happy

679
01:05:29.199 --> 01:05:34.519
because their conduct and their principles agree. As for reason, which makes conduct

680
01:05:34.519 --> 01:05:40.599
and is not unconnected with the making
of principles, it plays a far smaller

681
01:05:40.639 --> 01:05:45.800
part in our lives than we fancy. We are supposed to be reasonable,

682
01:05:45.519 --> 01:05:50.039
but we are much more instinctive than
reasonable, and the less we reflect,

683
01:05:50.519 --> 01:05:57.079
the less reasonable we shall be.
The next time you get cross with the

684
01:05:57.119 --> 01:06:01.400
waiter because your stake is overcooked,
ask a reason to step into the cabinet

685
01:06:01.480 --> 01:06:06.519
room of your mind and consult her. She will probably tell you that the

686
01:06:06.519 --> 01:06:11.719
waiter did not cook the steak,
and has no control over the cooking of

687
01:06:11.760 --> 01:06:15.719
the steak, and that even if
he alone was to blame, you accomplished

688
01:06:15.840 --> 01:06:21.119
nothing good By getting cross. You
merely lost your dignity, looked a fool

689
01:06:21.159 --> 01:06:27.079
in the eyes of sensible men,
and soured the waiter, while producing no

690
01:06:27.199 --> 01:06:31.400
effect whatever on the steak. The
result of this consultation with Reason, for

691
01:06:31.519 --> 01:06:35.480
which she makes no charge, will
be that, when once more your steak

692
01:06:35.639 --> 01:06:41.840
is overcooked, you will treat the
waiter as a fellow creature, remain quite

693
01:06:41.920 --> 01:06:46.320
calm, in a kindly spirit,
and politely insist on having a fresh steak.

694
01:06:47.400 --> 01:06:54.960
The gain will be obvious and solid. In the formation or modification of

695
01:06:55.079 --> 01:07:00.960
principles and the practice of conduct.
Much help can be derived from printed books

696
01:07:00.559 --> 01:07:08.079
issued at sixpence each and upwards.
I mentioned in my last chapter Marcus Aurelius

697
01:07:08.119 --> 01:07:13.639
and Epetitus, Certain even more widely
known works will occur at once to the

698
01:07:13.679 --> 01:07:20.079
memory. I may also mention Pascal
la Bruriere and Emerson. For myself.

699
01:07:20.320 --> 01:07:27.480
You do not catch me traveling without
my Marcus Aurelius. But reading of books

700
01:07:27.559 --> 01:07:32.079
will not take the place of a
daily, candid, honest examination of what

701
01:07:32.239 --> 01:07:38.360
one has recently done, and what
one is about to do of a steady

702
01:07:38.599 --> 01:07:44.679
looking at oneself in the face.
Disconcerting though the site may be, when

703
01:07:44.760 --> 01:07:50.239
shall this important business be accomplished?
The solitude of the evening journey home appears

704
01:07:50.280 --> 01:07:57.000
to me to be suitable for it. A reflective mood naturally follows the exertion

705
01:07:57.079 --> 01:08:01.599
of having earned the day's living.
If instead of attending to an elementary and

706
01:08:01.800 --> 01:08:08.239
profoundly important duty, you prefer to
read the paper, which you might just

707
01:08:08.320 --> 01:08:11.880
as well read while waiting for your
dinner, I have nothing to say,

708
01:08:12.880 --> 01:08:17.199
but attend to it some time of
the day you must. I now come

709
01:08:17.479 --> 01:08:29.520
to the evening hours. End of
chapter eight, Chapter nine of How to

710
01:08:29.680 --> 01:08:34.880
Live on Twenty four Hours a Day
by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox recording is

711
01:08:34.880 --> 01:08:43.600
in the public domain. Chapter nine. Interest in the arts. Many people

712
01:08:43.720 --> 01:08:48.640
pursue a regular and uninterrupted course of
idleness in the evenings because they think that

713
01:08:48.680 --> 01:08:54.359
there is no alternative to idleness but
the study of literature, and they do

714
01:08:54.439 --> 01:08:59.640
not happen to have a taste for
literature. This is a great mistake.

715
01:09:00.880 --> 01:09:04.560
Of course. It is impossible,
or at any rate very difficult, properly

716
01:09:04.720 --> 01:09:11.079
to study anything whatever without the aid
of printed books. But if you desire

717
01:09:11.119 --> 01:09:15.199
to understand the deeper depths of bridge
or of boat sailing, you would not

718
01:09:15.319 --> 01:09:18.920
be deterred, by your lack of
interest in literature, from reading the best

719
01:09:18.960 --> 01:09:27.079
books on bridge or boat sailing.
We must therefore distinguish between literature and books

720
01:09:27.079 --> 01:09:31.279
treating of subjects not literary. I
shall come to literature in due course.

721
01:09:32.199 --> 01:09:35.880
Let me now remark to those who
have never read Meredith, and who are

722
01:09:35.920 --> 01:09:42.640
capable of being unmoved by a discussion
as to whether mister Stephen Phillips is or

723
01:09:42.720 --> 01:09:47.600
is not a true poet, that
they are perfectly within their rights. It

724
01:09:47.680 --> 01:09:53.640
is not a crime not to love
literature. It is not a sign of

725
01:09:53.720 --> 01:10:01.000
imbecility. The mandarins of literature will
order out to instant execution the unfortunate individual

726
01:10:01.000 --> 01:10:06.960
who does not comprehend, say,
the influences of Wordsworth on Tennyson. But

727
01:10:08.000 --> 01:10:14.119
that is only their impudence. Where
would they be, I wonder if requested

728
01:10:14.239 --> 01:10:19.960
to explain the influences that went to
make Tchaikowsky's pathetic symphony. There are enormous

729
01:10:19.960 --> 01:10:28.359
fields of knowledge quite outside literature,
which will yield magnificent results to cultivators For

730
01:10:28.479 --> 01:10:32.760
example, since I have just mentioned
the most popular piece of high class music

731
01:10:32.800 --> 01:10:38.680
in England to day, I am
reminded that the promenade concerts begin in August.

732
01:10:39.760 --> 01:10:44.319
You go to them, you smoke
your cigar or cigarette, and I

733
01:10:44.399 --> 01:10:48.159
regret to say that you strike your
matches during the soft bars of the Loewengrin

734
01:10:48.239 --> 01:10:54.560
overture, and you enjoy the music. But you say you cannot play the

735
01:10:54.600 --> 01:10:59.920
piano or the fiddle or even the
banjo, that you know nothing of music.

736
01:11:00.880 --> 01:11:08.119
What does that matter? That you
have a genuine taste for music is

737
01:11:08.239 --> 01:11:11.359
proved by the fact that, in
order to fill his haul with you and

738
01:11:11.439 --> 01:11:16.439
your peers, the conductor is obliged
to provide programs from which bad music is

739
01:11:16.560 --> 01:11:24.279
almost entirely excluded, a change from
the old COVID garden days. Now,

740
01:11:24.479 --> 01:11:30.039
Surely, your inability to perform the
Maiden's Prayer on a piano need not prevent

741
01:11:30.119 --> 01:11:34.159
you from making yourself familiar with the
construction of the orchestra to which you listen

742
01:11:34.279 --> 01:11:39.920
a couple of nights a week during
a couple of months. As things are,

743
01:11:40.560 --> 01:11:45.000
you probably think of the orchestra as
a heterogeneous mass of instruments producing a

744
01:11:45.079 --> 01:11:51.159
confused agreeable mass of sound. You
do not listen for details, because you

745
01:11:51.279 --> 01:11:57.399
have never trained your ears to listen
to details. If you were asked to

746
01:11:57.479 --> 01:12:00.000
name the instruments which play the great
theme at the beginning of the C.

747
01:12:00.359 --> 01:12:06.600
Minor Symphony, you could not name
them for your life's sake. Yet you

748
01:12:06.680 --> 01:12:12.560
admire the C. Minor Symphony.
It has thrilled you, it will thrill

749
01:12:12.720 --> 01:12:17.079
you again. You have even talked
about it in an expansive mood to that

750
01:12:17.439 --> 01:12:23.039
lady you know whom I mean.
And all you can positively state about the

751
01:12:23.079 --> 01:12:27.880
C. Minor Symphony is that Beethoven
composed it, and that it is a

752
01:12:28.119 --> 01:12:32.319
jolly fine thing. Now, if
you have read, say mister Kriebles,

753
01:12:32.399 --> 01:12:36.479
How to Listen to Music, which
can be got at any booksellers for less

754
01:12:36.520 --> 01:12:42.279
than the price of a stall at
the Alhambra, and which contains photographs of

755
01:12:42.439 --> 01:12:47.399
all the orchestral instruments and plans of
the arrangement of orchestras, you would next

756
01:12:47.520 --> 01:12:55.319
go to a promenade concert with an
astonishing intensification of interest in it. Instead

757
01:12:55.319 --> 01:13:00.159
of a confused mass, the orchestra
would appear to you as what it is

758
01:13:00.159 --> 01:13:06.119
is a marvelously balanced organism whose various
groups of members each have a different end

759
01:13:06.279 --> 01:13:13.920
and indispensable function. You would spy
out the instruments and listen for their respective

760
01:13:13.960 --> 01:13:18.520
sounds. You would know the gulf
that separates a French horn from an English

761
01:13:18.520 --> 01:13:24.079
horn, and you would perceive why
a player of the hate boy gets higher

762
01:13:24.119 --> 01:13:29.119
wages than a fiddler, though the
fiddle is the more difficult instrument. You

763
01:13:29.159 --> 01:13:34.600
would live at a promenade concert,
whereas previously you had merely existed there in

764
01:13:34.640 --> 01:13:40.279
a state of beatific coma, like
a baby gazing at a bright object,

765
01:13:41.600 --> 01:13:47.039
the foundations of a genuine, systematic
knowledge of music might be laid. You

766
01:13:47.119 --> 01:13:53.159
might specialize your inquiries, either on
a particular form of music, such as

767
01:13:53.199 --> 01:13:58.039
the symphony, or on the works
of a particular composer. At the end

768
01:13:58.079 --> 01:14:02.079
of a year of forty eight weeks
of three brief evenings, each combined with

769
01:14:02.159 --> 01:14:08.479
a study of programs and attendances at
concerts chosen out of your increasing knowledge,

770
01:14:09.079 --> 01:14:14.479
you would really know something about music, even though you were as far off

771
01:14:14.520 --> 01:14:19.479
as ever from jangling the Maiden's Prayer
on the piano. But I hate music,

772
01:14:19.880 --> 01:14:26.680
you say, my dear sir,
I respect you. What applies to

773
01:14:26.760 --> 01:14:31.600
music applies to the other arts.
I might mention mister claremont Wits how to

774
01:14:31.640 --> 01:14:41.199
look at pictures are mister Russell Sturgis's
how to Judge Architecture as beginnings merely beginnings

775
01:14:41.239 --> 01:14:46.640
of systematic, vitalizing knowledge in other
arts, the materials for whose study abound

776
01:14:46.800 --> 01:14:54.560
in London. I hate all the
arts, you say, my dear sir,

777
01:14:55.319 --> 01:15:01.239
I respect you more and more.
Will deal with your case next before

778
01:15:01.319 --> 01:15:17.960
coming to literature. End of chapter
nine, Chapter ten of How to Live

779
01:15:18.039 --> 01:15:24.399
On Twenty four Hours a Day by
Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox recording is in

780
01:15:24.439 --> 01:15:32.920
the public domain. Chapter ten.
Nothing in life is hum drum. Art

781
01:15:33.000 --> 01:15:39.239
is a great thing, but it
is not the greatest. The most important

782
01:15:39.239 --> 01:15:45.520
of all perceptions is the continual perception
of cause and effect, in other words,

783
01:15:45.560 --> 01:15:50.479
the perception of the continuous development of
the universe. In still other words,

784
01:15:51.119 --> 01:15:58.039
the perception of the course of evolution. When one has thoroughly got imbued

785
01:15:58.159 --> 01:16:02.920
into one's head the leading truth that
nothing happens without a cause, one grows

786
01:16:03.119 --> 01:16:10.439
not only large minded, but large
hearted. It is hard to have one's

787
01:16:10.520 --> 01:16:15.880
watch stolen, but one reflects that
the thief of the watch became a thief

788
01:16:16.000 --> 01:16:23.439
from causes of heredity and environment,
which are as interesting as they are scientifically

789
01:16:23.479 --> 01:16:29.479
comprehensible, and one buys another watch, if not with joy at any rate,

790
01:16:29.560 --> 01:16:34.279
with a philosophy that makes bitterness impossible. One loses in the study of

791
01:16:34.319 --> 01:16:41.319
cause and effect that absurd air which
so many people have, of being always

792
01:16:41.359 --> 01:16:46.760
shocked and pained by the curiousness of
life. Such people live amid human nature

793
01:16:46.800 --> 01:16:53.760
as if human nature were a foreign
country full of awful foreign customs. But

794
01:16:54.039 --> 01:16:59.319
having reached maturity, one ought surely
to be ashamed of being a stranger in

795
01:16:59.399 --> 01:17:04.359
a strain land. The study of
cause and effect, while it lessens the

796
01:17:04.399 --> 01:17:12.439
painfulness of life, adds to life's
picturesqueness. The man to whom evolution is

797
01:17:12.520 --> 01:17:17.520
but a name, looks at the
sea as a grandiose, monotonous spectacle which

798
01:17:17.560 --> 01:17:23.800
he can witness in August for three
shillings third class return. The man,

799
01:17:23.880 --> 01:17:30.159
who is imbued with the idea of
development of continuous cause and effect, perceives

800
01:17:30.159 --> 01:17:33.640
in the sea an element which in
the day before yesterday of geology was vapor,

801
01:17:34.239 --> 01:17:41.680
which yesterday was boiling, and which
tomorrow will inevitably be ice. He

802
01:17:41.840 --> 01:17:46.119
perceives that a liquid is merely something
on its way to be solid, and

803
01:17:46.239 --> 01:17:53.359
he is penetrated by a sense of
the tremendous, changeful, picturesqueness of life.

804
01:17:53.439 --> 01:17:59.600
Nothing will afford a more durable satisfaction
than the constantly cultivated appreciation of this.

805
01:18:00.800 --> 01:18:04.880
It is the end of all science. Cause and effect are to be

806
01:18:04.960 --> 01:18:13.199
found everywhere. Rints went up in
Shepherd's Bush. It was painful and shocking

807
01:18:13.319 --> 01:18:16.720
that rints should go up in Shepherd's
Bush. But to a certain point,

808
01:18:16.920 --> 01:18:21.239
we are all scientific students of cause
and effect. And there was not a

809
01:18:21.319 --> 01:18:28.079
clerk lunching at Lion's Restaurant who did
not scientifically put two and two together,

810
01:18:28.520 --> 01:18:33.000
and see in the once two penny
tube the cause of an excessive demand for

811
01:18:33.079 --> 01:18:39.960
wigwams in Shepherd's Bush, and the
excessive demand for wigwams the cause of the

812
01:18:40.039 --> 01:18:46.199
increase in the price of wigwams.
Simple, you say, disdainfully, everything,

813
01:18:46.520 --> 01:18:51.680
the whole complex movement of the universe
is as simple as that, when

814
01:18:51.760 --> 01:18:59.560
you can sufficiently put two and two
together. And my dear sir, perhaps

815
01:18:59.600 --> 01:19:03.239
you happen to be an estate agent's
clerk, and you hate the arts,

816
01:19:03.479 --> 01:19:09.359
and you want to foster your immortal
soul, and you can't be interested in

817
01:19:09.399 --> 01:19:15.880
your business because it's so humdrum.
Nothing is humdrum. The tremendous, changeful

818
01:19:15.960 --> 01:19:25.600
picturesqueness of life is marvelously shown in
anes state agent's office. What there was

819
01:19:25.640 --> 01:19:30.399
a block of traffic in Oxford Street. To avoid the block, people actually

820
01:19:30.439 --> 01:19:34.239
began to travel under the cellars and
drains, and the result was a rise

821
01:19:34.319 --> 01:19:42.520
of rents in Shepherd's Bush. And
you say that isn't picturesque. Suppose you

822
01:19:42.560 --> 01:19:46.039
were to study in this spirit the
property question in London for an hour and

823
01:19:46.079 --> 01:19:51.560
a half every other evening, would
it not give zest to your business and

824
01:19:51.840 --> 01:19:59.319
transform your whole life. You would
arrive at more difficult problems, and you

825
01:19:59.359 --> 01:20:03.000
would be able do tell us why, as the natural result of cause and

826
01:20:03.039 --> 01:20:08.560
effect, the longest straight street in
London is about a yard and a half

827
01:20:08.560 --> 01:20:13.720
and left, while the longest absolutely
straight street in Paris extends for miles.

828
01:20:14.920 --> 01:20:18.039
I think you will admit that in
an estate agent's clerk, I have not

829
01:20:18.239 --> 01:20:25.319
chosen an example that especially favors my
theories. You are a bank clerk,

830
01:20:25.880 --> 01:20:30.640
and you have not read that breathless
romance disguised as a scientific study. Walter

831
01:20:30.840 --> 01:20:36.640
Begehot's Lombard Street. Ah, My
dear sir, if you had begun with

832
01:20:36.760 --> 01:20:43.319
that and followed it up for ninety
minutes every other evening, how enthralling your

833
01:20:43.359 --> 01:20:47.800
business would be to you, and
how much more clearly you would understand human

834
01:20:47.880 --> 01:20:54.880
nature. You are pinned in town, but you love excursions to the country,

835
01:20:54.920 --> 01:21:00.600
and the observation of wild life certainly
a hard enlarging diversion. Why don't

836
01:21:00.600 --> 01:21:05.800
you walk out of your house door
in your slippers to the nearest gas lamp

837
01:21:05.840 --> 01:21:11.680
of a night with a butterfly net
and observe the wild life of common and

838
01:21:11.800 --> 01:21:16.159
rare moths that is beating about it, and co ordinate the knowledge thus obtained,

839
01:21:16.199 --> 01:21:20.439
and build a superstructure on it,
and at last get to know something

840
01:21:20.640 --> 01:21:27.520
about something. You need not be
devoted to the arts, not to literature,

841
01:21:27.720 --> 01:21:31.760
in order to live fully. The
whole field of daily habit and seen

842
01:21:32.439 --> 01:21:39.119
is waiting to satisfy that curiosity which
means life, and the satisfaction of which

843
01:21:39.399 --> 01:21:44.960
means an understanding heart. I promised
to deal with your case, o man

844
01:21:44.960 --> 01:21:47.479
who hates art in literature, and
I have dealt with it. I now

845
01:21:47.520 --> 01:21:53.560
come to the case of the person
happily very common who does like reading?

846
01:21:54.600 --> 01:22:03.159
End of chapter ten chapter eleven of
How to Live On Twenty four Hours a

847
01:22:03.199 --> 01:22:10.720
Day by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox
recording is in the public domain. Chapter

848
01:22:10.800 --> 01:22:19.880
eleven serious reading. Novels are excluded
from serious reading, so that the man

849
01:22:19.960 --> 01:22:26.560
who bent on self improvement has been
deciding to devote ninety minutes three times a

850
01:22:26.600 --> 01:22:31.199
week to a complete study of the
works of Charles Dickens will be well advised

851
01:22:31.279 --> 01:22:39.000
to alter his plans. The reason
is not that novels are not serious.

852
01:22:39.079 --> 01:22:43.039
Some of the great literature of the
world is in the form of prose fiction.

853
01:22:44.279 --> 01:22:47.880
The reason is that bad novels ought
not to be read, and that

854
01:22:47.960 --> 01:22:54.079
good novels never demand any appreciable mental
application on the part of the reader.

855
01:22:55.319 --> 01:23:00.600
It is only the bad parts of
Meredith's novels that are difficult. Good novel

856
01:23:00.760 --> 01:23:05.159
rushes you forward like a skiff down
a stream, and you arrive at the

857
01:23:05.319 --> 01:23:12.600
end, perhaps breathless but unexhausted.
The best novels involve the least strain.

858
01:23:13.760 --> 01:23:17.079
Now, in the cultivation of the
mind, one of the most important factors

859
01:23:17.159 --> 01:23:24.119
is precisely the feeling of strain,
of difficulty, of a task which one

860
01:23:24.239 --> 01:23:28.279
part of you is anxious to achieve, and another part of you is anxious

861
01:23:28.319 --> 01:23:32.239
to shirk, and that feeling cannot
be got in facing a novel. You

862
01:23:32.319 --> 01:23:36.840
do not set your teeth in order
to read on a karnina. Therefore,

863
01:23:38.159 --> 01:23:42.640
though you should read novels, you
should not read them in those ninety minutes.

864
01:23:44.079 --> 01:23:50.000
Imaginative poetry produces a far greater mental
strain than novels. It produces probably

865
01:23:50.119 --> 01:23:57.479
the severest strain of any form of
literature. It is the highest form of

866
01:23:57.560 --> 01:24:01.560
literature. It yields the highest form
of pleasure and teaches the highest form of

867
01:24:01.640 --> 01:24:08.159
wisdom. In a word, there
is nothing to compare with it. I

868
01:24:08.359 --> 01:24:13.119
say this with sad consciousness of the
fact that the majority of people do not

869
01:24:13.520 --> 01:24:19.000
read poetry. I am persuaded that
many excellent persons, if they were confronted

870
01:24:19.039 --> 01:24:25.720
with the alternatives of reading Paradise Lost
and going round Trafalga Square at noonday on

871
01:24:25.760 --> 01:24:30.960
their knees in sackcloth, which choose
the ordeal of public ridicule. Still I

872
01:24:30.079 --> 01:24:38.239
will never cease advising my friends and
enemies to read poetry before anything. If

873
01:24:38.319 --> 01:24:44.079
poetry is what is called a sealed
book, to you again by reading Haslet's

874
01:24:44.119 --> 01:24:48.159
famous essay on the nature of poetry
in general. It is the best thing

875
01:24:48.199 --> 01:24:53.600
of its kind in English, and
no one who has read it can possibly

876
01:24:53.680 --> 01:24:59.600
be under the misapprehension that poetry is
a medieval torture, or a mad elephant,

877
01:25:00.159 --> 01:25:02.840
or a gun that will go off
by itself and kill at forty paces.

878
01:25:03.520 --> 01:25:08.520
Indeed, it is difficult to imagine
the mental state of the man who,

879
01:25:08.640 --> 01:25:14.359
after reading Hazlit's essay is not urgently
desirous of reading some poetry before his

880
01:25:14.520 --> 01:25:18.479
next meal. If the essay so
inspires you, I would suggest that you

881
01:25:18.600 --> 01:25:26.880
make a commencement with purely narrative poetry. There is an infinitely finer English novel

882
01:25:27.159 --> 01:25:30.760
written by a woman than anything by
George Eliot, or the Brontes, or

883
01:25:30.800 --> 01:25:35.560
even Jane Austen, which perhaps you
have not read. Its title is Aurora

884
01:25:35.680 --> 01:25:41.439
Lee, and its author is E. B. Browning. It happens to

885
01:25:41.479 --> 01:25:46.239
be written in verse and to contain
a considerable amount of genuinely fine poetry.

886
01:25:47.159 --> 01:25:54.640
Decide to read that book through,
even if you die for it. Forget

887
01:25:54.760 --> 01:25:59.880
that it is fine poetry. Read
it simply for the story and the socialized

888
01:26:00.199 --> 01:26:04.359
is. And when you have done, ask yourself, honestly whether you still

889
01:26:04.479 --> 01:26:11.840
dislike poetry. I have known more
than one person to whom Aurora Lee has

890
01:26:11.920 --> 01:26:15.960
been the means of proving that,
in assuming they hated poetry, they were

891
01:26:15.279 --> 01:26:21.800
entirely mistaken. Of course, if
after Hazlitt and such an experiment made in

892
01:26:21.880 --> 01:26:27.399
the light of Haslet, you are
finally assured that there is something in you

893
01:26:27.520 --> 01:26:31.520
which is antagonistic to poetry, you
must be content with history or philosophy.

894
01:26:32.319 --> 01:26:39.880
I shall regret it, yet not
inconsolably. The Decline and Fall is not

895
01:26:39.920 --> 01:26:44.039
to be named in the same day
with Paradise Lost, but it is a

896
01:26:44.159 --> 01:26:49.680
vastly pretty thing, and Herbert Spencer's
First Principles simply laughs at the claims of

897
01:26:49.720 --> 01:26:56.319
poetry and refuses to be accepted as
aught but the most majestic product of any

898
01:26:56.439 --> 01:27:00.079
human mind. I do not suggest
that either of these these works as suitable

899
01:27:00.119 --> 01:27:04.880
for a trio in mental strains.
But I see no reason why any man

900
01:27:04.920 --> 01:27:11.520
of average intelligence should not, after
a year of continuous reading, be fit

901
01:27:11.680 --> 01:27:17.800
to assault the supreme masterpieces of history
or philosophy. The great convenience of masterpieces

902
01:27:18.199 --> 01:27:27.000
is that they are so astonishingly Lucid. I suggest no particular work as a

903
01:27:27.039 --> 01:27:31.319
start. The attempt would be futile
in the space of my command. But

904
01:27:31.560 --> 01:27:39.359
I have two general suggestions of a
certain importance. The first is to define

905
01:27:39.359 --> 01:27:44.520
the direction and scope of your efforts. Choose a limited period, or a

906
01:27:44.600 --> 01:27:49.800
limited subject, or a single author. Say to yourself, I will know

907
01:27:49.960 --> 01:27:55.239
something about the French Revolution, or
the rise of railroads, or the works

908
01:27:55.279 --> 01:28:00.520
of John Keats, and during a
given period to be settled before hand.

909
01:28:00.960 --> 01:28:05.039
Confine yourself to your choice. There
is much pleasure to be derived from being

910
01:28:05.159 --> 01:28:12.439
a specialist. The second suggestion is
to think as well as read. I

911
01:28:12.520 --> 01:28:15.039
know people who read and read,
and for all the good it does them,

912
01:28:15.359 --> 01:28:20.039
they might just as well cut bread
and butter. They take to reading

913
01:28:20.199 --> 01:28:26.720
as better men take to drink.
They fly through the shires of literature on

914
01:28:26.760 --> 01:28:31.279
a motor car, their sole object
being motion. They will tell you how

915
01:28:31.319 --> 01:28:35.840
many books they have read in a
year. Unless you give at least forty

916
01:28:35.840 --> 01:28:43.439
five minutes too careful fatiguing reflection,
it is an awful boar at first upon

917
01:28:43.439 --> 01:28:46.760
what you are reading. Your ninety
minutes of a night are chiefly wasted.

918
01:28:47.720 --> 01:28:55.840
This means that your pace will be
slow, never mind forget the goal,

919
01:28:56.680 --> 01:29:00.560
think only of the surrounding country,
and after a period, perhaps when you

920
01:29:00.680 --> 01:29:06.039
least expect it, you will suddenly
find yourself in a lovely town on a

921
01:29:06.159 --> 01:29:17.960
hill. End of chapter eleven,
Chapter twelve of How to Live On Twenty

922
01:29:17.960 --> 01:29:24.159
four Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox recording is in the public

923
01:29:24.199 --> 01:29:32.560
domain. Chapter twelve, Dangers to
avoid. I cannot terminate these hints.

924
01:29:32.600 --> 01:29:38.680
Often I fear too didactic and abrupt
upon the full use of one's time to

925
01:29:38.720 --> 01:29:44.680
the great end of living, as
distinguished from vegetating, without briefly referring to

926
01:29:44.760 --> 01:29:50.079
certain dangers which lie in wait for
the sincere asperant towards life. The first

927
01:29:50.319 --> 01:29:56.960
is the terrible danger of becoming the
most odious and least supportable of persons.

928
01:29:57.479 --> 01:30:02.960
A prig. Now a prig is
a pert fellow who gives himself airs of

929
01:30:03.000 --> 01:30:10.199
superior wisdom. A prig is a
pompous fool who has gone out for a

930
01:30:10.359 --> 01:30:15.039
ceremonial walk, and, without knowing
it, has lost an important part of

931
01:30:15.079 --> 01:30:20.199
his attire, namely his sense of
humor. A prig is a tedious individual

932
01:30:20.640 --> 01:30:27.119
who, having made a discovery,
is so impressed by his discovery that he

933
01:30:27.239 --> 01:30:32.399
is capable of being gravely displeased because
the entire world is not also impressed by

934
01:30:32.439 --> 01:30:39.560
it unconsciously. To become a prig
is an easy and a fatal thing.

935
01:30:41.840 --> 01:30:45.800
Hence, when one sets forth on
the enterprise of using all one's time,

936
01:30:46.439 --> 01:30:50.560
it is just as well to remember
that one's own time, and not other

937
01:30:50.640 --> 01:30:56.720
people's time, is the material with
which one has to deal. That the

938
01:30:56.760 --> 01:31:01.279
earth rolled on pretty comfortably before one
began to balance a budget of the hours,

939
01:31:02.039 --> 01:31:06.319
and that it will continue to roll
on pretty comfortably whether or not one

940
01:31:06.359 --> 01:31:13.399
succeeds in one's new role of chancellor
of the Exchequer of time. It is

941
01:31:13.479 --> 01:31:17.039
as well not to chatter too much
about what one is doing, and not

942
01:31:17.119 --> 01:31:24.399
to betray a too pained sadness at
the spectacle of a whole world deliberately wasting

943
01:31:24.520 --> 01:31:29.920
so many hours out of every day
and therefore never really living. It will

944
01:31:29.960 --> 01:31:35.239
be found ultimately that in taking care
of oneself, one has quite all one

945
01:31:35.319 --> 01:31:41.680
can do. Another danger is the
danger of being tied to a program,

946
01:31:41.760 --> 01:31:45.920
like a slave to a chariot.
One's program must not be allowed to run

947
01:31:45.960 --> 01:31:51.359
away with one. It must be
respected, but it must not be worshiped

948
01:31:51.399 --> 01:31:59.079
as a fetish. A program of
daily employ is not a religion. This

949
01:31:59.159 --> 01:32:03.840
seems obvious. Yet I know men
whose lives are a burden to themselves and

950
01:32:03.960 --> 01:32:10.600
a distressing burden to their relatives and
friends, simply because they have failed to

951
01:32:10.680 --> 01:32:16.840
appreciate the obvious. Oh no,
I have heard the martyrer's wife exclaim,

952
01:32:17.279 --> 01:32:23.079
Arthur always takes the dog out for
exercise at eight o'clock, and he always

953
01:32:23.119 --> 01:32:26.760
begins to read at a quarter to
nine. So it's quite out of the

954
01:32:26.840 --> 01:32:31.479
question that we should et cetera,
et cetera. And the note of absolute

955
01:32:31.560 --> 01:32:39.720
finality in that plaintive voice reveals the
unsuspected and ridiculous tragedy of a career.

956
01:32:41.039 --> 01:32:45.279
On the other hand, a program
is a program, and unless it is

957
01:32:45.399 --> 01:32:50.600
treated with deference, it ceases to
be anything but a poor joke. To

958
01:32:50.680 --> 01:32:56.720
treat one's program with exactly the right
amount of deference, to live with not

959
01:32:57.000 --> 01:33:01.239
too much and not too little elasticity
is scarcely the simple affair, it may

960
01:33:01.279 --> 01:33:08.279
appear to the inexperienced. And still
another danger is the danger of developing a

961
01:33:08.359 --> 01:33:14.079
policy of rush, of being gradually
more and more obsessed by what one has

962
01:33:14.159 --> 01:33:18.199
to do next. In this way, one may come to exist as in

963
01:33:18.279 --> 01:33:24.560
a prison, and one's life may
cease to be one's own. One may

964
01:33:24.600 --> 01:33:29.000
take the dog out for a walk
at eight o'clock and meditate the whole time

965
01:33:29.399 --> 01:33:32.000
on the fact that one must begin
to read at a quarter to nine,

966
01:33:32.399 --> 01:33:39.439
and that one must not be late. And the occasional deliberate breaking of one's

967
01:33:39.520 --> 01:33:45.000
program will not help to mend matters. The evil springs not from persisting without

968
01:33:45.079 --> 01:33:53.119
elasticity in what one has attempted,
but from originally attempting too much, from

969
01:33:53.199 --> 01:33:59.560
filling one's program till it runs over. The only cure is to reconstitute the

970
01:33:59.560 --> 01:34:04.600
program and to attempt less. But
the appetite for knowledge grows by what it

971
01:34:04.640 --> 01:34:10.399
feeds on, and there are men
who come to like a constant, breathless

972
01:34:10.479 --> 01:34:14.359
hurry of endeavor. Of them,
it may be said that a constant,

973
01:34:14.399 --> 01:34:18.520
breathless hurry is better than any eternal
doze. In any case, if the

974
01:34:18.560 --> 01:34:24.479
program exhibits a tendency to be oppressive, and yet one wishes not to modify

975
01:34:24.520 --> 01:34:30.399
it, an excellent palliative is to
pass with exaggerated deliberateness, from one portion

976
01:34:30.560 --> 01:34:35.600
of it to another. For example, to spend five minutes in perfect mental

977
01:34:35.680 --> 01:34:42.680
quiescence between chaining up the Saint Bernard
and opening the book. In other words,

978
01:34:43.079 --> 01:34:48.359
to waste five minutes with the entire
consciousness of wasting them. The last

979
01:34:48.399 --> 01:34:55.079
and chiefest danger which I would indicate
is one to which I have already referred,

980
01:34:55.279 --> 01:35:00.720
the risk of a failure at the
commencement of the enterprise. I must

981
01:35:00.760 --> 01:35:05.000
insist on it. A failure at
the commencement may easily kill outright the newborn

982
01:35:05.079 --> 01:35:12.720
impulse toward a complete vitality, and
therefore every precaution should be observed to avoid

983
01:35:12.760 --> 01:35:18.159
it. The impulse must not be
over text. Let the pace of the

984
01:35:18.199 --> 01:35:25.239
first lap be even absurdly slow,
but let it be as regular as possible,

985
01:35:26.399 --> 01:35:30.199
And, having once decided to achieve
a certain task, achieve it at

986
01:35:30.239 --> 01:35:36.840
all costs of tedium and distaste.
The gain is self confidence of having accomplished

987
01:35:36.840 --> 01:35:44.479
a tiresome labor is immense. Finally, in choosing the first occupations of those

988
01:35:44.600 --> 01:35:49.880
evening hours, be guided by nothing
whatever but your taste and natural inclination.

989
01:35:50.920 --> 01:35:57.119
It is a fine thing to be
a walking encyclopedia of philosophy. But if

990
01:35:57.119 --> 01:36:00.199
you happen to have no liking for
philosophy and to have a like for the

991
01:36:00.279 --> 01:36:06.880
natural history of street cries. Much
better leave philosophy alone and take two street

992
01:36:06.960 --> 01:36:14.159
cries. End of chapter twelve,
end of How to Live On Twenty four

993
01:36:14.199 --> 01:36:18.840
Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett.
This book recorded by Phil Shinever.