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Section one of mental efficiency. This
is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings

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are in the public domain. For
more information or to volunteer, please visit

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LibriVox dot org. Recording by Ruth
Golding. Mental Efficiency and Other Hints to

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Men and Women by Arnold Bennett,
Section one Mental efficiency. The appeal if

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there is any virtue in advertisements,
and a journalist should be the last person

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to say that there is not.
The American nation is rapidly reaching a state

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of physical efficiency of which the world
has probably not seen the like since Sparta.

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In all the American newspapers and all
the American monthlies are innumerable illustrated announcements

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of physical culture specialists who guarantee to
make all the organs of the body perform

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their dear duties with the mighty precision
of a sixty horse power motor car that

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never breaks down. I saw a
book the other day written by one of

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these specialists, to show how perfect
health could be attained by devoting a quarter

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of an hour a day to certain
exercises. The advertisements multiply and increase in

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size. They cost a great deal
of money. Therefore, they must bring

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in a great deal of business.
Therefore, vast numbers of people must be

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worried about the non efficiency of their
bodies, and on the way to achieve

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efficiency. In our more modest British
fashion. We have the same phenomenon in

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England, and it is growing.
Our muscles are growing. Also, surprise

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a man in his bedroom of a
morning, and you will find him lying

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on his back on the floor,
or standing on his head, or whirling

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clubs in pursuit of physical efficiency.
I remember that once I went in for

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physical efficiency myself, I too lay
on the floor, my delicate epidermis,

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separated from the carpet by only the
thinnest of garments, and I contorted myself

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according to the fifteen diagrams of a
large chart believed to be the Magna carter

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of physical efficiency. Daily after shaving. In three weeks, my collars would

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not meet round my prize fighter's neck. My hozier reaped immense profits, and

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I came to the conclusion that I
had carried physical efficiency quite far enough.

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A strange thing, was it,
not? That I never had the idea

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of devoting a quarter of an hour
a day after shaving to the pursuit of

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mental efficiency. The average body is
a pretty complicated affair, sadly out of

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order, but happily susceptible to culture. The average mind is vastly more complicated,

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not less sadly out of order,
but perhaps even more susceptible to culture.

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We compare our arms to the arms
of the gentleman illustrated in the physical

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efficiency advertisement, and we murmur to
ourselves the classic phrase, this will never

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do. And we set about developing
the muscles of our arms until we can

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show them off through a frock coat
to women at afternoon tea. But it

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does not perhaps occur to us that
the mind has its muscles, and a

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lot of apparatus besides, and that
these invisible yet paramount mental organs are far

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less efficient than they ought to be, that some of them are atrophied,

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others starved, others out of shape, et cetera. A man of sedentary

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occupation goes for a very long walk
on Easter Monday, and in the evening

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it's so exhausted that he can scarcely
eat. He wakes up to the inefficiency

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of his body, caused by his
neglect of it, and he is so

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shocked that he determines on remedial measures
either he will walk to the office,

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or he will play golf, or
he will execute the post shaving exercises.

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But let the same man, after
a prolonged sedentary course of newspapers, magazines,

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and novels, take his mind out
for a stiff climb among the rocks

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of a scientific, philosophic, or
artistic subject. What will he do?

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Will he stay out all day and
return in the evening, too tired even

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to read his paper? Not he? It is ten to one that,

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finding himself puffing for breath after a
quarter of an hour, he won't even

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persist till he gets his second wind, but will come back at once.

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Will he remark with genuine concern that
his mind is sadly out of condition,

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and that he really must do something
to get it into order. Not he?

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It is a hundred to one that
he will tranquility accept the status quo,

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without shame and without very poignant regret. Do I make my meaning clear?

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I say without a very poignant regret, Because a certain vague regret is

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indubitably caused by realizing that one is
handicapped by a mental inefficiency, which might,

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without too much difficulty, be cured. That vague regret exudes like a

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vapor from the more cultivating section of
the public. It is to be detected

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everywhere, and especially among people who
are near the half way house of life.

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They perceive the existence of immense quantities
of knowledge, not the smallest particle

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of which will they ever make their
own. They stroll forth from their orderly

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dwellings on a starlit night and feel
dimly the wonder of the heavens. But

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the still small voice is telling them
that though they have read in a newspaper

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that there are fifty thousand stars in
the Plioides, they cannot even point to

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the pliodes in the sky. How
they would like to grasp the significance of

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the nebular theory, the most overwhelming
of all theories. And the years are

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passing, and there are twenty four
hours in every day, out of which

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they work only six or seven.
And it needs only an impulse, an

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effort, a system, in order
gradually to cure the mind of its slackness,

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to give tone to its muscles,
and to enable it to grapple with

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the splendors of knowledge and sensation that
await it. But the regret is not

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poignant enough. They do nothing.
They go on doing nothing. It is

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as though they passed forever along the
length of an endless table filled with delicacies,

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and could not stretch out a hand
to seize. Do I exaggerate?

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Is there not deep in the consciousness
of most of us a mournful feeling that

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our minds are, like the liver
of the advertisement, sluggish, And that

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for the sluggishness of our minds there
is the excuse neither of incompetence, nor

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a lack of time, nor of
lack of opportunity, nor of lack of

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means. Why does not some mental
efficiency specialist come forward and show us how

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to make our minds do the work
which our minds are certainly capable of doing.

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I do not mean a quack.
All the physical efficiency specialists who advertise

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largely are not quacks. Some of
them achieve very genuine results. If a

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course of treatment can be devised for
the body, a course of treatment can

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be devised for the mind. Thus
we might realize some of the ambitions which

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all of us cherish in regard to
the utilization in our spare time of that

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magnificent machine which we allow to rust
within our craniums. We have the desire

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to perfect ourselves, to round off
our careers with the graces of knowledge and

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taste. How many people would not
gladly undertake some branch of serious study,

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so that they might not die under
the approach of having lived and died without

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ever really having known anything about anything. It is not the absence of desire

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that prevents them. It is first
the absence of willpower, not the will

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to begin, but the will to
continue, And second a mental apparatus which

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is out of condition, puffy weedy
through sheer neglect. The remedy then divides

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itself into two parts, the cultivation
of willpower and the getting into condition of

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the mental apparatus, And these two
branches of the cure must be worked concurrently.

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I'm sure that the considerations which I
have presented to you you must have

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already presented themselves to tens of thousands
of my readers, and that thousands must

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have attempted the cure. I doubt
not that many have succeeded. I shall

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deem it a favor if those readers
who have interested themselves in the question will

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communicate to me at once the result
of their experience, whatever its outcome,

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I will make such use as I
can of the letters I receive, and

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afterwards I will give my own experience
the replies. The correspondence which I have

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received in answer to my appeal shows
that at any rate I did not overstate

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the case. There is, among
a vast mass of reflecting people in this

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country a clear consciousness of being mentally
less than efficient, and a strong,

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though ineffective desire that such mental inefficiency
should cease to be. The desire is

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stronger than I had imagined, but
it does not seem to have led to

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much hitherto and that course of treatment
for the mind, by means of which

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we are to realize some of the
ambitions which all of us cherish in regard

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to the utilization in our spare time
of the magnificent machine which we allow to

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rust within our craniums, that desiderated
course of treatment has not apparently been devised

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by any body. The sandeau of
the brain has not yet loomed up above

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the horizon. On the other hand, there appears to be a general expectancy

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that I personally am going to play
the role of the sandoa of the brain.

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Vain thought. I have been very
much interested in the letters, some

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of which, as a statement of
the matter in question, are admirable.

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It is perhaps not surprising that the
best of them come from women. For

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genius apart, woman is usually more
touchingly lyrical than man in the yearning for

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the ideal. The most enthusiastic of
all the letters I have received, however,

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is from a gentleman whose notion is
that we should be hypnotized into mental

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efficiency after advocating the establishment of quote
an institution of practical psychology, from whence

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there can be graduated, fit and
proper people whose efforts would be in the

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direction of the subconscious mental mechanism of
the child or even the adult end quote.

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This hypnotist proceeds quote between the academician
whose speciality is an inconsequential cobweb,

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the medical man who has got it
into his head that he is the logical

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foster father for psychonomical matters, and
the blatant professor who deals with monkey tricks

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on a few some nambules on the
musical stage, you are allowing to go

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unrecognized one of the most potent factors
of mental development end quote. Am I

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I have not the least idea what
this gentleman means, but I can assure

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him that he is wrong. I
can make more sense out of the remarks

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of another correspondent, who, utterly
despising the things of the mind, compares

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a certain class of young men to
a hapenny bloater with the row out,

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and asserts that he himself got out
of the groove by dint of having to

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unload ten tons of coal in three
hours and a half every day during several

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years. This is interesting, and
it is constructive, but it is just

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a little beside the point. A
lady, whose optimism is indicated by her

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pseudonym Esperance, puts her finger on
the spot, or rather on one of

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the spots. In a very sensible
letter, it appears to me, she

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says that the great cause of mental
inefficiency is lack of concentration, perhaps especially

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in the case of women. I
can trace my chief failures to this cause.

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Concentration is a talent. It may
be in a measure cultivated, but

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it needs to be inborn. The
greater number of us are in a state

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of semi slumber, with minds which
are only exerted to one half of their

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capability. I thoroughly agree that inability
to concentrate is one of the chief symptoms

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of the mental machine being out of
condition. Esperance's suggested cure is rather drastic.

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She says, perhaps one of the
best cures for mental sedentariness is arithmetic,

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for there is nothing else which requires
greater power of com concentration. Perhaps

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arithmetic might be an effective cure,
but it is not a practical cure because

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no one, or scarcely any one, would practice it. I cannot imagine

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the plain man, who, having
a couple of hours to spare of a

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night, and having also the sincere
desire but not the will power to improve

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his taste and knowledge, would deliberately
sit down and work sums by way of

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preliminary mental calisthenics. As Ibsen's puppet
said, people don't do these things.

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Why do they not? The answer
is simply because they won't, simply because

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human nature will not run to it. Esperance's suggestion of learning poetry is slightly

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better. Certainly, the best letter
I have had is from miss h D.

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She says, this idea to avoid
the reproach of living and dying without

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ever really knowing anything about anything,
came to me of itself from somewhere when

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I was a small girl, and
looking back, I fancy that the thought

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itself spurred me to do something in
this world, to get into line with

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people who did things, people who
painted pictures, wrote books, built bridges,

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or did something beyond the ordinary.
This only has seemed to me all

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my life since. Worth while,
here I must interject that such a statement

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is somewhat sweeping. In fact,
it sweeps a whole lot of fine and

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legitimate ambitions straight into the rubbish heap
of the not worth while, I think

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the writer would wish to modify it. She continues. And when the day

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comes in which I have not done
some serious reading, however small the measure,

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or some writing, or I have
been too sad or dull to notice

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the brightness of color of the sun, of grass and flowers of the sea,

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or the moonlight on the water,
I think the day ill spent.

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So I must think the incentive to
do a little each day beyond the ordinary,

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towards the real culture of the mind
is the beginning of the cure of

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mental inefficiency. This is very ingenious
and good. Further, the day comes

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when the mental habit has become a
part of our life and we value mental

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work for the work's sake, but
I am not sure about that. For

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myself, I have never valued work
for its own sake, and I never

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shall. And I only value such
mental work for the more full and more

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intense consciousness of being alive which it
gives me. Miss h D's remedies are

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vague As to lack of will power. The first step is to realize your

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weakness. The next step is to
have ordinary shame that you are defective.

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I doubt, I gravely doubt if
these steps would lead to anything definite,

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Nor is this very helpful. I
would advise reading, observing, writing.

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I would advise the use of every
sense and every faculty by which we at

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last learn the sacredness of life.
This is begging the question. If people,

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by merely wishing to do so,
could regularly and seriously read, observe,

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write, and use every faculty and
sense, there would be very little

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mental inefficiency. I see that I
shall be driven to construct a program out

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of my own bitter and ridiculous experiences
the cure. But tasks in hours of

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insight willed can be through hours of
gloom fulfilled. The above lines from Matthew

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Arnold are quoted by one of my
very numerous correspondents to support a certain optimism

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in this matter of a systematic attempt
to improve the mind. They form part

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of a beautiful and inspiring poem,
but I gravely fear that they run counter

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to the vast mass of earthly experience. More often than not, I have

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found that a task willed in some
hour of insight can not be fulfilled through

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hours of gloom. No, no, and no to will is easy.

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It needs but the momentary, bright
contagion of a stronger spirit than one's own,

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to fulfill morning after morning, or
evening after evening, through months and

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years. This is the very dickens
And there is not one of my readers

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that will not agree with me.
Yet, such is the elastic quality of

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human nature that most of my correspondents
are quite ready to ignore the sad fact

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and to demand at once, what
shall we will? Tell us what we

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must will. Some seem to think
that they have solved the difficulty when they

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have advocated certain systems of memory and
mind training. Such systems may be in

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themselves useful or useless. The evidence
furnished to me is contradictory. But were

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they perfect systems? A man cannot
be intellectually born again merely by joining a

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memory class. The best system depends
utterly on the man's power of resolution.

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And what really counts is not the
system, but the spirit in which the

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man handles it. Now, the
proper spirit can only be induced by a

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careful consideration and realization of the man's
conditions, the limitations of his temperament,

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the strengths of adverse influences, and
the lessons of his past. Let me

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take an average case. Let me
take your case, O man or woman

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of thirty living in comfort, with
some cares and some responsibilities, and some

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pretty hard daily work, but not
too much of any The question of mental

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efficiency is in the air. It
interests you, It touches you nearly.

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Your conscience tells you that your mind
is less active and less informed than it

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might be. You suddenly spring up
from the garden seat, and you say

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to yourself that you will take your
mind in hand and do something with it.

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Wait a moment, be so good
as to sink back into that garden

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seat and clutch that tennis racket a
little longer. You have had these hours

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of insight. Before you know,
you have not arrived at the age of

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thirty, without having tried to carry
out noble resolutions and failed. What precautions

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are you going to take against failure
this time? For your will is probably

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no stronger now than it was aforetime. You have admitted and accepted failure in

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the past, and no wound is
more cruel to the spirit of resolve than

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that dealt by failure. You fancy
the wound closed, but just at the

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critical moment, it may reopen and
mortally bleed you. What are your precautions?

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Have you thought of them? No, you have not. I have

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not the pleasure of your acquaintance,
but I know you because I know myself.

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Your failure in the past was due
to one or more of three causes,

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and the first was that you undertook
too much at the beginning. You

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started off with a magnificent program.
You are something of an expert in physical

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exercises. You would be ashamed not
to be in these physical days, and

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so you would never attempt to hurdle
race or an uninterrupted hour's club whirling without

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some preparation. The analogy between the
body and the mind ought to have struck

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you this time. Please do not
form an elaborate program. Do not form

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any program. Please content yourself with
a preliminary canter, a ridiculously easy preliminary

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canter, for example. And I
give this merely as an example. You

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might say to yourself. Within one
month from this date, I will read

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twice Herbert Spencer's Little Book on Education
sixpence, and will make notes in pencil

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inside the back cover of the things
that particularly strike me. You remark that

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that is nothing that you can do
it on your head, and so on.

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Well do it. When it is
done, you will, at any

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rate possess the satisfaction of having resolved
to do something, and having done it,

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your mind will have gained tone and
healthy pride. You will be even

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justified in setting yourself some kind of
a simple program to extend over three months,

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and you will have acquired some general
principle by the light of which to

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construct the program. But best of
all, you will have avoided failure,

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that dangerous wound. The second possible
cause of previous failure was the disintegrating effect

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on the willpower of the ironic superior
smile of friends. Whenever a man turns

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over a new leaf, he has
this inane giggle to face the drunkard may

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be less ashamed of getting drunk than
of breaking to a crony the news that

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he has signed the pledge. Strange, but true, and human nature must

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be counted with. Of course,
on a few stern spirits, the effect

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of that smile is merely to harden
the resolution, but on the majority,

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its influence is deleterious. Therefore,
don't go and nail your flag to the

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mast, don't raise any flag,
say nothing. Work as unobtrusively as you

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can. When you have won a
battle or two, you can begin to

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wave the banner, and then you
will find that that miserable, pitiful,

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ironic, superior smile will die away
ere it is borne. The third possible

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cause was that you did not rearrange
your day, idler and time wasted though

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you have been still you had done
something during the twenty four hours. You

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went to work with a kind of
dim idea that there were twenty six hours

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in every day. Something large and
definite has to be dropped. Some space

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in the rank jungle of the day
has to be cleared and swept up for

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the new operations. Robbing yourself of
sleep won't help you, nor trying to

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squeeze in a time for study between
two other times. Use the knife and

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use it freely. If you mean
to read or think. Half an hour

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a day arranged for an hour one
hundred percent margin is not too much for

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a beginner. Do you ask me
where the knife is to be used?

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I should say that in nine cases
out of ten, the rights of the

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cult of the body might be abbreviated. I recently spent a weekend in a

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London suburb, and I was staggered
by the wholesale attention given to physical recreation

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in all its forms. It was
a gigantic debauch of the muscles on every

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side. It shocked me, poor
withering mind. I thought, cricket and

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football, and boating and golf and
tennis have their seasons. But not thou.

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These considerations are general and preferatory.
Now I must come to detail mental

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calisthenics. I have dealt with the
state of mind in which one should begin

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a serious effort towards mental efficiency,
and also with the probable causes of failure

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in previous efforts. We come now
to what I may call the calisthenics of

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the business exercises, which may be
roughly compared to the technical exercises necessary in

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learning to play a musical instrument.
It is curious that a person studying a

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musical instrument will have no false shame
whatever in doing mere exercises for the fingers

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and wrists, while a person who
is trying to get his mind into order

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will almost certainly experience a false shame
in going through performances which are undoubtedly good

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for him. Herein lies one of
the great obstacles to mental efficiency. Tell

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a man that he should join a
memory class, and he will hum and

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haul and say, as I have
already remarked, that memory isn't everything.

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And in short, he won't join
the memory class, partly from indolence,

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I grant, but more from false
shame. Is not this true? He

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will even hesitate about learning things by
heart. Yet there are few mental exercises

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better than learning great poetry or prose
by heart twenty lines a week for six

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months. What a cure for debility. The chief, but not the only,

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merit of learning by heart as an
exercise is that it compels the mind

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to concentrate, And the most important
preliminary to self development is the faculty of

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concentrating at will. Another excellent exercise
is to read a page of no matter

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what, and then immediately to write
down in one's own words or in the

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author's one's full recollection of it.
A quarter of an hour a day,

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no more, and it works like
magic. This brings me to the department

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of writing. I am a writer
by profession, but I do not think

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I have any prejudices in favor of
the exercise of writing. Indeed, I

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say to myself every morning that if
there is one exercise in the world which

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I hate, it is the exercise
of writing. But I must assert that,

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in my opinion, the exercise of
writing is an indispensable part of any

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genuine effort towards mental efficiency. I
don't care much what you write, so

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long as you compose sentences and achieve
continuity. There are forty ways of writing

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in an unprofessional manner, and they
are all good. You may keep a

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full diary, as mister Arthur Christopher
Benson says he does. This is one

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of the least good ways diaries,
save in experienced hands like those of mister

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Benson, are apt to get themselves
done with the very minimum of mental effort.

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They also tend to an exaggeration of
egotism, and if they are left

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lying about, they tend to strife. Further, one never knows when one

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may not be compelled to produce them
in a court of law. A journal

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is better. Do not ask me
to define the difference between a journal and

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a diary. I will not,
and I cannot. It is a difference

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that one feels instinctively. A diary
treats exclusively of one's self and one's doings.

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A journal roams wider and notes whatever
one has observed of interest. A

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00:31:59.640 --> 00:32:04.640
diary relates that one had lobster mayonnaise
for dinner and rose the next morning with

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a headache doubtless attributable to mental strain. A journal relates that Missus Blank,

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whom one took in to dinner,
had brown eyes and an agreeable trick of

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00:32:15.359 --> 00:32:21.160
throwing back her head after asking a
question, and gives her account of her

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husband's strange adventures in Colorado, et
cetera. A diary is all iii itself.

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I to quote a line of the
transcendental poetry of Mary Baker g Eddy,

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A journal is the large spectacle of
life. A journal may be special

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or general. I know a man
who keeps a journal of all cases of

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00:32:49.319 --> 00:32:55.400
current superstition which he actually encounters.
He began it without the slightest suspicion that

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00:32:55.480 --> 00:33:01.279
he was beginning a document of astounding
interest and real scientific value. But such

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was the fact. In default of
a diary or a journal, one may

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write essays, provided one has the
moral courage, or one may simply make

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notes on the book one reads.
Or one may construct anthologies of passages which

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00:33:19.039 --> 00:33:25.200
have made an individual and particular appeal
to one's tastes. Anthology construction is one

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00:33:25.200 --> 00:33:30.880
of the pleasantest hobbies that a person
who is not mad about golf and bridge,

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00:33:30.319 --> 00:33:35.720
that is to say, a thinking
person can possibly have, And I

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00:33:35.799 --> 00:33:39.039
recommend it to those who, discreetly, mistrusting their power to keep up a

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00:33:39.079 --> 00:33:45.559
fast pace from start to finish,
are anxious to begin their intellectual course gently

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00:33:45.640 --> 00:33:52.200
and mildly. In any event,
writing the act of writing is vital to

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almost any scheme. I would say
it was vital to every scheme without exception,

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were I not sure that some kind
correspondent would instantly point out a scheme

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00:34:05.400 --> 00:34:14.760
to which writing was obviously not vital. After writing comes thinking, the sequence

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00:34:14.840 --> 00:34:20.079
may be considered odd, but I
adhere to it in this connection, I

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00:34:20.119 --> 00:34:24.079
cannot do better than quote an admirable
letter which I have received from a correspondent

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00:34:24.320 --> 00:34:31.400
who wishes to be known only as
an Oxford lecturer. The italics except the

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last are mine, not his.
He says, quote till a man has

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00:34:38.079 --> 00:34:45.480
got his physical brain completely under his
control, in italics, suppressing its too

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00:34:45.559 --> 00:34:51.519
great receptivity, its tendencies to reproduce
idly the thoughts of others, and to

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00:34:51.599 --> 00:34:57.400
be swayed by every passing gust of
emotion. End of italics, I hold

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that he cannot do a tense part
of the work that he would then be

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00:35:00.199 --> 00:35:06.960
able to perform with little or no
effort. Moreover, work apart, he

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has not entered upon his kingdom,
and unlimited possibilities of future development are barred

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to him. Mental efficiency can be
gained by constant practice in meditation, i

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00:35:20.480 --> 00:35:24.119
e. By concentrating the mind,
say for but ten minutes daily, but

353
00:35:24.320 --> 00:35:30.719
with absolute regularity, on some of
the highest thoughts of which it is capable.

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Failures will be frequent, but they
must be regarded with simple indifference and

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dogged perseverance in the path chosen.
If that path be followed without intermission,

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00:35:45.760 --> 00:35:52.480
even for a few weeks, the
results will speak for themselves. End quote.

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I thoroughly agree with what this correspondent
says, and am obliged to him

358
00:35:58.199 --> 00:36:02.320
for having so ably stated the case. But I regard such a practice of

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00:36:02.440 --> 00:36:07.519
meditation as he indicates, as being
rather an advanced exercise for a beginner.

360
00:36:08.599 --> 00:36:14.679
After the beginner has got underweigh and
gained a little confidence in his strength of

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purpose, and acquired the skill to
define his thoughts sufficiently to write them down,

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then it would be time enough,
in my view, to undertake what

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00:36:23.719 --> 00:36:31.280
an Oxford lecturer suggests. By the
way, he highly recommends missus Annie Besant's

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00:36:31.280 --> 00:36:37.920
book Thought, Power, Its Control
and Culture. He says that it treats

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00:36:37.960 --> 00:36:43.360
the subject with scientific clearness and gives
a practical method of training the mind.

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00:36:44.400 --> 00:36:50.199
I endorse the latter part of the
statement so much for the more or less

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00:36:50.239 --> 00:36:55.159
technical processes of stirring the mind from
its sloth and making it exactly obedient to

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the aspirations of the soul. And
here I close. Numerous correspondents have asked

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me to outline a course of reading
for them. In other words, they

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have asked me to particularize for them
the aspirations of their souls. My subject

371
00:37:13.960 --> 00:37:19.880
however, was not self development.
My subject was mental efficiency as a means

372
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to self development. Of course,
one can only acquire mental efficiency in the

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actual effort of self development. But
I was concerned not with the choice of

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00:37:30.519 --> 00:37:36.760
route, rather with the manner of
following the route. You say to me

375
00:37:36.840 --> 00:37:40.440
that I am busying myself with the
best method of walking and refusing to discuss

376
00:37:40.480 --> 00:37:47.320
where to go precisely, One man
cannot tell another man where the other man

377
00:37:47.400 --> 00:37:53.400
wants to go. If he can't
himself decide on a goal, he may

378
00:37:53.400 --> 00:37:58.360
as well curl up and expire,
for the root of the matter is not

379
00:37:58.679 --> 00:38:05.239
in him. I will content myself
with pointing out that the entire universe is

380
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open for inspection. Too many people
fancy that self development means literature. They

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00:38:13.159 --> 00:38:17.679
associate the higher life with an intimate
knowledge of the life of Charlotte Bronte or

382
00:38:17.719 --> 00:38:22.599
the order of the plays of Shakespeare. The higher life may just as well

383
00:38:22.599 --> 00:38:29.280
be butterflies or funeral customs, or
county boundaries, or street names, or

384
00:38:29.360 --> 00:38:36.119
mosses or stars or slugs as Charlotte
Bronte or Shakespeare. Choose what interests you.

385
00:38:37.400 --> 00:38:43.679
Lots of finely organized, mentally efficient
persons can't read Shakespeare at any price.

386
00:38:44.360 --> 00:38:46.880
And if you asked them who was
the author of the Tenant of Wildfell

387
00:38:46.960 --> 00:38:52.960
Hall, they might proudly answer Emily
Bronte, if they didn't say they never

388
00:38:52.039 --> 00:38:59.800
heard of it. An accurate knowledge
of any subject coupled with a carefully nurtured

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00:38:59.800 --> 00:39:06.880
sense that the relativity of that subject
to other subjects implies an enormous self development.

390
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With this hint, I conclude end
of section one, Chapter two of

391
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Mental Efficiency. This LibriVox recording is
in the public domain recording by Ruth Golding.

392
00:39:34.920 --> 00:39:39.280
Mental Efficiency and Other Hints to Men
and Women by Arnold Bennett, Chapter

393
00:39:39.360 --> 00:39:49.719
two, Expressing one's individuality. A
most curious and useful thing to realize is

394
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that one never knows the impression one
is creating on other people. One may

395
00:39:54.280 --> 00:40:00.599
often guess pretty accurately whether it is
good, bad, or indifferent. Some

396
00:40:00.679 --> 00:40:05.599
people render it unnecessary for one to
guess. They practically inform one. But

397
00:40:05.679 --> 00:40:09.719
that is not what I mean.
I mean much more than that. I

398
00:40:09.840 --> 00:40:15.599
mean that one has one's self no
mental picture corresponding to the mental picture which

399
00:40:15.639 --> 00:40:22.679
one's personality leaves in the minds of
one's friends. Has it ever struck you

400
00:40:22.840 --> 00:40:28.960
that there is a mysterious individual going
around walking the streets, calling at houses

401
00:40:29.000 --> 00:40:34.320
for tea, chatting, laughing,
grumbling, arguing, and that all your

402
00:40:34.360 --> 00:40:37.679
friends know him and have long since
added him up and come to a definite

403
00:40:37.719 --> 00:40:45.000
conclusion about him without saying more than
a chance cautious word to you, And

404
00:40:45.039 --> 00:40:51.880
that that person is you. Supposing
that you came into a drawing room where

405
00:40:51.880 --> 00:40:57.880
you were having tea, do you
think you would recognize yourself as an individuality?

406
00:40:59.159 --> 00:41:04.840
I think you would be apt to
say to yourself, as guests do

407
00:41:05.000 --> 00:41:10.320
when disturbed in drawing rooms by other
guests whose this chap seems rather queer.

408
00:41:10.639 --> 00:41:15.360
I hope you won't be a bore, and your first telling would be slightly

409
00:41:15.519 --> 00:41:21.960
hostile. Why, even when you
meet yourself in an unsuspected mirror, in

410
00:41:22.000 --> 00:41:24.239
the very clothes that you have put
on that very day and that you know

411
00:41:24.440 --> 00:41:30.679
by heart, you are almost always
shocked by the realization that you are you.

412
00:41:31.480 --> 00:41:36.000
And now and then, when you
have gone to the glass to arrange

413
00:41:36.000 --> 00:41:38.960
your hair in the full sobriety of
early morning, have you not looked on

414
00:41:39.079 --> 00:41:47.199
an absolute stranger? And has not
that stranger piqued your curiosity? And if

415
00:41:47.199 --> 00:41:52.679
it is thus with precise external details
of form, color, and movement.

416
00:41:53.639 --> 00:41:59.599
What may it not be with the
vague complex effect of the mental and moral

417
00:41:59.639 --> 00:42:07.519
interval duality. A man honestly tries
to make a good impression, what is

418
00:42:07.559 --> 00:42:12.519
the result. The result merely is
that his friends, in the privacy of

419
00:42:12.559 --> 00:42:15.199
their minds, set him down as
a man who tries to make a good

420
00:42:15.199 --> 00:42:22.320
impression. If much depends on the
result of a single interview or a couple

421
00:42:22.320 --> 00:42:27.880
of interviews, a man may conceivably
force another to accept an impression of himself

422
00:42:27.920 --> 00:42:32.559
which he would like to convey.
But if the receiver of the impression is

423
00:42:32.599 --> 00:42:37.920
to have time at his disposal,
then the giver of the impression may just

424
00:42:37.960 --> 00:42:40.320
as well sit down and put his
hands in his pockets, for nothing that

425
00:42:40.400 --> 00:42:45.400
he can do will modify or influence
in any way the impression that he will

426
00:42:45.480 --> 00:42:53.400
ultimately give. The real impress is
in the end given unconsciously, not consciously.

427
00:42:54.159 --> 00:43:00.639
And further, it is received unconsciously
not consciously. It depends partly on

428
00:43:00.800 --> 00:43:08.039
both persons, and it is immutably
fixed beforehand. There can be no final

429
00:43:08.119 --> 00:43:15.840
deception. Take the extreme case that
of the mother and her son. One

430
00:43:15.880 --> 00:43:21.599
hears that the son hoodwinks his mother, not he If he is cruel,

431
00:43:21.760 --> 00:43:27.679
neglectful, overbearing, she is perfectly
aware of it. He does not deceive

432
00:43:27.719 --> 00:43:32.280
her, and she does not deceive
herself. I have often thought, if

433
00:43:32.320 --> 00:43:37.840
a son could look into a mother's
heart, what an eye opener he would

434
00:43:37.880 --> 00:43:45.480
have? What he would cry?
This cold, impartial judgment, this keen

435
00:43:45.679 --> 00:43:52.800
vision for my faults, this implacable
memory of little slights and injustices and callousnesses

436
00:43:52.039 --> 00:43:58.920
committed long ago, in the breast
of my mother. Yes, my friend,

437
00:43:59.400 --> 00:44:04.639
in the breath of your mother.
The only difference between your mother and

438
00:44:04.719 --> 00:44:08.840
another person is that she takes you
as you are and loves you for what

439
00:44:08.920 --> 00:44:16.199
you are. She isn't blind.
Do not imagine it. The marvel is

440
00:44:16.639 --> 00:44:21.880
not that people are such bad judges
of character, but that they are such

441
00:44:21.960 --> 00:44:29.079
good judges, especially of what I
may call fundamental character. The wiliest person

442
00:44:29.320 --> 00:44:36.880
cannot forever conceal his fundamental character from
the simplest, and people are very stern

443
00:44:37.079 --> 00:44:43.719
judges too. Think of your best
friends. Are you oblivious of their defects?

444
00:44:44.519 --> 00:44:49.719
On the contrary, you are perhaps
too conscious of them when you summon

445
00:44:49.760 --> 00:44:55.119
them before your mind's eye. It
is no ideal creation that you see when

446
00:44:55.199 --> 00:45:00.920
you meet them and talk to them, you are constantly making reserv in their

447
00:45:00.960 --> 00:45:05.840
disfavor, unless, of course,
you happen to be a schoolgirl gushing over

448
00:45:06.039 --> 00:45:12.039
like a fountain with enthusiasm. It
is well when one is judging a friend

449
00:45:12.079 --> 00:45:16.840
to remember that he is judging you
with the same godlike and superior impartiality.

450
00:45:19.199 --> 00:45:22.840
It is well to grasp the fact
that you are going through life under the

451
00:45:22.880 --> 00:45:29.000
scrutiny of a band of acquaintances who
are subject to very few illusions about you,

452
00:45:29.679 --> 00:45:34.320
whose views of you are indeed apt
to be harsh and even cruel.

453
00:45:35.800 --> 00:45:40.199
Above all, it is advisable to
comprehend thoroughly that the things in your individuality

454
00:45:40.440 --> 00:45:46.800
which annoy your friends most are the
things of which you are completely unconscious.

455
00:45:47.639 --> 00:45:52.960
It is not until years have passed
that one begins to be able to form

456
00:45:52.000 --> 00:45:59.440
a dim idea of what one has
looked like to one's friends. At forty

457
00:45:59.559 --> 00:46:04.039
one goes back ten years, and
one says, sadly, but with a

458
00:46:04.039 --> 00:46:07.840
certain amusement, A, I must
have been pretty blatant. Then I can

459
00:46:07.920 --> 00:46:13.360
see how I must have exasperated them. And yet I hadn't the faintest notion

460
00:46:13.480 --> 00:46:17.320
of it. At the time,
my intentions were of the best, only

461
00:46:17.360 --> 00:46:25.880
I didn't know enough. And one
recollects some particularly crude action and kicks oneself.

462
00:46:28.199 --> 00:46:31.960
Yes, that is all very well, and the enlightenment which has come

463
00:46:32.039 --> 00:46:39.000
with increasing age is exceedingly satisfactory.
But you are forty now what shall you

464
00:46:39.039 --> 00:46:46.079
be saying of yourself at fifty?
Such reflections foster humility, and they foster

465
00:46:46.239 --> 00:46:52.920
also a reluctance which it is impossible
to praise too highly to tread on other

466
00:46:52.039 --> 00:47:00.760
people's toes. A moment ago I
used the phrase fundamental character. It is

467
00:47:00.800 --> 00:47:07.039
a reminiscence of Stephenson's phrase fundamental decency, and it is the final test by

468
00:47:07.039 --> 00:47:13.199
which one judges one's friends. After
all, he is a decent fellow.

469
00:47:15.119 --> 00:47:21.159
We must be able to use that
formula concerning our friends. Kindliness of heart

470
00:47:21.679 --> 00:47:25.679
is not the greatest of human qualities, and its general effect on the progress

471
00:47:25.679 --> 00:47:31.320
of the world is not entirely beneficent. But it is the greatest of human

472
00:47:31.400 --> 00:47:38.039
qualities in friendship. It is the
least dispensable quality. We come back to

473
00:47:38.119 --> 00:47:44.880
it with relief from more brilliant qualities, and it has the great advantage of

474
00:47:45.000 --> 00:47:51.039
always going with a broad mind.
Narrow minded people are never kind hearted.

475
00:47:52.320 --> 00:47:58.039
You may be inclined to dispute this
statement, Please think it over. I

476
00:47:58.079 --> 00:48:06.159
am inclined to uphold it. We
can forgive the absence of any quality except

477
00:48:06.400 --> 00:48:12.000
kindliness of heart, And when a
man lacks that, we blame him,

478
00:48:12.079 --> 00:48:15.639
we will not forgive him. This
is, of course scandalous. A man

479
00:48:15.760 --> 00:48:20.400
is born as he is born,
and he can as easily add a cubit

480
00:48:20.519 --> 00:48:24.639
to his stature as add kindliness to
his heart. The feet never has been

481
00:48:24.719 --> 00:48:30.719
done, and never will be done. And yet we blame those who have

482
00:48:30.840 --> 00:48:37.360
not kindliness. We have the incredible, insufferable and odious audacity to blame them.

483
00:48:37.639 --> 00:48:40.639
We think of them as though they
had nothing to do but go into

484
00:48:40.679 --> 00:48:47.360
a shop and buy kindliness. I
hear you say that kindliness of heart can

485
00:48:47.400 --> 00:48:53.559
be cultivated. Well, I hate
to have even the appearance of contradicting you,

486
00:48:54.039 --> 00:49:00.360
but it can only be cultivated in
the botanical sense. You can't cultivate

487
00:49:00.639 --> 00:49:06.599
violets on a nettle. A philosopher
has enjoined us to suffer fools gladly.

488
00:49:07.760 --> 00:49:15.199
He had more usefully enjoined us to
suffer ill natured persons gladly. I see

489
00:49:15.320 --> 00:49:19.119
that, in a fit of absent
mindedness, I have strayed into the pulpit.

490
00:49:20.360 --> 00:49:34.880
I descend end of chapter two,
Chapter three of Mental Efficiency. This

491
00:49:35.079 --> 00:49:42.000
LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Ruth Golding Mental Efficiency and

492
00:49:42.119 --> 00:49:46.519
Other Hints to Men and Women by
Arnold Bennett, Chapter three, Breaking with

493
00:49:46.639 --> 00:49:53.679
the Past. On that dark morning, we woke up, and it instantly

494
00:49:53.719 --> 00:49:58.559
occurred to us, or at any
rate to those of us who have preserved

495
00:49:58.679 --> 00:50:04.480
some of our illusions and our naivete
that we had something to be cheerful about,

496
00:50:05.159 --> 00:50:09.440
some cause for a gay and strenuous
vivacity. And then we remembered that

497
00:50:09.519 --> 00:50:15.920
it was New Year's Day, and
there were those resolutions to put into force.

498
00:50:15.880 --> 00:50:20.920
Of course, we all smile in
a superior manner at the very mention

499
00:50:21.079 --> 00:50:24.880
of New Year's resolutions. We pretend
they are toys for children, and that

500
00:50:24.920 --> 00:50:30.159
we have long since ceased to regard
them seriously as a possible aid to conduct.

501
00:50:31.639 --> 00:50:38.800
But we are such deceivers, such
miserable moral cowards, in such terror

502
00:50:38.960 --> 00:50:44.119
of appearing naive, that I for
one am not to be taken in by

503
00:50:44.199 --> 00:50:50.239
that smile and that pretense. The
individual who scoffs at New Year's resolutions,

504
00:50:50.599 --> 00:50:54.079
resembles the woman who says she doesn't
look under the bed at nights. The

505
00:50:54.199 --> 00:50:59.199
truth is not in him. And
in the very moment of his lying,

506
00:50:59.559 --> 00:51:06.480
could he his cranium suddenly become transparent. We should see resolutions burning brightly in

507
00:51:06.559 --> 00:51:13.000
his brain like lamps in Trafalgar Square. Of this, I am convinced that

508
00:51:13.280 --> 00:51:19.440
nineteen twentieths of us got out of
bed that morning animated by that special feeling

509
00:51:19.719 --> 00:51:28.480
of gay and strenuous vivacity which resolutions
alone can produce, And nineteen twentieths of

510
00:51:28.599 --> 00:51:34.199
us were also conscious of a high
virtue, forgetting that it is not the

511
00:51:34.239 --> 00:51:39.159
making of resolutions, but the keeping
of them, which renders pardonable the consciousness

512
00:51:39.159 --> 00:51:45.239
of virtue. And at this hour, while the activity of the resolution is

513
00:51:45.360 --> 00:51:52.159
yet in full blast, I would
wish to insist on the truism obvious perhaps,

514
00:51:52.199 --> 00:51:57.079
but apt to be overlooked, that
a man cannot go forward and stand

515
00:51:57.199 --> 00:52:02.719
still at the same time. Just
as moralists have often animadverted on the tendency

516
00:52:02.760 --> 00:52:07.320
to live in the future, so
I would anim advert upon the tendency to

517
00:52:07.360 --> 00:52:14.760
live in the past, because all
around me I see men carefully tying themselves

518
00:52:14.800 --> 00:52:19.559
with an unbreakable rope to an immovable
post at the bottom of a hill,

519
00:52:20.079 --> 00:52:24.639
and then struggling to climb the hill. If there is one resolution more important

520
00:52:24.719 --> 00:52:30.400
than another, it is the resolution
to break with the past. If life

521
00:52:30.480 --> 00:52:37.320
is not a continual denial of the
past, then it is nothing. This

522
00:52:37.639 --> 00:52:43.000
may seem a hard and callous doctrine, but you know, there are aspects

523
00:52:43.000 --> 00:52:49.960
of common sense which decidedly are hard
and callous, and one finds constantly in

524
00:52:50.079 --> 00:52:58.599
plain common sense persons o rare and
select band a surprising quality of ruthlessness mingled

525
00:52:58.639 --> 00:53:06.599
with softer traits. Have you not
noticed it? The past is absolutely intractable.

526
00:53:07.280 --> 00:53:13.480
One can't do anything with it,
and an exaggerated attention to it is

527
00:53:13.639 --> 00:53:20.039
like an exaggerated attention to sepulchers,
a sign of barbarism. Moreover, the

528
00:53:20.119 --> 00:53:25.199
past is usually the enemy of cheerfulness, and cheerfulness is a most precious attainment.

529
00:53:27.599 --> 00:53:31.559
Personally, I could even go so
far as to exhibit hostility towards grief

530
00:53:31.920 --> 00:53:37.239
and a marked hostility towards remorse,
two states of mind which feed on the

531
00:53:37.320 --> 00:53:43.400
past instead of on the present.
Remorse, which is not the same thing

532
00:53:43.480 --> 00:53:49.800
as repentance serves no purpose that I
have ever been able to discover what one

533
00:53:49.840 --> 00:53:53.360
has done. One has done,
and there's an end of it. As

534
00:53:53.400 --> 00:54:00.760
a great prelate unforgettably said quote,
things are what they are, and the

535
00:54:00.800 --> 00:54:05.320
consequences of them will be what they
will be. Why then, attempt to

536
00:54:05.360 --> 00:54:12.719
deceive ourselves? End? Quote that
remorse for wickedness is a useful and praiseworthy

537
00:54:12.760 --> 00:54:17.800
exercise, much better to forget.
As a matter of fact, people indulge

538
00:54:17.880 --> 00:54:23.760
in remorse. It is a somewhat
vicious form of spiritual pleasure. Grief,

539
00:54:23.880 --> 00:54:29.599
of course, is different, and
it must be handled with delicate consideration.

540
00:54:30.079 --> 00:54:35.599
Nevertheless, when I see, as
one does, see a man or a

541
00:54:35.639 --> 00:54:40.639
woman dedicating existence to sorrow for the
loss of a beloved creature, and the

542
00:54:40.679 --> 00:54:49.159
world tacitly applauding, my feeling is
certainly inimical to my idea that man or

543
00:54:49.159 --> 00:54:54.519
woman is not honoring but dishonoring the
memory of the departed. Society suffers,

544
00:54:54.920 --> 00:55:02.000
the individual suffers, and no earthly
or heavenly good is achieved. Grief is

545
00:55:02.039 --> 00:55:07.719
of the past, it mars the
present. It is a form of indulgence,

546
00:55:07.960 --> 00:55:13.679
and it ought to be bridled much
more than it often is. The

547
00:55:13.800 --> 00:55:20.119
human heart is so large that mere
remembrance should not be allowed to tyrannize over

548
00:55:20.199 --> 00:55:27.880
every part of it. But cases
of remorse and absorbing grief are comparatively rare.

549
00:55:29.079 --> 00:55:34.519
What is not rare is that misguided
loyalty to the past which dominates the

550
00:55:34.559 --> 00:55:38.199
lives of so many of us.
I do not speak of leading principles,

551
00:55:38.360 --> 00:55:43.760
which are not likely to incommode us
by changing. I speak of secondary,

552
00:55:43.840 --> 00:55:49.480
yet still important things. We will
not do so and so because we have

553
00:55:49.599 --> 00:55:53.880
never done it, as if that
was a reason, or we have always

554
00:55:53.920 --> 00:55:59.800
done so, and so therefore we
must always do it as if that was

555
00:56:00.920 --> 00:56:08.159
This disposition to an irrational toryism is
curiously discoverable in advanced radicals, and it

556
00:56:08.199 --> 00:56:15.480
will show itself in the various trifles. I remember such a man whose wife

557
00:56:15.599 --> 00:56:20.719
objected to his form of hat.
Not that I would call so crowning an

558
00:56:20.760 --> 00:56:25.559
affair as a hat a trifle,
my dear, he protested, I have

559
00:56:25.800 --> 00:56:30.079
always worn this sort of hat.
It may not suit me, but it

560
00:56:30.159 --> 00:56:37.199
is absolutely impossible for me to alter
it now. However, she took him,

561
00:56:37.239 --> 00:56:40.039
by means of an omnibus to a
hat shop, and bought him another

562
00:56:40.119 --> 00:56:45.000
hat and put it on his head, and made a present of the old

563
00:56:45.000 --> 00:56:49.480
one to the shop assistant, and
marked him out of the shop. There

564
00:56:50.079 --> 00:56:57.119
she said, you see how impossible
it is. This is a parable and

565
00:56:57.159 --> 00:57:02.079
I will not insult your intelligence by
a plan eyeing it. The faculty that

566
00:57:02.199 --> 00:57:07.679
we chiefly need when we are in
the resolution making mood is the faculty of

567
00:57:07.719 --> 00:57:12.880
imagination, the faculty of looking at
our lives as though we had never looked

568
00:57:12.920 --> 00:57:17.519
at them before, freshly with a
new eye. Supposing that you had been

569
00:57:17.599 --> 00:57:23.079
born mature and full of experience,
and that yesterday had been the first day

570
00:57:23.159 --> 00:57:29.079
of your life, you would regard
it to day as an experiment. You

571
00:57:29.119 --> 00:57:32.599
would challenge each act in it,
and you would probably arrange to morrow in

572
00:57:32.639 --> 00:57:38.239
a manner that showed a healthy disrespect
for yesterday. You certainly would not say,

573
00:57:38.480 --> 00:57:43.039
I have done so and so once. Therefore I must keep on doing

574
00:57:43.079 --> 00:57:51.079
it. The past is never more
than an experiment. A genuine appreciation of

575
00:57:51.119 --> 00:57:57.360
this fact will make our new resolutions
more valuable and drastic than they usually are.

576
00:57:58.719 --> 00:58:01.599
I have a dim notion that the
most useful resolution for most of us

577
00:58:01.719 --> 00:58:07.079
would be to break quite fifty percent
of all the vowels we have ever made.

578
00:58:07.679 --> 00:58:15.559
Quote. Do not accustom yourself to
enchain your volatility with vows. Take

579
00:58:15.760 --> 00:58:21.960
this warning. It is of great
importance. End quote. The wisdom is

580
00:58:22.079 --> 00:58:36.039
Johnson's, but I flatter myself on
the italics end of chapter three, Chapter

581
00:58:36.119 --> 00:58:43.360
four of Mental Efficiency. This LibriVox
recording is in the public domain. Recording

582
00:58:43.440 --> 00:58:49.840
by Ruth Golding. Mental Efficiency and
Other Hints to Men and Women by Arnold

583
00:58:49.920 --> 00:58:58.119
Bennett, Chapter four, Settling down
in life. The other day a well

584
00:58:58.159 --> 00:59:06.039
known English novelist asked me how old
I thought she was? Really well,

585
00:59:06.719 --> 00:59:10.960
I said to myself, since she
has asked for it, she shall have

586
00:59:12.039 --> 00:59:15.880
it. I will be as true
to life as her novels, so I

587
00:59:15.960 --> 00:59:23.360
replied audaciously, thirty eight. I
fancied I was erring, if at all

588
00:59:23.480 --> 00:59:30.800
on the side of really, and
I trembled. She laughed triumphantly. I

589
00:59:30.880 --> 00:59:37.960
am forty three. She said.
The incident might have passed off entirely to

590
00:59:38.039 --> 00:59:45.199
my satisfaction had she not proceeded.
And now tell me how old you are.

591
00:59:46.920 --> 00:59:54.079
That was like a woman. Women
imagine that men have no reticences,

592
00:59:54.119 --> 01:00:00.320
no pretty little vanities. What an
error, of course, I could not

593
01:00:00.440 --> 01:00:07.440
be beaten in candor by a woman. I had to offer myself a burnt

594
01:00:07.599 --> 01:00:14.800
sacrifice to her curiosity, and I
did it bravely, but not unflinchingly.

595
01:00:15.159 --> 01:00:21.920
And then afterwards the fact of my
age remained with me, worried me,

596
01:00:22.599 --> 01:00:28.599
obsessed me. I saw more clearly
than ever before, that age was telling

597
01:00:28.639 --> 01:00:34.400
on me. I could not be
blind to the deliberation of my movements in

598
01:00:34.519 --> 01:00:40.000
climbing stairs and in dressing. Once
upon a time, the majority of persons

599
01:00:40.039 --> 01:00:45.800
I met in the street seemed much
older than myself. It is different now.

600
01:00:47.000 --> 01:00:53.079
The change has come unperceived. There
is a generation younger than mine that

601
01:00:53.239 --> 01:01:00.840
smokes cigars and falls in love.
Astounding. Once I could play left wing

602
01:01:00.960 --> 01:01:07.320
forward for an hour and a half
without dropping down dead. Once I could

603
01:01:07.360 --> 01:01:10.440
swim one hundred and fifty feet submerged
at the bottom of a swimming bath.

604
01:01:12.199 --> 01:01:22.079
Incredible, simply incredible. Can it
be that I have already lived and lo?

605
01:01:22.119 --> 01:01:27.679
I, at the age of nearly
forty, am putting to myself the

606
01:01:27.800 --> 01:01:35.480
old questions concerning the intrinsic value of
life, the fundamentally important questions, What

607
01:01:35.800 --> 01:01:38.840
have I got out of it?
What am I likely to get out of

608
01:01:38.920 --> 01:01:45.760
it, In a word, what's
it worth? If a man can ask

609
01:01:45.880 --> 01:01:51.880
himself a question more momentous, radical, and critical than these questions, I

610
01:01:51.920 --> 01:01:57.920
would like to know what it is? Innumerable philosophers have tried to answer these

611
01:01:58.039 --> 01:02:02.599
questions in a general way for the
average individual, and possibly they have succeeded

612
01:02:02.639 --> 01:02:08.320
pretty well. Possibly I might derive
benefit from a perusal of their answers.

613
01:02:08.800 --> 01:02:13.599
But do you suppose I am going
to read them? Not? I.

614
01:02:15.039 --> 01:02:19.360
Do you suppose that I can recall
the wisdom that I happen already to have

615
01:02:19.480 --> 01:02:24.880
read? Not I. My mind
is a perfect blank at this moment in

616
01:02:24.920 --> 01:02:30.440
regard to the wisdom of others on
the essential question? Strange is it not?

617
01:02:32.119 --> 01:02:37.239
But quite a common experience? I
believe. Besides, I don't actually

618
01:02:37.280 --> 01:02:43.679
care tuppence what any other philosopher has
replied to my question. In this each

619
01:02:43.840 --> 01:02:49.920
man must be his own philosopher.
There is an instinct in the profound egoism

620
01:02:49.960 --> 01:02:55.440
of human nature which prevents us from
accepting such ready made answers. What is

621
01:02:55.480 --> 01:03:01.119
it to us? What Plato thought? Nothing? And thus the question remains

622
01:03:01.199 --> 01:03:08.280
ever new, and ever unanswered,
and ever of dramatic interest. The singular,

623
01:03:08.559 --> 01:03:15.480
the highly singular thing is. And
here I arrive at my point that

624
01:03:15.639 --> 01:03:21.519
so few people put the question to
themselves in time, that so many put

625
01:03:21.559 --> 01:03:29.639
it too late, or even die
without putting it. I am firmly convinced

626
01:03:29.679 --> 01:03:35.800
that an immense proportion of my instructed
fellow creatures do not merely omit to strike

627
01:03:35.920 --> 01:03:40.480
the balance sheet of their lives.
They omit even the preliminary operation of taking

628
01:03:40.639 --> 01:03:46.159
stock. They go on and on
and on buying and selling. They know

629
01:03:46.360 --> 01:03:52.719
not what at unascertained prices, dropping
money into the till and taking it out.

630
01:03:53.840 --> 01:03:58.400
They don't know what goods are in
the shop, nor what amount is

631
01:03:58.440 --> 01:04:02.280
in the till. But they have
a clear impression that the living room behind

632
01:04:02.280 --> 01:04:08.239
the shop is by no means as
luxurious and as well ventilated as they would

633
01:04:08.360 --> 01:04:14.800
like it to be. And the
years pass and that beautiful furniture and that

634
01:04:14.920 --> 01:04:20.000
system of ventilation are not achieved.
And then one day they die, and

635
01:04:20.079 --> 01:04:26.719
friends come to the funeral and remark, dear me, how stuffy this room

636
01:04:26.840 --> 01:04:32.039
is, and the shops practically full
of trash. Or some little time before

637
01:04:32.039 --> 01:04:36.159
they are dead, they stay later
than usual in the shop one evening and

638
01:04:36.360 --> 01:04:42.159
make up their minds to take stock
and count the till, and the disillusion

639
01:04:42.400 --> 01:04:46.400
lays them low, and they struggle
into the living room and murmur, I

640
01:04:46.440 --> 01:04:53.280
shall never have that beautiful furniture,
and I shall never have that system of

641
01:04:53.400 --> 01:04:58.800
ventilation. If I had known earlier, I would have at least got a

642
01:04:58.840 --> 01:05:02.519
few inexpensive cushions to go on wars, and I would have put my fist

643
01:05:02.559 --> 01:05:08.519
through a pane in the window.
But it's too late. Now. I'm

644
01:05:08.599 --> 01:05:15.880
used to windsor chairs, and I
should feel the draft horribly if I were

645
01:05:15.920 --> 01:05:18.320
a preacher, and if I hadn't
got more than enough to do in minding

646
01:05:18.360 --> 01:05:23.519
my own affairs, and if I
could look anyone in the face and deny

647
01:05:23.679 --> 01:05:29.199
that I too had pursued for nearly
forty years the great British policy of muddling

648
01:05:29.280 --> 01:05:32.559
through and hoping for the best.
In short, if things were not what

649
01:05:32.719 --> 01:05:38.920
they are, I would hire the
Alhambra Theater or Exeter Hall of a Sunday

650
01:05:39.000 --> 01:05:43.679
night, preferably the Alhambra, because
more people would come to my entertainment,

651
01:05:44.599 --> 01:05:49.280
and I would invite all men and
women over twenty six. I would supply

652
01:05:49.440 --> 01:05:55.639
the seething crowd with what they desired
in the way of bodily refreshment, except

653
01:05:55.800 --> 01:06:00.679
spirits, I would draw the line
at poisons, and having got them and

654
01:06:00.880 --> 01:06:05.239
myself into a nice, amiable,
expansive frame of mind, I would thus

655
01:06:05.320 --> 01:06:11.920
address them, of course, in
ringing eloquence that John Bright might have ended.

656
01:06:13.360 --> 01:06:19.360
Men and women, I would say, companions in the universal pastime of

657
01:06:19.440 --> 01:06:25.840
hiding one's head in the sand.
I am about to impart to you the

658
01:06:26.000 --> 01:06:31.440
very essence of human wisdom. It
is not abstract. It is a principle

659
01:06:31.559 --> 01:06:38.639
of daily application, affecting the daily
round in its entirety, from the strap

660
01:06:38.679 --> 01:06:43.199
hanging on the district railway in the
morning to the strap hanging on the district

661
01:06:43.239 --> 01:06:51.480
railway the next morning. Beware of
hope and beware of ambition. Each is

662
01:06:51.719 --> 01:07:00.000
excellently tonic, like German competition in
moderation. But all of you are suffering

663
01:07:00.079 --> 01:07:03.800
from self indulgence in the first,
and very many of you are ruining your

664
01:07:03.840 --> 01:07:11.119
constitutions with the second. Be it
known unto you, my dear men and

665
01:07:11.199 --> 01:07:17.000
women, that existence, rightly considered
is a fair compromise between two instincts,

666
01:07:17.920 --> 01:07:25.039
the instinct of hoping one day to
live and the instinct to live here and

667
01:07:25.360 --> 01:07:30.400
now. In most of you the
first instinct has simply got the other by

668
01:07:30.440 --> 01:07:36.840
the throat and is throttling it.
Prepare to live by all means, But

669
01:07:36.920 --> 01:07:42.760
for Heaven's sake, do not forget
to live. You will never have a

670
01:07:42.800 --> 01:07:46.280
better chance than you have at present. You may think you will have,

671
01:07:46.599 --> 01:07:54.280
but you are mistaken. Pardon this
bluntness. Surely you are not so naive

672
01:07:54.400 --> 01:07:58.920
as to imagine that the road on
the other side of that hill there is

673
01:07:59.000 --> 01:08:04.480
more beautiful than the piece you are
now traversing. Hopes are never realized,

674
01:08:05.559 --> 01:08:13.800
for in the act of realization they
become something else. Ambitions may be attained,

675
01:08:14.320 --> 01:08:19.279
but ambitions attained are rather like burnt
coal. Ninety percent of the heat

676
01:08:19.359 --> 01:08:26.800
generated has gone up the chimney instead
of into the room. Nevertheless, indulge

677
01:08:26.800 --> 01:08:32.359
in hopes and ambitions, which,
though deceiving, are agreeable deceptions. Let

678
01:08:32.399 --> 01:08:38.079
them cheat you a little a lot, but do not let them cheat you

679
01:08:38.239 --> 01:08:45.279
too much. This that you are
living now is life itself. It is

680
01:08:45.479 --> 01:08:49.159
much more life itself than that which
you will be living twenty years. Hence,

681
01:08:50.399 --> 01:08:57.880
grasp that truth, dwell on it, absorb it, let it influence

682
01:08:57.960 --> 01:09:04.199
your conduct to the end that neither
the present nor the future be neglected you

683
01:09:04.279 --> 01:09:13.239
search for happiness. Happiness is chiefly
a matter of temperament. It is exceedingly

684
01:09:13.279 --> 01:09:17.600
improbable that you will, by struggling, gain more happiness than you already possess

685
01:09:18.840 --> 01:09:30.239
in fine settled down at once into
life loud cheers. The cheers would of

686
01:09:30.279 --> 01:09:35.640
course be for the refreshments. There
is no doubt that the mass of the

687
01:09:35.720 --> 01:09:41.359
audience would consider that I had missed
my vocation and ought to have been a

688
01:09:41.439 --> 01:09:46.119
caterer instead of a preacher. But
once started I would not be discouraged.

689
01:09:46.760 --> 01:09:55.239
I would keep on Sunday night after
Sunday night. Our leading advertisers have ritually

690
01:09:55.439 --> 01:10:00.000
proved that the public will believe anything
if they are told of it often enough.

691
01:10:00.039 --> 01:10:06.960
I would practice iteration, always with
refreshments. In the result, it

692
01:10:08.000 --> 01:10:12.680
would dawn upon the corporate mind that
there was some glimmering of sense in my

693
01:10:12.840 --> 01:10:18.399
doctrine, and people would at last
begin to perceive the folly of neglecting to

694
01:10:18.600 --> 01:10:25.359
savor the present, the folly of
assuming that the future can be essentially different

695
01:10:25.520 --> 01:10:30.920
from the present, the fatuity of
dying before they have begun to live.

696
01:10:34.560 --> 01:10:46.520
End of Chapter four, Chapter five
of Mental Efficiency. This LibriVox recording is

697
01:10:46.560 --> 01:10:54.119
in the public domain. Recording by
Ruth Golding, Mental Efficiency and other hints

698
01:10:54.159 --> 01:11:01.000
to men and women by Arnold Bennett, Chapter five Marriage the duty of it.

699
01:11:03.520 --> 01:11:09.319
Every now and then it becomes necessary
to deal faithfully with that immortal type

700
01:11:09.319 --> 01:11:13.439
of person, the praiser of the
past, at the expense of the present.

701
01:11:14.560 --> 01:11:17.800
I will not quote Horace, as
by all the traditions of letters I

702
01:11:17.880 --> 01:11:24.479
ought to do, because Horace,
like the incurable trimmer that he was hedged

703
01:11:24.560 --> 01:11:29.960
on this question, and I do
not admire him much either. The Praiser

704
01:11:30.000 --> 01:11:33.640
of the Past has been very rife
lately. He has told us that pauperism

705
01:11:33.760 --> 01:11:40.439
and lunacy are mightily increasing, And
though the exact opposite has been proved to

706
01:11:40.479 --> 01:11:44.760
be the case, and he has
apologized, he will have forgotten the correction

707
01:11:44.880 --> 01:11:50.239
in a few months and will break
out again into renewed lamentation. He has

708
01:11:50.319 --> 01:11:56.279
told us that we are physically deteriorating, and in such awful tones that we

709
01:11:56.359 --> 01:12:00.800
have shuddered, and many of us
have believed and considering that the death rate

710
01:12:00.880 --> 01:12:06.800
is decreasing, that slums are decreasing, that disease is decreasing, that the

711
01:12:06.840 --> 01:12:13.640
agricultural laborer eats more than ever he
did. Our credence does not do much

712
01:12:13.680 --> 01:12:17.600
credit to our reasoning powers, does
it. Of course, there is that

713
01:12:17.760 --> 01:12:23.039
terrible influx into the towns. But
I, for one, should be much

714
01:12:23.119 --> 01:12:27.920
interested to know wherein the existence of
the rustic in times past was healthier than

715
01:12:27.960 --> 01:12:33.800
the existence of the town dwellers of
today. The personal appearance of agricultural veterans

716
01:12:33.880 --> 01:12:40.159
does not help me. They resemble
starved bus drivers twisted out of shape by

717
01:12:40.239 --> 01:12:46.119
lightning. But the pierres de resistance
of the praiser of the past is now

718
01:12:46.399 --> 01:12:54.039
marriage. With discreet hints about the
birth rate, the praiser of the past

719
01:12:54.199 --> 01:12:59.199
is going to have a magnificent time
with the subject of marriage. The first

720
01:12:59.479 --> 01:13:04.560
moaning of the tempest have already been
heard. Bishops have looked askance at the

721
01:13:04.600 --> 01:13:11.600
birth rate, and have mentioned their
displeasure. The matter is serious, as

722
01:13:11.600 --> 01:13:16.520
the phrase goes, It strikes at
the root. We are marrying later,

723
01:13:16.800 --> 01:13:23.119
my friends. Some of us,
in the hurry and preoccupation of business,

724
01:13:23.359 --> 01:13:28.720
are quite forgetting to marry. It
is the duty of the citizen to marry

725
01:13:28.760 --> 01:13:32.279
and have children, and we are
neglecting our duty. We are growing selfish.

726
01:13:33.359 --> 01:13:41.560
No longer are produced the glorious quiverfalls
of old times. Our fathers married

727
01:13:41.600 --> 01:13:48.079
at twenty, we marry at thirty
five. Why because a gross and enervating

728
01:13:48.279 --> 01:13:55.279
luxury has overtaken us? What will
become of England? If this continues,

729
01:13:56.000 --> 01:14:00.920
there will be no England. Hence
we must look to it and so on.

730
01:14:01.279 --> 01:14:06.960
In the same strain, I should
like to ask all those who have

731
01:14:08.199 --> 01:14:15.600
raised and will raise such outcries,
have you read X now? The book

732
01:14:15.600 --> 01:14:20.199
that I refer to as X is
a mysterious work written rather more than a

733
01:14:20.279 --> 01:14:26.920
hundred years ago by an English curate. It is a classic of English science.

734
01:14:27.520 --> 01:14:30.119
Indeed, it is one of the
great scientific books of the world.

735
01:14:31.159 --> 01:14:39.000
It has immensely influenced all the scientific
thought of the nineteenth century, especially Darwin's.

736
01:14:39.880 --> 01:14:44.239
Mister H. G. Wells,
as cited in Chambers Cyclopedia of English

737
01:14:44.279 --> 01:14:49.439
Literature, describes it as the most
shattering book that ever has or will be

738
01:14:49.520 --> 01:14:56.520
written. If I may make a
personal reference, I would say that it

739
01:14:56.600 --> 01:15:02.199
affected me more deeply than any other
scientific book that I have read. Although

740
01:15:02.199 --> 01:15:09.439
it is perfectly easy to understand and
free from the slightest technicality, it is

741
01:15:09.479 --> 01:15:15.119
the most misunderstood book in English literature. Simply because it is not read.

742
01:15:16.600 --> 01:15:24.239
The current notion about it is utterly
false. It might be a powerful instrument

743
01:15:24.279 --> 01:15:30.920
of education, general and sociological,
but publishers will not reprint it, at

744
01:15:30.039 --> 01:15:35.159
least they do not. And yet
it is forty times more interesting and four

745
01:15:35.239 --> 01:15:42.920
hundred times more educational than Gilbert White's
remarks on the Birds of Selborne. I

746
01:15:42.920 --> 01:15:46.239
will leave you to guess what X
is. But I do not offer a

747
01:15:46.279 --> 01:15:50.880
prize for the solution of a problem
which a vast number of my readers will

748
01:15:50.920 --> 01:15:58.760
certainly solve at once. If those
who are worrying themselves about the change in

749
01:15:58.800 --> 01:16:03.439
our system of marriage would read X, they would probably cease from worrying,

750
01:16:04.279 --> 01:16:08.600
for they would perceive that they had
been putting the cart before the horse,

751
01:16:09.520 --> 01:16:15.279
that they had elevated to the dignity
of fundamental principles, certain average rules of

752
01:16:15.359 --> 01:16:20.880
conduct, which had sprung solely from
certain average instincts in certain average conditions,

753
01:16:21.600 --> 01:16:27.760
and that they were now frightened because
the conditions, having changed, the rules

754
01:16:27.800 --> 01:16:32.640
of conduct had changed with them.
One of the truths that X makes clear

755
01:16:33.159 --> 01:16:42.680
is that conduct conforms to conditions and
not conditions. To conduct, the payment

756
01:16:42.720 --> 01:16:47.680
of taxes is a duty which the
citizen owes to the state. Marriage with

757
01:16:47.800 --> 01:16:53.520
the begetting of children is not a
duty which the citizen owes to the state.

758
01:16:54.920 --> 01:17:00.319
Marriage with its consequences is a matter
of personal inclination and convenience. It

759
01:17:00.399 --> 01:17:05.039
never has been anything else, and
it never will be anything else. How

760
01:17:05.079 --> 01:17:12.239
could it be otherwise? If a
man goes against inclination and convenience in a

761
01:17:12.279 --> 01:17:16.840
matter where inclination is of the essence
of the contract, he merely presents the

762
01:17:16.920 --> 01:17:24.359
state with a discontented citizen, if
not too in exchange for a contented one.

763
01:17:25.239 --> 01:17:28.479
The happiness of the state is the
sum of the happiness of all its

764
01:17:28.479 --> 01:17:32.520
citizens. To decrease one's own happiness, then, is a singular way of

765
01:17:32.560 --> 01:17:39.079
doing one's duty to the state.
Do you imagine that when people married early

766
01:17:39.199 --> 01:17:43.399
and much, they did so from
a sense of duty to the state,

767
01:17:44.319 --> 01:17:50.359
a sense of duty which our modern
luxury has weakened. I imagine they married

768
01:17:50.439 --> 01:17:57.159
simply because it's suitedom. They married
from sheer selfishness, as all decent people

769
01:17:57.279 --> 01:18:02.239
do marry, And do those who
clatter about the duty of marriage kiss the

770
01:18:02.279 --> 01:18:08.439
girls of their hearts with an eye
to the general welfare. I can fancy

771
01:18:08.479 --> 01:18:13.800
them saying my angel, I love
you from a sense of duty to the

772
01:18:13.920 --> 01:18:19.119
state. Let us rear innumerable progeny
from a sense of duty to the state.

773
01:18:20.239 --> 01:18:29.560
How charmed the girls would be if
the marrying age changes, if the

774
01:18:29.600 --> 01:18:34.159
birth rate shows a sympathetic tendency to
follow the death rate as it must see

775
01:18:34.439 --> 01:18:42.279
X, no one need be alarmed. Elementary principles of right and wrong are

776
01:18:42.359 --> 01:18:47.960
not trembling on their basis. The
human conscience is not silenced, The nation

777
01:18:48.279 --> 01:18:56.119
is not going to the dogs.
Conduct is adjusting itself to new conditions,

778
01:18:56.199 --> 01:19:00.800
and that is all. We may
not be able to see exactly how conditions

779
01:19:00.800 --> 01:19:08.319
are changing. That is a detail
our descendants will see exactly. Meanwhile,

780
01:19:08.359 --> 01:19:14.720
the change in our conduct affords us
some clue. And although certain nervous persons

781
01:19:14.760 --> 01:19:19.479
do get alarmed and do preach and
do take measures, the rest of us

782
01:19:19.720 --> 01:19:26.239
may remain placid, in the sure
faith that measures will avail nothing whatever.

783
01:19:27.119 --> 01:19:32.840
If there are two things set high
above legislation, movements, crusades, and

784
01:19:33.079 --> 01:19:39.199
preaching, one is the marrying age, and the other is the birth rate.

785
01:19:40.439 --> 01:19:46.600
For there the supreme instinct comes along
and stamps ruthlessly on all insincere reasonings

786
01:19:46.640 --> 01:19:53.920
and sham altruisms, stamps on everything
in fact, and blandly remarks. I

787
01:19:54.039 --> 01:19:59.479
shall suit my own convenience, and
no one but nature herself with a big

788
01:19:59.720 --> 01:20:04.600
bee n shall talk to me.
Don't pester me with right and wrong.

789
01:20:04.800 --> 01:20:13.720
I am right and wrong. Having
thus attempted to clear the ground a little

790
01:20:13.720 --> 01:20:20.800
of fudge, I propose next to
offer a few simple remarks on marriage,

791
01:20:21.199 --> 01:20:28.720
the adventure of it. Having endeavored
to show that men do not and should

792
01:20:28.760 --> 01:20:32.760
not marry from a sense of duty
to the state or to mankind, but

793
01:20:32.920 --> 01:20:39.479
simply and solely from an egoistic inclination
to marry, I now proceed to the

794
01:20:39.520 --> 01:20:44.319
individual case of the man who is
in a position to marry, and whose

795
01:20:44.359 --> 01:20:48.439
affections are not employed. Of course, if he has fallen in love,

796
01:20:49.119 --> 01:20:54.359
unless he happens to be a person
of extremely powerful will, he will not

797
01:20:54.520 --> 01:20:58.800
weigh the pros and cons of marriage. He will merely marry, and forty

798
01:20:58.920 --> 01:21:03.399
thousand cons will not prevent him,
and he will be absolutely right and justified,

799
01:21:04.039 --> 01:21:09.239
just as the straw, as it
rushes down the current, is absolutely

800
01:21:09.359 --> 01:21:15.000
right and justified. But the privilege
of falling in love is not given to

801
01:21:15.079 --> 01:21:20.039
everybody, and the inestimable privilege of
falling deeply in love is given to few.

802
01:21:21.319 --> 01:21:27.159
However, the man whom circumstances permit
to marry, but who is not

803
01:21:27.359 --> 01:21:32.720
in love or is only slightly amorous, will still think of marriage. How

804
01:21:32.800 --> 01:21:39.560
will he think of it? I
will tell you. In the first place,

805
01:21:39.920 --> 01:21:44.760
if he has reached the age of
thirty unscathed by aphrodite, he will

806
01:21:44.800 --> 01:21:49.840
reflect that that peculiar feeling of romantic
expectation with which he gets up every morning

807
01:21:50.279 --> 01:21:57.720
would cease to exist after marriage,
and it is a highly agreeable feeling in

808
01:21:57.840 --> 01:22:01.359
its stead. In moments of depress, he would have the feeling of having

809
01:22:01.479 --> 01:22:09.000
done something irremediable, of having definitely
closed an avenue for the outlet of his

810
01:22:09.119 --> 01:22:15.720
individuality. Kindly remember that I am
not describing what this human man ought to

811
01:22:15.800 --> 01:22:20.199
think. I am describing what he
does think. In the second place,

812
01:22:20.600 --> 01:22:28.119
he will reflect that after marriage he
could no longer expect the charming welcomes which

813
01:22:28.199 --> 01:22:33.600
bachelors so often receive from women.
He would be done with as a possibility,

814
01:22:34.399 --> 01:22:40.119
and he does not relish the prospect
of being done with as a possibility.

815
01:22:41.479 --> 01:22:46.640
Such considerations all connected more or less
with the loss of freedom, Oh,

816
01:22:46.960 --> 01:22:55.279
mysterious and thrilling word, will affect
his theoretical attitude, and be it

817
01:22:55.399 --> 01:23:01.640
known that even the freedom to be
lonely and melancholy is still freedom. Other

818
01:23:01.800 --> 01:23:08.359
ideas will suggest themselves. One morning, while brushing his hair, he will

819
01:23:08.399 --> 01:23:13.319
see a gray hair, and,
however young he may be, the anticipation

820
01:23:13.479 --> 01:23:20.199
of old age will come to him
a solitary old age, a senility dependent

821
01:23:20.399 --> 01:23:28.479
for its social and domestic requirements on
condescending nephews and nieces or even more distant

822
01:23:28.560 --> 01:23:35.640
relations awful unthinkable, And his first
movement, especially if he has read that

823
01:23:35.800 --> 01:23:42.840
terrible novel for compla more of de
Moutpasson, is to rush out into the

824
01:23:42.840 --> 01:23:46.039
street and propose to the first girl
he encounters, in order to avoid this

825
01:23:46.279 --> 01:23:53.119
dreadful nightmare of a solitary old age. But before he has got as far

826
01:23:53.159 --> 01:23:59.600
as the doorstep, he reflects further. Suppose he marries, and after twenty

827
01:23:59.720 --> 01:24:04.560
years his wife dies and leaves him
a widower. He will still have a

828
01:24:04.640 --> 01:24:10.720
solitary old age, and a vastly
more tragical one than if he had remained

829
01:24:10.760 --> 01:24:16.600
single. Marriage is not therefore a
sure remedy for a solitary old age,

830
01:24:17.079 --> 01:24:25.800
it may intensify the evil children.
But suppose he doesn't have any children.

831
01:24:26.560 --> 01:24:32.359
Suppose they're being children, they die? What anguish? Suppose merely that they

832
01:24:32.399 --> 01:24:40.920
are seriously ill and recover? What
an aging experience? Suppose they prove a

833
01:24:41.000 --> 01:24:49.279
disappointment? What endless regret? Suppose
they turn out badly? Children doom?

834
01:24:50.199 --> 01:24:59.479
What shame? Suppose he finally becomes
dependent upon the grudging kindness of an ungrateful

835
01:24:59.600 --> 01:25:08.079
child. What a supreme humiliation?
All these things are occurring constantly everywhere.

836
01:25:08.720 --> 01:25:13.600
Suppose his wife, having loved him, ceased to love him, or suppose

837
01:25:13.640 --> 01:25:19.560
he ceased to love his wife.
Say sure's nussir commande de pas. These

838
01:25:19.680 --> 01:25:28.479
things do not command themselves. Personally, I should estimate that in not one

839
01:25:28.600 --> 01:25:33.520
percent even of romantic marriages, are
the husband and wife capable of passion for

840
01:25:33.560 --> 01:25:41.159
each other after three years. So
brief is the violence of love. In

841
01:25:41.239 --> 01:25:46.720
perhaps thirty three percent, passion settles
down into a tranquil affection, which is

842
01:25:46.800 --> 01:25:54.640
ideal. In fifty percent it sinks
into sheer indifference, and one becomes used

843
01:25:54.680 --> 01:25:59.600
to one's wife or one's husband as
to one's other habits. And in the

844
01:25:59.640 --> 01:26:08.399
remains sixteen percent it develops into dislike
or detestation. Do you think my percentages

845
01:26:08.399 --> 01:26:12.680
are wrong? You who have been
married a long time and know what the

846
01:26:12.720 --> 01:26:16.439
world is, well, you may
modify them a little. You won't want

847
01:26:16.520 --> 01:26:24.920
to modify them much. The risk
of finding oneself ultimately among the sixteen percent

848
01:26:25.399 --> 01:26:30.680
can be avoided by the simple expedient
of not marrying them, and by the

849
01:26:30.760 --> 01:26:34.439
same expedient the other risks can be
avoided, together with yet others that I

850
01:26:34.439 --> 01:26:41.119
have not mentioned. It is entirely
obvious. Then, in fact, I

851
01:26:41.199 --> 01:26:46.039
beg pardon for mentioning it that the
attitude towards marriage of the heart free bachelor

852
01:26:46.439 --> 01:26:51.920
must be at best a highly cautious
attitude. He knows he is already in

853
01:26:51.960 --> 01:26:58.279
the frying pan. None knows better, But considering the propinquity of the fire,

854
01:26:58.920 --> 01:27:02.640
he doubts whether he had not better
stay where he is. His life

855
01:27:02.680 --> 01:27:10.039
will be calmer, more like that
of a hibernating snake. His sensibilities will

856
01:27:10.079 --> 01:27:15.640
be dulled, but the chances of
poignant suffering will be very materially reduced,

857
01:27:16.439 --> 01:27:20.359
so that the bachelor, in a
position to marry but not in love,

858
01:27:20.920 --> 01:27:29.000
will assuredly decide in theory against marriage
that is to say, if he is

859
01:27:29.159 --> 01:27:34.079
timid, if he prefers frying pans, if he is lacking in initiative,

860
01:27:35.000 --> 01:27:40.560
if he has the soul of a
rat, if he wants to live as

861
01:27:40.600 --> 01:27:45.800
little as possible, if he hates
his kind, if his egoism is of

862
01:27:45.920 --> 01:27:53.199
the miserable sort that dares not mingle
with another's. But if he has been

863
01:27:53.279 --> 01:28:00.560
more happily gifted, he will decide
that the magnificent adventure is worth plunging into

864
01:28:00.560 --> 01:28:05.920
the ineradicable, and fine gambling instinct
in him will urge him to take,

865
01:28:06.039 --> 01:28:12.800
at the first chance a ticket in
the only lottery permitted by the British government,

866
01:28:14.039 --> 01:28:18.239
Because after all, the mutual sense
of ownership felt by the normal husband

867
01:28:18.319 --> 01:28:24.600
and the normal wife is something unique, something the like of which cannot be

868
01:28:24.640 --> 01:28:30.399
obtained without marriage. I saw a
man and a woman at as sail the

869
01:28:30.439 --> 01:28:33.239
other day. I was too far
off to hear them, but I could

870
01:28:33.319 --> 01:28:40.000
perceive they were having a most lively
argument. Perhaps it was only about initials

871
01:28:40.000 --> 01:28:45.720
on pillow cases. They were absorbed
in themselves. The world did not exist

872
01:28:45.800 --> 01:28:53.039
for them, And I thought,
what miraculous, exquisite force is it that

873
01:28:53.199 --> 01:28:59.840
brings together that strange somber, laconic
organism in a silk hat and a loose

874
01:29:00.279 --> 01:29:06.880
overcoat, and that strange, bright, vivacious, querulous, irrational organism in

875
01:29:06.960 --> 01:29:14.880
brilliant fur and feathers. And when
they moved away, the most interesting phenomenon

876
01:29:14.960 --> 01:29:20.000
in the universe moved away. And
I thought, just as no beer is

877
01:29:20.119 --> 01:29:26.520
bad, but some beer is better
than other beer, so no marriage is

878
01:29:26.680 --> 01:29:32.800
bad. The chief reward of marriage
is something which marriage is bound to give,

879
01:29:33.840 --> 01:29:43.680
companionship whose mysterious interestingness nothing can stale. A man may hate his wife

880
01:29:43.760 --> 01:29:46.920
so that she can't thread a needle
without annoying him. But when he dies

881
01:29:47.119 --> 01:29:54.159
or she dies, he will say, well, I was interested, And

882
01:29:54.279 --> 01:30:00.039
one always is, said a bachelor
of forty six to me the other night.

883
01:30:00.720 --> 01:30:10.319
Anything is better than the void.
The two ways of it, sabine

884
01:30:10.399 --> 01:30:15.039
and other summary methods of marrying,
being now abandoned by all nice people,

885
01:30:15.600 --> 01:30:20.800
there remain two broad general ways.
The first is the English way. We

886
01:30:20.960 --> 01:30:28.000
let nature take her course. We
give heed to the heart's cry. When

887
01:30:28.239 --> 01:30:32.319
amid the hazards and accidents of the
world, two souls find each other,

888
01:30:32.800 --> 01:30:39.199
we rejoice. Our instinctive wish is
that they shall marry. If the matter

889
01:30:39.279 --> 01:30:44.800
can anyhow be arranged. We frankly
recognize the claim of romance in life,

890
01:30:45.119 --> 01:30:49.119
and we are prepared to make sacrifices
to it. We see a young couple

891
01:30:49.159 --> 01:30:55.279
at the altar. They are in
love, good, they are poor,

892
01:30:56.279 --> 01:31:00.800
so much the worse, but nevertheless
we feel that love will pull them through.

893
01:31:01.920 --> 01:31:06.600
The revolting French system of bargain and
barter. Is the one thing that

894
01:31:06.640 --> 01:31:13.319
we can neither comprehend nor pardon in
the customs of our great neighbors. We

895
01:31:13.439 --> 01:31:17.960
endeavor to be polite about that system, we simply cannot. It shocks our

896
01:31:18.119 --> 01:31:26.680
finest tenderest feelings. It is so
obviously contrary to nature. The second is

897
01:31:26.760 --> 01:31:31.079
the French way just alluded to us, bargain and barter. Now, if

898
01:31:31.119 --> 01:31:36.159
there is one thing a Frenchman can
neither comprehend nor pardon in the customs of

899
01:31:36.199 --> 01:31:42.840
a race so marvelously practical and sagacious
as ourselves, it is the English marriage

900
01:31:42.880 --> 01:31:47.720
system. He endeavors to be polite
about it, and he succeeds, but

901
01:31:47.920 --> 01:31:55.159
it shocks his finest tenderest feelings.
He admits that it is in accordance with

902
01:31:55.359 --> 01:32:00.600
nature, but he is apt to
argue that the whole progress of civilization has

903
01:32:00.680 --> 01:32:05.239
been the result of an effort to
get away from nature. What leave the

904
01:32:05.279 --> 01:32:11.760
most important relation into which a man
can enter, to the mercy chance when

905
01:32:11.800 --> 01:32:16.359
a mere gesture may arouse passion or
the color of a corsage induced desire.

906
01:32:17.399 --> 01:32:23.239
No, you English, you who
are so self controlled, You are not

907
01:32:23.399 --> 01:32:28.760
going seriously to defend that. You
talk of lover as though it lasted for

908
01:32:28.840 --> 01:32:33.920
ever. You talk of sacrificing to
love. But what you really sacrifice,

909
01:32:34.159 --> 01:32:39.840
or risk sacrificing, is the whole
of the latter part of married existence.

910
01:32:40.199 --> 01:32:44.920
For the sake of the first two
or three years. Marriage is not one

911
01:32:45.000 --> 01:32:48.720
long honeymoon we wish it were.
When you agree to a marriage, you

912
01:32:48.880 --> 01:32:54.239
fix your eyes on the honeymoon.
When we agree to a marriage, we

913
01:32:54.520 --> 01:32:59.319
try to see it as it will
be five or ten years. Hence we

914
01:32:59.479 --> 01:33:03.520
assert that in the average instance,
five years after the wedding, it doesn't

915
01:33:03.520 --> 01:33:08.760
matter whether or not the parties were
in love on the wedding day. Hence

916
01:33:08.800 --> 01:33:14.279
we will not yield to the gusts
of the moment. Your system is.

917
01:33:14.439 --> 01:33:19.840
Moreover, if we may be permitted
the observation a premium on improvidence, it

918
01:33:19.920 --> 01:33:26.560
is to some extent the result of
improvidence. You can marry your daughters without

919
01:33:26.680 --> 01:33:31.000
dowries, and the ability to do
so tempts you to neglect your plain duty

920
01:33:31.079 --> 01:33:36.640
to your daughters, and you do
not always resist the temptation. Do your

921
01:33:36.720 --> 01:33:44.760
marriages of romance turn out better than
our marriages of prudence, of careful thought,

922
01:33:45.199 --> 01:33:51.319
of long foresight. We do not
think they do so much, for

923
01:33:51.399 --> 01:33:59.000
the two ways, patriotism being the
last refuge of a scoundrel. According to

924
01:33:59.039 --> 01:34:03.000
doctor Johnson, I have no intention
of judging between them, as my heart

925
01:34:03.119 --> 01:34:09.279
prompts me to do, lest I
should be accused of it. Nevertheless,

926
01:34:09.640 --> 01:34:14.960
I may hint that, while perfectly
convinced by the admirable logic of the French,

927
01:34:15.439 --> 01:34:20.680
I am still with the charming illogicalness
of the English in favor of romantic

928
01:34:20.840 --> 01:34:27.640
marriages, it being of course understood
that dowries ought to be far more plentiful

929
01:34:27.680 --> 01:34:32.399
than they are in England. If
a Frenchman accuses me of being ready to

930
01:34:32.520 --> 01:34:38.279
risk sacrificing the whole of the latter
part of married life for the sake of

931
01:34:38.319 --> 01:34:44.600
the first two or three years,
I would unhesitatingly reply, yes, I

932
01:34:44.680 --> 01:34:48.920
am ready to risk that sacrifice.
I reckon the first two or three years

933
01:34:48.920 --> 01:34:56.079
are worth it. But then I
am English and therefore romantic by nature.

934
01:34:57.159 --> 01:35:02.279
Look at London, that city who's
out standing quality is its romantic quality.

935
01:35:03.239 --> 01:35:09.720
And look at the English women going
their ways in the wonderful streets thereof their

936
01:35:09.840 --> 01:35:15.079
very eyes are full of romance.
They may they do lack chic, but

937
01:35:15.159 --> 01:35:23.199
they are heroines of drama. Then
look at Paris. There is little romance

938
01:35:23.319 --> 01:35:29.800
in the fine right lines of Paris. Look at the Parisiennes. They are

939
01:35:29.920 --> 01:35:36.479
the most astounding and adorable women yet
invented by nature. But they aren't romantic.

940
01:35:36.600 --> 01:35:43.319
You know, they don't know what
romance is. They are so matter

941
01:35:43.479 --> 01:35:46.279
of fact that when you think of
their matter of factness, it gives you

942
01:35:46.319 --> 01:35:53.720
a shiver in the small of your
back. To return, one may view

943
01:35:53.840 --> 01:36:00.600
the two ways in another light.
Perhaps the difference between them is fundamentally less

944
01:36:00.640 --> 01:36:05.079
a difference between the ideas of two
races than a difference between the ideas of

945
01:36:05.199 --> 01:36:13.680
two times of life. And in
France, the elderly attitude predominates as people

946
01:36:13.720 --> 01:36:17.399
get on in years, even English
people, they are more and more in

947
01:36:17.479 --> 01:36:24.199
favor of the marriage of reason as
against the marriage of romance. Young people,

948
01:36:24.439 --> 01:36:29.279
even French people, object strongly to
the theory and practice of the marriage

949
01:36:29.279 --> 01:36:33.920
of reason. But with them the
unique and precious ecstasy of youth is not

950
01:36:34.199 --> 01:36:42.039
past. Whereas their elders have forgotten
its savor. Which is right, no

951
01:36:42.119 --> 01:36:45.840
one will ever be able to decide, But neither the one system nor the

952
01:36:45.920 --> 01:36:51.479
other will apply itself well to all
or nearly all cases. There have been

953
01:36:51.600 --> 01:36:57.439
thousands of romantic marriages in England,
of which it may be said that it

954
01:36:57.479 --> 01:37:01.319
would have been better had the French
system been in force to prevent their existence.

955
01:37:02.359 --> 01:37:08.479
And equally, thousands of possible romantic
marriages have been prevented in France,

956
01:37:08.720 --> 01:37:15.079
which, had the English system prevailed
there would have turned out excellently. The

957
01:37:15.119 --> 01:37:19.079
prevalence of diaries in England would not
render the English system perfect, for it

958
01:37:19.199 --> 01:37:24.680
must be remembered that money is only
one of several ingredients in the French marriage,

959
01:37:25.079 --> 01:37:29.880
but it would considerably improve it.
However, we are not a provident

960
01:37:30.039 --> 01:37:33.279
race, and we are not likely
to become one, so our young men

961
01:37:33.359 --> 01:37:42.399
must reconcile themselves to the continued absence
of diaries. The reader may be excused

962
01:37:42.439 --> 01:37:45.239
for imagining that I am at the
end of my remarks, I am not

963
01:37:46.239 --> 01:37:53.119
all. That precedes is a mere
preliminary to what follows. I want to

964
01:37:53.159 --> 01:37:57.359
regard the case of the man who
has given the English system a fair trial

965
01:37:57.720 --> 01:38:02.560
and found it futile. We wait
on chance in England, we wait for

966
01:38:02.680 --> 01:38:09.840
love to arrive. Suppose it doesn't
arrive. Where is the English system?

967
01:38:09.880 --> 01:38:15.720
Then? Assume that a man in
a position to marry reaches thirty five or

968
01:38:15.760 --> 01:38:20.359
forty without having fallen in love,
why should he not try the French system

969
01:38:20.439 --> 01:38:26.880
for a change. Any marriage is
better than none at all. Naturally in

970
01:38:26.960 --> 01:38:31.399
England he couldn't go up to the
chosen fair and announce I am not precisely

971
01:38:31.439 --> 01:38:36.199
in love with you, but will
you marry me? He would put it

972
01:38:36.359 --> 01:38:45.479
differently, and she would understand,
and do you think she would refuse?

973
01:38:47.840 --> 01:39:00.479
End of chapter five, Chapter six
of Mental Efficiency. This LibriVox recording is

974
01:39:00.520 --> 01:39:08.640
in the public domain. Recording by
Ruth Golding. Mental Efficiency and Other Hints

975
01:39:08.680 --> 01:39:15.199
to Men and Women by Arnold Bennett. Chapter six, Books, the physical

976
01:39:15.319 --> 01:39:24.199
side. The chief interest of many
of my readers is avowedly books. They

977
01:39:24.239 --> 01:39:30.600
may they probably do profess other interests, but they are primarily bookmen and when

978
01:39:30.640 --> 01:39:35.079
one is a bookman, one is
a bookman during about twenty three and three

979
01:39:35.159 --> 01:39:42.119
quarter hours in every day. Now, book men are capable of understanding things

980
01:39:42.199 --> 01:39:47.119
about books which cannot be put into
words. They're not like mere subscribers to

981
01:39:47.199 --> 01:39:53.600
circulating libraries. For them, a
book is not just a book. It

982
01:39:53.720 --> 01:40:00.359
is a book. If these lines
should happen to catch the eye of any

983
01:40:00.399 --> 01:40:05.479
person's not bookmen, such persons may
imagine that I am writing nonsense. But

984
01:40:05.600 --> 01:40:12.119
I trust that the bookmen will comprehend
me. And I venture then to offer

985
01:40:12.199 --> 01:40:17.399
a few reflections upon an aspect of
modern bookishness that is becoming more and more

986
01:40:17.520 --> 01:40:25.640
actual as the enterprise of publishers and
the beneficent effects of education grow and increase

987
01:40:25.760 --> 01:40:33.079
together. I refer to popular editions
of classics. Now I am very grateful

988
01:40:33.159 --> 01:40:39.520
to the devisors of cheap and handy
editions. The first book I ever bought

989
01:40:39.720 --> 01:40:45.520
was the first volume of the first
modern series of presentable and really cheap reprints,

990
01:40:45.079 --> 01:40:55.279
namely Macaulay's Warren Hastings in Castle's National
Library sixpence in cloth. That foundation

991
01:40:55.560 --> 01:41:01.479
stone of my library has unfortunately disappeared
beneath the successive deposits, But another volume

992
01:41:01.560 --> 01:41:06.079
of the same series. F.
T. Palgrave's Visions of England, an

993
01:41:06.119 --> 01:41:13.319
otherwise scarce book, still remains to
me through the vicissitudes of seventeen years of

994
01:41:13.439 --> 01:41:17.319
sale, purchase and exchange, and
I would not care to part with it.

995
01:41:18.560 --> 01:41:24.720
I have over two hundred volumes of
that inestimable and incomparable series, the

996
01:41:24.800 --> 01:41:30.560
Temple Classics, besides several hundred assorted
volumes of various other series. And when

997
01:41:30.600 --> 01:41:36.399
I heard of the new Everyman's Library
projected by that benefactor of bookman, mister

998
01:41:36.520 --> 01:41:42.479
J. M. Dent, my
first impassioned act was to sit down and

999
01:41:42.520 --> 01:41:48.279
write a postcard to my bookseller ordering
George Finley's The Byzantine Empire, a work

1000
01:41:48.319 --> 01:41:55.279
which has waited sixty years for popular
recognition, so that I cannot be said

1001
01:41:55.359 --> 01:42:02.800
to be really antagonistic to cheap reprints. Strong in this consciousness, I beg

1002
01:42:02.960 --> 01:42:09.720
to state that cheap and handy reprints
are all very well in their way,

1003
01:42:10.920 --> 01:42:15.039
which is a manner of saying that
they are not the alpha and omega of

1004
01:42:15.119 --> 01:42:20.840
bookishness. By expending twenty pounds yearly
during the next five years, a man

1005
01:42:20.960 --> 01:42:28.159
might collect in cheap and handy reprints
all that was worth having in classic English

1006
01:42:28.199 --> 01:42:32.640
literature. But I, for one, would not be willing to regard such

1007
01:42:32.680 --> 01:42:39.399
a library as a real library.
I would regard it as only a cheap

1008
01:42:39.600 --> 01:42:45.119
edition of a library. There would
be something about it that would arouse in

1009
01:42:45.199 --> 01:42:50.760
me a certain benevolent disdain, even
though every volume was well printed on good

1010
01:42:50.880 --> 01:42:59.720
paper and inoffensively bound. Why well, although it is my profession in life

1011
01:42:59.720 --> 01:43:02.479
to seay say what I feel in
plain words, I do not know that

1012
01:43:02.600 --> 01:43:09.920
in this connection I can say what
I feel in plain words. I have

1013
01:43:10.039 --> 01:43:15.479
to rely on a sympathetic comprehension of
my attitude in the bookish breasts of my

1014
01:43:15.640 --> 01:43:21.840
readers. In the first place,
I have an instinctive antipathy to a series.

1015
01:43:23.680 --> 01:43:29.560
I do not want the Golden Legend
and the essays of Eliah uniformed alike

1016
01:43:29.680 --> 01:43:34.600
in a regiment of books. It
makes me think of conscription and barracks.

1017
01:43:35.479 --> 01:43:43.279
Even the noblest series of reprints ever
planned not at all cheap either nor heterogeneous

1018
01:43:43.279 --> 01:43:50.159
in matter. The Tudor translations faintly
annoys me in the mass its appearances in

1019
01:43:50.239 --> 01:43:57.079
a series seems to me to rob
a book of something very delicate and subtle

1020
01:43:57.359 --> 01:44:03.479
in the aroma of its individuality,
something which it being inexplicable, I will

1021
01:44:03.520 --> 01:44:11.600
not try to explain. In the
second place, most cheap and handy reprints

1022
01:44:11.640 --> 01:44:17.319
are small in size. They may
be typographically excellent with large type and opaque

1023
01:44:17.319 --> 01:44:24.119
paper. They may be convenient to
handle. They may be surpassingly suitable for

1024
01:44:24.159 --> 01:44:29.479
the pocket and the very thing for
travel. They may save precious space where

1025
01:44:29.560 --> 01:44:34.439
shelf room is limited. But they
are small in size, and there is,

1026
01:44:34.680 --> 01:44:42.479
as regards most literature, a distinct
moral value in size. Do I

1027
01:44:42.720 --> 01:44:48.920
carry my audience with me? I
hope so let Paradise Last be so produced

1028
01:44:48.920 --> 01:44:53.960
that you can put it in your
waistcoat pocket, and it is no more

1029
01:44:54.159 --> 01:45:00.880
Paradise lost. Milton needs a solid
octavo form with stout paper and long primer

1030
01:45:01.000 --> 01:45:09.119
type. I have Walpole's Letters in
Nun's thin paper classics, a marvelous volume

1031
01:45:09.159 --> 01:45:13.479
of near nine hundred pages, with
a portrait and a good index and a

1032
01:45:13.520 --> 01:45:18.319
beautiful binding for three and six.
And I am exceedingly indebted to Messrs Newns

1033
01:45:18.319 --> 01:45:23.800
for creating that volume. It was
sheer genius on their part to do so.

1034
01:45:25.399 --> 01:45:30.159
I get charming sensations from it,
but sensations not so charming as I

1035
01:45:30.159 --> 01:45:36.600
should get from Missus Paget Toynbee's many, volumed and grandiose edition, even aside

1036
01:45:36.640 --> 01:45:42.319
from Missus Toynbee's erudite notes and the
extra letters which she has been able to

1037
01:45:42.359 --> 01:45:48.119
print, the same letter in Missus
Toynbee's edition would have a higher esthetic and

1038
01:45:48.399 --> 01:45:56.439
moral value for me than in the
additional of Messrs Neuns. The one cheap

1039
01:45:56.520 --> 01:46:01.720
series which satisfies my desire for size
is my Millan's Library of English Classics,

1040
01:46:01.760 --> 01:46:08.199
in which I have the travels of
that mythical personage Sir John Mandeville. But

1041
01:46:08.319 --> 01:46:11.880
it is only in paying for it
that you know this edition to be cheap,

1042
01:46:12.279 --> 01:46:17.119
for it measures nine inches by six
inches by two inches. And in

1043
01:46:17.199 --> 01:46:23.600
the third place, when one by
his series, one only partially chooses one's

1044
01:46:23.640 --> 01:46:28.640
books. They are mainly chosen for
one by the publisher, and even if

1045
01:46:28.640 --> 01:46:31.720
they are not chosen for one by
the publisher, they are suggested to one

1046
01:46:31.880 --> 01:46:39.359
by the publisher. Not so does
the genuine bookman form his library. The

1047
01:46:39.479 --> 01:46:45.520
genuine bookman begins by having specific desires. His study of authorities gives him a

1048
01:46:45.560 --> 01:46:51.279
demand, and the demand forces him
to find the supply He does not let

1049
01:46:51.319 --> 01:46:58.279
the supply create the demand. Such
a state of affairs would be almost humiliating,

1050
01:46:58.680 --> 01:47:02.760
almost like the parvenus who calls in
the wholesale furniture and decorator to provide

1051
01:47:02.840 --> 01:47:10.399
him with a home. A library
must be primarily the expression of the owner's

1052
01:47:10.439 --> 01:47:16.600
personality. Let me assert again that
I am strongly in favor of cheap series

1053
01:47:16.600 --> 01:47:21.920
of reprints. Their influence, though
not the very finest, is indisputably good.

1054
01:47:23.760 --> 01:47:29.399
They are as great a boon as
cheap bread. They are indispensable where

1055
01:47:29.439 --> 01:47:34.159
money or space is limited, and
in traveling. They decidedly help to educate

1056
01:47:34.159 --> 01:47:40.359
a taste for books that are neither
cheap nor handy, and the most luxurious

1057
01:47:40.359 --> 01:47:45.319
collectors may not afford to ignore them
entirely. But they have their limitations,

1058
01:47:45.520 --> 01:47:53.640
their disadvantages. They cannot form the
backbone of a proper library. They make,

1059
01:47:53.800 --> 01:47:58.960
however admirable embroidery to a library.
My own would look rather plain if

1060
01:47:59.000 --> 01:48:06.560
it was stripped of the the philosophy
of book buying. For some considerable time

1061
01:48:06.720 --> 01:48:11.960
I have been living, as regards
books, with the minimum of comfort and

1062
01:48:12.079 --> 01:48:17.239
decency, with in fact the bare
necessaries of life. Such necessaries being in

1063
01:48:17.319 --> 01:48:26.600
my case, sundry dictionaries Boswell and
Atlas, Wordsworth, an Encyclopedia Shakespeare,

1064
01:48:26.920 --> 01:48:33.520
Whittaker, so De moutperson, a
poetical anthology, Verlen Baudlaire, a natural

1065
01:48:33.640 --> 01:48:40.399
history of my native county, an
old directory of my native town Sir Thomas

1066
01:48:40.399 --> 01:48:45.880
Brown, Poe Wolpole's letters, and
a book of memoirs that I will not

1067
01:48:45.239 --> 01:48:50.479
name, A curious list. You
will say, well, never mind.

1068
01:48:51.079 --> 01:48:56.159
We do not all care to eat
beef steak and chip potatoes off an oak

1069
01:48:56.279 --> 01:49:00.720
table with a foaming court to the
right hand. We have our idiosyncrasies.

1070
01:49:01.600 --> 01:49:06.520
The point is that I existed on
the bare necessaries of life, very healthy,

1071
01:49:06.680 --> 01:49:13.159
doctors say, for a long time, and then just lately I summoned

1072
01:49:13.319 --> 01:49:18.159
energy and caused fifteen hundred volumes to
be transported to me, and I arranged

1073
01:49:18.199 --> 01:49:24.079
them on shelves, and I rearranged
them on shelves, and I left them

1074
01:49:24.119 --> 01:49:29.600
to arrange themselves on shelves. Well, you know, the way that I

1075
01:49:29.800 --> 01:49:32.920
walk up and down in front of
these volumes, whose faces I had half

1076
01:49:32.960 --> 01:49:39.720
forgotten, is perfectly infantile. It
is like the way of a child at

1077
01:49:39.720 --> 01:49:45.279
a menagerie there in its cage Is
that eighteen thirty nine edition of Shelley,

1078
01:49:45.720 --> 01:49:50.560
edited by Missus Shelley, that I
once nearly sold to the British Museum because

1079
01:49:50.600 --> 01:49:55.720
the keeper of printed books thought he
hadn't got a copy. Only he had,

1080
01:49:56.960 --> 01:50:02.479
and there in a cage by himself
because of his terrible hugeness. Is

1081
01:50:02.520 --> 01:50:11.039
the sixteen fifty two Paris edition of
Montaigne's Essays. And so I might continue.

1082
01:50:11.520 --> 01:50:15.199
And so I would continue, were
it not essential that I come to

1083
01:50:15.279 --> 01:50:20.800
my argument. Do you suppose that
the presence of these books, after our

1084
01:50:21.000 --> 01:50:28.439
long separation is making me read more
than I did? Do you suppose I

1085
01:50:28.479 --> 01:50:33.840
am engaged in looking up my favorite
passages? Not a bit? The other

1086
01:50:33.920 --> 01:50:39.960
evening I had a long tram journey, and before starting I tried to select

1087
01:50:39.960 --> 01:50:45.079
a book to take with me.
I couldn't find one to suit just the

1088
01:50:45.159 --> 01:50:49.119
tram mood. As I had to
catch the tram, I was obliged to

1089
01:50:49.159 --> 01:50:54.560
settle on something, and in the
end I went off with nothing more original

1090
01:50:54.600 --> 01:51:00.920
than Hamlet, which I am really
too familiar with. Then I bought an

1091
01:51:00.960 --> 01:51:05.359
evening paper and read it all through, including advertisements. So I said to

1092
01:51:05.399 --> 01:51:11.000
myself, this is a nice result
of all my trouble to resume company with

1093
01:51:11.079 --> 01:51:15.479
some of my books. However,
as I have long since ceased to be

1094
01:51:15.520 --> 01:51:21.560
surprised at the eccentric manner in which
human nature refuses to act as one would

1095
01:51:21.560 --> 01:51:28.680
have expected it to act, I
was able to keep calm and unashamed during

1096
01:51:28.760 --> 01:51:33.560
this extraordinary experience. And I am
still walking up and down in front of

1097
01:51:33.600 --> 01:51:41.600
my books and enjoying them without reading
them. I wish to argue that a

1098
01:51:41.640 --> 01:51:48.359
great deal of cant is talked and
written about reading papers such as the Athenaeum,

1099
01:51:48.800 --> 01:51:54.239
which nevertheless I peruse with joy from
end to end every week, can

1100
01:51:54.319 --> 01:52:00.560
scarcely notice a new edition of a
classic without expressing an aggrieved and pessimistic tone

1101
01:52:00.000 --> 01:52:06.399
the fear that more people buy these
agreeable editions than read them. And if

1102
01:52:06.399 --> 01:52:12.720
it is so, what then are
we only to buy the books that we

1103
01:52:12.920 --> 01:52:17.199
read. The question has merely to
be thus bluntly put, and it answers

1104
01:52:17.239 --> 01:52:24.159
itself. All impassioned book men,
except a few who devote their whole lives

1105
01:52:24.199 --> 01:52:28.680
to reading, have rows of books
on their shelves which they have never read,

1106
01:52:29.199 --> 01:52:32.399
and which they never will read.
I know that I have hundred such

1107
01:52:33.680 --> 01:52:39.119
My eye rests on the works of
Berkeley in three volumes, with a preface

1108
01:52:39.159 --> 01:52:45.079
by the right Honorable Arthur James Balfour. I cannot conceive the circumstances under which

1109
01:52:45.119 --> 01:52:48.560
I shall ever read Berkeley. But
I do not regret having bought him in

1110
01:52:48.600 --> 01:52:53.119
a good edition, and I would
buy him again if I had him not,

1111
01:52:54.079 --> 01:52:58.079
for when I look at him,
some of his virtue passes into me.

1112
01:52:58.920 --> 01:53:04.039
I am the better for him.
A certain aroma of philosophy informs my

1113
01:53:04.279 --> 01:53:10.880
soul, and I am less crude
than I should otherwise be. This is

1114
01:53:11.000 --> 01:53:17.479
not fancy but fact. Taking Berkeley
simply as an instance, I will utilize

1115
01:53:17.560 --> 01:53:23.239
him a little further. I ought
to have read Berkeley, you say,

1116
01:53:24.159 --> 01:53:28.439
just as I ought to have read
Spencer, Ben Jonson, George Eliot,

1117
01:53:28.680 --> 01:53:34.439
Victor Hugo. Not at all.
There is no aught about it. If

1118
01:53:34.479 --> 01:53:40.760
the mass of obtainable first class literature
were, as it was perhaps a century

1119
01:53:40.800 --> 01:53:45.920
ago, not too large to be
assimilated by a man of ordinary limited leisure

1120
01:53:45.079 --> 01:53:50.119
in his leisure and during the first
half of his life, then possibly there

1121
01:53:50.199 --> 01:53:57.479
might be an aught about it.
But the mass has grown unmanageable even by

1122
01:53:57.520 --> 01:54:02.880
those robust professional readers who can grapple
with whole libraries. And I am not

1123
01:54:03.039 --> 01:54:08.560
a professional reader. I am a
writer, just as I might be a

1124
01:54:08.600 --> 01:54:13.720
hotel keeper, a solicitor, a
doctor, a grocer, or an earthenware

1125
01:54:13.800 --> 01:54:18.640
manufacturer. I read in my scanty
spare time, and I don't read in

1126
01:54:18.760 --> 01:54:26.279
all my spare time either. I
have other distractions. I read what I

1127
01:54:26.319 --> 01:54:30.239
feel inclined to read, and I
am conscious of no duty to finish a

1128
01:54:30.279 --> 01:54:34.760
book that I don't care to finish. I read in my leisure, not

1129
01:54:35.000 --> 01:54:40.880
from a sense of duty, not
to improve myself, but solely because it

1130
01:54:40.960 --> 01:54:45.760
gives me pleasure to read. Sometimes
it takes me a month to get through

1131
01:54:45.800 --> 01:54:51.399
one book. I expect my case
is quite an average case. But am

1132
01:54:51.399 --> 01:54:58.279
I going to fetter my buying to
my reading. Not exactly. I want

1133
01:54:58.319 --> 01:55:01.079
to have lots of books on my
show because I know they are good,

1134
01:55:01.479 --> 01:55:05.600
because I know they would amuse me, because I like to look at them,

1135
01:55:05.920 --> 01:55:12.319
and because one day I might have
a caprice to read them. Berkeley,

1136
01:55:12.680 --> 01:55:17.800
even thy turn may come. In
short, I want them because I

1137
01:55:17.960 --> 01:55:24.640
want them, and shall I be
deterred from possessing them by the fear of

1138
01:55:24.720 --> 01:55:30.600
some sequestered and singular person some person
who has read vastly, but who doesn't

1139
01:55:30.640 --> 01:55:33.520
know the difference between a J.
S. Muria cigar and an RP.

1140
01:55:33.680 --> 01:55:40.159
Muria strolling in and bullying me with
the dreadful query, sir, do you

1141
01:55:40.439 --> 01:55:46.199
read your books? Therefore, I
say, in buying a book, be

1142
01:55:46.479 --> 01:55:54.399
influenced by two considerations. Only.
Are you reasonably sure that it is a

1143
01:55:54.439 --> 01:56:00.000
good book? Have you a desire
to possess it? Do not be influenced

1144
01:56:00.039 --> 01:56:05.720
by the probability or the improbability of
your reading it. After all, one

1145
01:56:05.800 --> 01:56:13.560
does read a certain proportion of what
one buys, and further instinct counts the

1146
01:56:13.600 --> 01:56:18.600
man who spends half a crown on
Stubbs's Early Plantagenets instead of going into the

1147
01:56:18.640 --> 01:56:25.359
gaiety pit to see the spring chicken
will probably be the sort of man who

1148
01:56:25.399 --> 01:56:32.079
can suck goodness out of Stubbs's Early
Plantagenets years before he bestirs himself to read

1149
01:56:32.119 --> 01:56:45.840
it. End of chapter six,
Chapter seven of Mental Efficiency. This LibriVox

1150
01:56:45.920 --> 01:56:53.359
recording is in the public domain.
Recording by Ruth Golding. Mental Efficiency and

1151
01:56:53.479 --> 01:57:00.960
Other Hints to Men and Women by
Arnold Bennett. Chapter seven success candid remarks

1152
01:57:02.720 --> 01:57:09.039
there are times when the whole free
and enlightened press of the United Kingdom seems

1153
01:57:09.079 --> 01:57:15.319
to become strangely interested in the subject
of success, of getting on in life.

1154
01:57:15.800 --> 01:57:18.920
We are passing through such a period
now. It would be difficult to

1155
01:57:19.000 --> 01:57:25.439
name the prominent journalists who have not
lately written in some form or another about

1156
01:57:25.560 --> 01:57:31.199
success. Most singular phenomenon of all, Doctor Emil Reich has left Plato,

1157
01:57:31.520 --> 01:57:38.319
Duchesses and Clarage's hotel in order to
instruct the million readers of a morning paper

1158
01:57:38.600 --> 01:57:45.640
in the principles of success. What
the million readers thought of the doctor's stirring

1159
01:57:45.720 --> 01:57:49.079
and strenuous sentences, I will not
imagine, but I know what I thought

1160
01:57:49.319 --> 01:57:55.920
as a plain man, after taking
due cognizance of his airy play with the

1161
01:57:56.039 --> 01:58:02.600
constants and variables of success, After
watching him treat energetics, his wonderful new

1162
01:58:02.720 --> 01:58:08.479
name for the science of success,
as though because he had made it end

1163
01:58:08.520 --> 01:58:14.760
in ix it resembled mathematics, I
thought that the sublime and venerable art of

1164
01:58:14.880 --> 01:58:20.640
mystification could no further go If my
fellow pilgrim through this vale of woe.

1165
01:58:21.039 --> 01:58:26.319
The average young man who arrives at
Waterloo at nine forty every morning with a

1166
01:58:26.359 --> 01:58:30.680
cigarette in his mouth, and a
second class season over his heart, and

1167
01:58:30.880 --> 01:58:34.920
vague aspirations in his soul was half
as mystified as I was. He has

1168
01:58:35.000 --> 01:58:41.920
probably air this decided that the science
of success has all the disadvantages of algebra,

1169
01:58:42.199 --> 01:58:45.800
without any of the advantages of cricket, and that he may as well

1170
01:58:45.880 --> 01:58:50.119
leave it alone, lest evil should
befall him. On the off chance that

1171
01:58:50.199 --> 01:58:55.840
he has come as yet to no
decision about the science of success, I

1172
01:58:55.880 --> 01:59:02.079
am determined to deal with the subject
in a disturbingly can manner. I feel

1173
01:59:02.159 --> 01:59:06.600
that it is as dangerous to tell
the truth about success as it is to

1174
01:59:06.600 --> 01:59:13.279
tell the truth about the United States. But being thoroughly accustomed to the whistle

1175
01:59:13.319 --> 01:59:18.680
of bullets around my head, I
will nevertheless try. Most writers on success

1176
01:59:18.920 --> 01:59:25.960
are, through sheer goodness of heart, wickedly disingenuous, for the basis of

1177
01:59:26.000 --> 01:59:30.880
their argument is that nearly anyone who
gives his mind to it can achieve success.

1178
01:59:31.039 --> 01:59:36.439
This is, to put it briefly
untrue. The very central idea of

1179
01:59:36.479 --> 01:59:42.880
success is separation from the multitude of
plain men. It is perhaps the only

1180
01:59:43.000 --> 01:59:47.439
idea common to all the various sorts
of success. Differentiation from the crowd.

1181
01:59:48.720 --> 01:59:55.000
To address the population at large and
tell it how to separate itself from itself

1182
01:59:55.239 --> 02:00:00.279
is merely silly. I am now, of course, using the word success

1183
02:00:00.279 --> 02:00:04.399
in its ordinary sense. If human
nature were more perfect than it is,

1184
02:00:04.880 --> 02:00:11.239
success in life would mean an intimate
knowledge of one's self and the achievement of

1185
02:00:11.279 --> 02:00:15.239
a philosophic inward calm. And such
a goal might well be reached by the

1186
02:00:15.279 --> 02:00:23.640
majority of mortals. But to us
success signifies something else. It may be

1187
02:00:23.720 --> 02:00:30.720
divided into four branches. One distinction
in pure or applied science. This is

1188
02:00:30.760 --> 02:00:34.920
the least gross of all forms of
success as we regard it, for it

1189
02:00:35.000 --> 02:00:41.520
frequently implies poverty, and it does
not, by any means always imply fame.

1190
02:00:43.079 --> 02:00:48.479
Two distinction in the arts. Fame
and adulation are usually implied in this,

1191
02:00:48.920 --> 02:00:56.520
though they do not commonly bring riches
with them. Three direct influence and

1192
02:00:56.680 --> 02:01:00.640
power over the material lives of other
men, that is to say, distinction

1193
02:01:00.920 --> 02:01:09.800
in politics, national or local.
For success in amassing money. This last

1194
02:01:10.000 --> 02:01:15.319
is the commonest and easiest. Most
forms of success will fall under one of

1195
02:01:15.359 --> 02:01:21.199
these heads. Are they possible to
that renowned and much flattered person the man

1196
02:01:21.239 --> 02:01:27.199
in the street, They are not, And well you know it. All,

1197
02:01:27.319 --> 02:01:32.279
you, professors of the science of
success, only a small minority of

1198
02:01:32.399 --> 02:01:40.640
us can even become rich happily.
While it is true that success in its

1199
02:01:40.760 --> 02:01:46.079
common acceptation is by its very essence
impossible to the majority, there is an

1200
02:01:46.119 --> 02:01:54.359
accompanying truth which adjusts the balance to
wit that the majority do not desire success.

1201
02:01:55.840 --> 02:02:00.279
This may seem a bold saying,
but it is in accordance with the

1202
02:02:00.399 --> 02:02:05.079
facts. Conceive the man in the
streets suddenly, by some miracle, invested

1203
02:02:05.119 --> 02:02:12.159
with political power, and of course
under the obligation to use it, he

1204
02:02:12.199 --> 02:02:16.119
would be so upset, worried,
wearied, and exasperated at the end of

1205
02:02:16.119 --> 02:02:19.399
a week that he would be ready
to give the eyes out of his head

1206
02:02:19.439 --> 02:02:25.039
in order to get rid of it. As for success in science or in

1207
02:02:25.199 --> 02:02:30.760
art, the average person's interest in
such matters is so slight compared with that

1208
02:02:30.880 --> 02:02:33.239
of the man of science or the
artist, that he cannot be said to

1209
02:02:33.279 --> 02:02:39.640
have an interest in them, And
supposing that distinction in them were thrust upon

1210
02:02:39.720 --> 02:02:45.439
him, he would rapidly lose that
distinction by simple indifference and neglect. The

1211
02:02:45.600 --> 02:02:51.800
average person certainly wants some money,
and the average person does not usually rest

1212
02:02:51.880 --> 02:02:57.279
until he has got as much as
is needed for the satisfaction of his instinctive

1213
02:02:57.439 --> 02:03:01.840
needs. He will move the heaven
and earth of his environment to earn sufficient

1214
02:03:01.920 --> 02:03:08.079
money for marriage in the station to
which he has been accustomed, and precisely

1215
02:03:08.119 --> 02:03:13.920
at that point his genuine desire for
money will cease to be active. The

1216
02:03:14.000 --> 02:03:18.039
average man has this in common with
the most exceptional genius, that his career,

1217
02:03:18.279 --> 02:03:25.000
in its main contours, is governed
by his instincts. The average man

1218
02:03:25.239 --> 02:03:31.119
flourishes and finds his ease in an
atmosphere of peaceful routine. Men destined for

1219
02:03:31.199 --> 02:03:38.319
success flourish and find their ease in
an atmosphere of collision and disturbance. The

1220
02:03:38.359 --> 02:03:45.600
two temperaments are diverse. Naturally,
the average man dreams vaguely. Upon occasion,

1221
02:03:45.359 --> 02:03:49.399
he dreams how nice it would be
to be famous and rich. We

1222
02:03:49.560 --> 02:03:58.159
all dream vaguely upon such things.
But to dream vaguely is not to desire.

1223
02:03:59.479 --> 02:04:01.880
I often tell myself that I would
give anything to be the equal of

1224
02:04:01.960 --> 02:04:06.840
Chinque Valley the juggler, or to
be the captain of the largest atlantic liner.

1225
02:04:08.640 --> 02:04:13.399
But the reflective part of me tells
me that my yearning to emulate these

1226
02:04:13.439 --> 02:04:19.720
astonishing personages is not a genuine desire, and that its realization would not increase

1227
02:04:19.800 --> 02:04:27.520
my happiness. To obtain a passably
true notion of what happens to the mass

1228
02:04:27.520 --> 02:04:30.920
of mankind in its progress from the
cradle to the grave, one must not

1229
02:04:31.000 --> 02:04:35.920
attempt to survey a whole nation,
nor even a great metropolis, nor even

1230
02:04:36.039 --> 02:04:43.319
a very big city like Manchester or
Liverpool. These panoramas are so immense and

1231
02:04:43.439 --> 02:04:47.920
confusing that they defeat the observing eye. It is better to take a small

1232
02:04:48.039 --> 02:04:54.199
town of say twenty or thirty thousand
inhabitants. Such a town, as most

1233
02:04:54.239 --> 02:05:00.439
of us know more or less intimately, the extremely few individuals whose instincts mark

1234
02:05:00.520 --> 02:05:05.119
them out to take part in the
struggle for success can be identified at once.

1235
02:05:06.039 --> 02:05:11.159
For the first thing they do is
to leave the town. The air

1236
02:05:11.239 --> 02:05:15.279
of the town is not bracing enough
for them. Their nostrils dilate for something

1237
02:05:15.439 --> 02:05:21.840
keener. Those who are left form
a microcosm which is representative enough of the

1238
02:05:21.880 --> 02:05:28.079
world at large. Between the ages
of thirty and forty, they begin to

1239
02:05:28.119 --> 02:05:32.840
sort themselves out in their own sphere. They take their places. A dozen

1240
02:05:32.920 --> 02:05:39.000
or so politicians form the town council
and rule the town. Half a dozen

1241
02:05:39.039 --> 02:05:44.399
business men stand for the town's commercial
activity and its wealth. A few others

1242
02:05:44.479 --> 02:05:49.239
teach science and art, or are
locally known as botanists, geologists, amateurs

1243
02:05:49.279 --> 02:05:56.199
of music, or amateurs of some
other art. These are the distinguished,

1244
02:05:56.560 --> 02:06:00.239
and it will be perceived that they
cannot be more numerous than them. They

1245
02:06:00.239 --> 02:06:05.159
are. What of the rest?
Have they struggled for success and been beaten?

1246
02:06:06.000 --> 02:06:11.920
Not they? Do? They,
as they grow old, resemble disappointed

1247
02:06:12.039 --> 02:06:18.239
men? Not they? They have
fulfilled themselves modestly. They have got what

1248
02:06:18.359 --> 02:06:24.760
they genuinely tried to get. They
have never even gone near the outskirts of

1249
02:06:24.800 --> 02:06:30.600
the battle for success, but they
have not failed. The number of failures

1250
02:06:30.680 --> 02:06:36.319
is surprisingly small. You see a
shabby, disappointed aging man flit down the

1251
02:06:36.399 --> 02:06:42.960
main street, and someone replies to
your inquiry that so and so one of

1252
02:06:43.079 --> 02:06:47.520
life's failures, poor fellow, And
the very tone in which the words are

1253
02:06:47.600 --> 02:06:54.960
uttered, proves the excessive rarity of
the real failure. It goes without saying

1254
02:06:55.000 --> 02:06:58.680
that the case of the handful who
have left the town in search of the

1255
02:06:58.800 --> 02:07:03.520
success with the capital s has a
tremendous interest of curiosity. For the mass

1256
02:07:03.560 --> 02:07:15.720
who remains, I will consider it
the successful and the unsuccessful Having boldly stated

1257
02:07:15.800 --> 02:07:20.800
that success is not and cannot be, within grasp of the majority, I

1258
02:07:20.920 --> 02:07:26.199
now proceed to state, as regards
the minority, that they do not achieve

1259
02:07:26.239 --> 02:07:30.520
it in the manner in which they
are commonly supposed to achieve it, and

1260
02:07:30.600 --> 02:07:35.000
I may add an expression of my
thankfulness that they do not. The popular

1261
02:07:35.039 --> 02:07:42.039
delusion is that success is attained by
what I may call the Benjamin Franklin method.

1262
02:07:43.520 --> 02:07:47.479
Franklin was a very great man.
He united in his character a set

1263
02:07:47.520 --> 02:07:54.720
of splendid qualities, as various in
their different ways as those possessed by Leonardo

1264
02:07:54.840 --> 02:08:01.359
da Vinci. I have an immense
admiration for him, but his autobiography does

1265
02:08:01.520 --> 02:08:07.520
make me angry. His autobiography is
understood to be a classic, and if

1266
02:08:07.560 --> 02:08:11.000
you say a word against it in
the United States, you are apt to

1267
02:08:11.000 --> 02:08:15.880
get killed. I do, not, however, contemplate an immediate visit to

1268
02:08:15.920 --> 02:08:22.159
the United States, and I shall
venture to assert that Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography is

1269
02:08:22.279 --> 02:08:28.760
a detestable book and a misleading book. I can recall only two other volumes

1270
02:08:28.960 --> 02:08:35.079
which I would more willingly revile.
One is Samuel Budget, The Successful Merchant,

1271
02:08:35.640 --> 02:08:39.039
and the other is from log Cabin
to White House, being the history

1272
02:08:39.079 --> 02:08:46.560
of President Garfield. Such books may
impose on boys, and it is conceivable

1273
02:08:46.600 --> 02:08:50.680
that they do not harm boys.
Franklin, by the way, began his

1274
02:08:50.720 --> 02:08:54.319
autobiography in the form of a letter
to his son. But the grown man,

1275
02:08:54.399 --> 02:08:58.840
who can support them without nausea,
ought to go and see a doctor,

1276
02:09:00.119 --> 02:09:05.760
for there is something wrong with him. I began, now blandly,

1277
02:09:05.840 --> 02:09:09.520
remarks Franklin, to have some acquaintance
among the young people of the town that

1278
02:09:09.600 --> 02:09:16.159
were lovers of reading, with whom
I spent my evenings very pleasantly in italics,

1279
02:09:16.199 --> 02:09:22.239
and gained money by my industry and
frugality. End of italics, or

1280
02:09:22.319 --> 02:09:28.840
again quote. It was about this
time I conceived the bold and arduous project

1281
02:09:28.960 --> 02:09:33.960
of arriving at moral perfection. I
made a little book in which I allotted

1282
02:09:33.960 --> 02:09:39.520
a page for each of the virtues. I ruled each page with red ink,

1283
02:09:39.840 --> 02:09:43.640
so as to have seven columns,
one for each day of the week.

1284
02:09:43.119 --> 02:09:48.680
I crossed these columns with thirteen red
lines, marking the beginning of each

1285
02:09:48.760 --> 02:09:52.079
line with the first letter of one
of the virtues on which line and in

1286
02:09:52.119 --> 02:09:58.119
its proper column I might mark by
a little black spot every fault I found,

1287
02:09:58.199 --> 02:10:05.039
upon examining it, to have been
committed respecting that virtue upon that day

1288
02:10:05.000 --> 02:10:13.680
end shade of Franklin, where ere
thou art, this is really a little

1289
02:10:13.720 --> 02:10:20.520
bit stiff. A man may be
excused even such infamies of priggishness, But

1290
02:10:20.760 --> 02:10:26.560
truly he ought not to go and
write them down, especially to his son.

1291
02:10:26.479 --> 02:10:33.000
And why the detail about red Ink. If Franklin's son was not driven

1292
02:10:33.079 --> 02:10:37.680
to evil courses by the perusal of
that monstrous autobiography, he must have been

1293
02:10:37.680 --> 02:10:45.079
a man almost as astounding as his
father. Now, Franklin could only have

1294
02:10:45.159 --> 02:10:54.399
written his immortal classic from one of
three motives. One sheer conceit he was

1295
02:10:54.439 --> 02:11:00.000
a prig, but he was not
conceited to a desire that others should profit

1296
02:11:00.159 --> 02:11:05.920
by his mistakes. He never made
any mistakes. Now and again he emphasizes

1297
02:11:05.960 --> 02:11:11.680
some trifling error, but that is
only his fun. Three, a desire

1298
02:11:11.720 --> 02:11:16.560
that others should profit by the recital
of his virtuous sagacity to reach a similar

1299
02:11:16.640 --> 02:11:24.279
success. The last was undoubtedly his
principal motive. Honest fellow who happened to

1300
02:11:24.319 --> 02:11:30.479
be a genius. But the point
is that his success was in no way

1301
02:11:30.640 --> 02:11:35.880
the result of his virtuous sagacity.
I would go further and say that his

1302
02:11:35.119 --> 02:11:43.039
dreadful, virtuous sagacity often hindered his
success. No one is a worse guide

1303
02:11:43.159 --> 02:11:50.239
to success than your typical successful man. He seldom understands the reasons of his

1304
02:11:50.359 --> 02:11:54.920
own success. And when he is
asked by a popular magazine to give his

1305
02:11:54.039 --> 02:11:58.640
experiences for the benefit of the use
of a whole nation, it is impossible

1306
02:11:58.680 --> 02:12:03.479
for him to be natural and sincere. He knows the kind of thing that

1307
02:12:03.640 --> 02:12:07.680
is expected from him. And if
he didn't come to London with half a

1308
02:12:07.680 --> 02:12:11.920
crown in his pocket, he probably
did something equally silly. And he puts

1309
02:12:11.960 --> 02:12:16.239
that down, and the note of
the article or interview is struck, and

1310
02:12:16.359 --> 02:12:24.399
goodbye to genuine truth. There recently
appeared in a daily paper an autobiographic didactic

1311
02:12:24.680 --> 02:12:31.399
article by one of the world's richest
men, which was the most inadequate article

1312
02:12:31.399 --> 02:12:37.439
of the sort that I have ever
come across. Successful men forget so much

1313
02:12:37.520 --> 02:12:43.399
of their lives. Moreover, nothing
is easier than to explain an accomplished fact

1314
02:12:43.479 --> 02:12:50.760
in a nice, agreeable, conventional
way. The entire business of success is

1315
02:12:50.800 --> 02:12:56.640
a gigantic tacit conspiracy on the part
of the minority to deceive the majority.

1316
02:12:58.760 --> 02:13:03.239
Are successful men more industrious, frugal, and intelligent than men who are not

1317
02:13:03.399 --> 02:13:09.039
successful. I maintain that they are
not, and I have studied successful men

1318
02:13:09.079 --> 02:13:16.039
at close quarters. One of the
commonest characteristics of the successful man is his

1319
02:13:16.199 --> 02:13:22.039
idleness, his immense capacity for wasting
time. I stoutly assert that, as

1320
02:13:22.039 --> 02:13:28.840
a rule, successful men are by
habit comparatively idle. As for brugality,

1321
02:13:30.119 --> 02:13:35.319
it is practically unknown among the successful
classes. This statement applies with particular force

1322
02:13:35.399 --> 02:13:41.840
to financiers. As for intelligence,
I have over and over again been startled

1323
02:13:41.880 --> 02:13:48.239
by the lack of intelligence in successful
men. They are indeed capable of stupidities

1324
02:13:48.239 --> 02:13:52.760
that would be the ruin of a
plain clerk. And much of the talk

1325
02:13:52.880 --> 02:13:58.520
in those circles which surround the successful
man is devoted to the enumeration of instances

1326
02:13:58.520 --> 02:14:05.920
of his life lack of intelligence.
Another point. Successful men seldom succeed as

1327
02:14:05.960 --> 02:14:09.720
the result of an ordered arrangement of
their lives. They are the least methodical

1328
02:14:09.760 --> 02:14:16.000
of creatures. Naturally, when they
have arrived, they amuse themselves and impress

1329
02:14:16.119 --> 02:14:22.119
the majority by being convinced that right
from the start, with a steady eye

1330
02:14:22.239 --> 02:14:26.720
on the goal, they had carefully
planned every foot of the route. No

1331
02:14:28.800 --> 02:14:35.119
great success never depends on the practice
of the humbler virtues, though it may

1332
02:14:35.199 --> 02:14:41.279
occasionally depend on the practice of the
prouder vices. Use industry, frugality and

1333
02:14:41.359 --> 02:14:46.039
common sense by all means, but
do not expect that they will help you

1334
02:14:46.119 --> 02:14:52.600
to success, because they will not. I shall no doubt be told that

1335
02:14:52.680 --> 02:14:58.840
what I have just written has an
immoral tendency and is a direct encouragement to

1336
02:14:58.960 --> 02:15:05.399
slots, blessness, et cetera.
One of our chief national faults is our

1337
02:15:05.520 --> 02:15:11.399
hypocritical desire to suppress the truth on
the pretext that to admit it would encourage

1338
02:15:11.520 --> 02:15:15.840
sin, whereas the real explanation is
that we are afraid of the truth.

1339
02:15:16.680 --> 02:15:20.359
I will not be guilty of that
fault. I do like to look a

1340
02:15:20.479 --> 02:15:28.119
fact in the face without blinking.
I am fully persuaded that per head,

1341
02:15:28.239 --> 02:15:33.359
there is more of the virtues in
the unsuccessful majority than in the successful minority.

1342
02:15:35.279 --> 02:15:41.520
In London alone, are there not
hundreds of miles of streets crammed with

1343
02:15:41.680 --> 02:15:46.720
industry, frugality and prudence. Some
of the most brilliant men I have known

1344
02:15:46.880 --> 02:15:52.159
have been failures, and not through
lack of character either. And some of

1345
02:15:52.239 --> 02:15:58.319
the least gifted have been marvelously successful. It is impossible to point to a

1346
02:15:58.439 --> 02:16:05.239
single branch of human activity in which
success can be explained by the conventional principles

1347
02:16:05.279 --> 02:16:13.800
that find general acceptance. I hear
you, o reader, murmuring to yourself,

1348
02:16:13.119 --> 02:16:18.359
this is all very well, But
he is simply being paradoxical for his

1349
02:16:18.439 --> 02:16:24.119
own diversion. I would that I
could persuade you of my intense seriousness.

1350
02:16:26.399 --> 02:16:31.239
I have endeavored to show what does
not make success. I will next endeavor

1351
02:16:31.280 --> 02:16:39.559
to show what does make it.
But my hope is forlorn the inwardness of

1352
02:16:39.719 --> 02:16:48.680
success. Of course, one can
no more explain success than one can explain

1353
02:16:48.920 --> 02:16:54.680
Beethoven's C Minor Symphony. One may
state what key it is written in,

1354
02:16:54.079 --> 02:17:00.440
and make expert reflections upon its form, and catalog its themes, and relate

1355
02:17:00.479 --> 02:17:05.159
it to symphonies that preceded it and
symphonies that followed it. But in the

1356
02:17:05.360 --> 02:17:11.159
end one is reduced to saying that
the C Minor Symphony is beautiful because it

1357
02:17:11.239 --> 02:17:16.600
is in the same manner. One
is reduced to saying that the sole real

1358
02:17:16.760 --> 02:17:24.200
difference between success and failure is that
success succeeds This being frankly admitted at the

1359
02:17:24.200 --> 02:17:30.440
outset, I will allow myself to
assert that there are three sorts of success.

1360
02:17:31.680 --> 02:17:35.159
Success A is the accidental sort.
It is due to the thing we

1361
02:17:35.239 --> 02:17:41.319
call chance, and to nothing else. We are all of us still very

1362
02:17:41.319 --> 02:17:46.479
superstitious, and the caprices of chance
have a singular effect upon us. Suppose

1363
02:17:46.559 --> 02:17:52.559
that I go to Monte Carlo and
announce to a friend my firm conviction that

1364
02:17:52.719 --> 02:17:56.079
Red will turn up next time,
and I back Red for the maximum,

1365
02:17:56.280 --> 02:18:01.520
and Red does turn up, my
friend, in spite of his intellect,

1366
02:18:01.559 --> 02:18:09.360
will vaguely attribute to me a mysterious
power. Yet chance alone would be responsible.

1367
02:18:09.520 --> 02:18:13.159
If I did that six times running, all the players at the table

1368
02:18:13.200 --> 02:18:18.040
would be interested in me. If
I did it a dozen times, all

1369
02:18:18.079 --> 02:18:22.520
the players in the casino would regard
me with all. Yet chance alone would

1370
02:18:22.520 --> 02:18:28.639
be responsible. If I did it
eighteen times, my name would be in

1371
02:18:28.719 --> 02:18:35.559
every newspaper in Europe. Yet chance
alone would be responsible. I should be

1372
02:18:35.719 --> 02:18:41.360
in that department of human activity,
an extremely successful man, and the vast

1373
02:18:41.479 --> 02:18:46.879
majority of people would instinctively credit me
with gifts that I do not possess.

1374
02:18:48.760 --> 02:18:54.040
If such phenomena of superstition can occur
in an affair where the agency of chance

1375
02:18:54.159 --> 02:19:00.399
is open and avowed, how much
more probable is it that people should refuse

1376
02:19:00.479 --> 02:19:05.719
to be satisfied with the explanation of
sheer accident in affairs where it is to

1377
02:19:05.760 --> 02:19:11.680
the interest of the principal actors to
conceal the role played by chance. Nevertheless,

1378
02:19:11.879 --> 02:19:16.520
there can be no doubt in the
minds of persons who have viewed success

1379
02:19:16.559 --> 02:19:20.959
at close quarters that a proportion of
it is due solely and utterly to chance.

1380
02:19:22.600 --> 02:19:28.040
Successful men flourish to day, and
have flourished in the past, who

1381
02:19:28.120 --> 02:19:33.760
have no quality whatever to differentiate them
from the multitude red has turned up for

1382
02:19:33.840 --> 02:19:39.680
them a sufficient number of times,
and the universal superstitious instinct not to believe

1383
02:19:39.719 --> 02:19:46.879
in chance has accordingly surrounded them with
a halo. It is merely ridiculous to

1384
02:19:46.959 --> 02:19:50.799
say, as some do, say, that success is never due to chance

1385
02:19:50.840 --> 02:19:56.799
alone, because nearly everybody is personally
acquainted with reasonable proof on a great or

1386
02:19:56.799 --> 02:20:03.840
a small scale. To the contrary, the second sort of success b is

1387
02:20:03.879 --> 02:20:07.399
that made by men who, while
not gifted with first class talents, have

1388
02:20:07.680 --> 02:20:13.760
beyond doubt the talent to succeed.
I should describe these men by saying that

1389
02:20:15.000 --> 02:20:20.399
though they deserve something, they do
not deserve the dazzling reward known as success.

1390
02:20:20.159 --> 02:20:26.239
They strike us as overpaid. We
meet them in all professions and trades,

1391
02:20:26.559 --> 02:20:31.159
and we do not really respect them. They excite our curiosity and perhaps

1392
02:20:31.200 --> 02:20:37.120
are envy. They may rise very
high, indeed, but they must always

1393
02:20:37.159 --> 02:20:41.920
be unpleasantly conscious of a serious reservation
in our attitude towards them. And if

1394
02:20:41.920 --> 02:20:48.479
they could read their obituary notices,
they would assuredly discern therein a certain chilliness.

1395
02:20:48.799 --> 02:20:54.639
However, kindly we acted up to
our great national motto of de mortuis

1396
02:20:54.760 --> 02:21:01.200
nil nist buncom. It is this
class of success which puzzles a social student.

1397
02:21:01.079 --> 02:21:07.399
How comes it that men without any
other talent possess a mysterious and indefinable

1398
02:21:07.559 --> 02:21:15.719
talent to succeed well? It seems
to me that such men always display certain

1399
02:21:15.840 --> 02:21:22.639
characteristics, and the chief of these
characteristics is the continual insatiable wish to succeed.

1400
02:21:24.680 --> 02:21:30.159
They are preoccupied with the idea of
succeeding. We others are not so

1401
02:21:30.319 --> 02:21:35.200
preoccupied. We dream of success at
intervals, but we have not the passion

1402
02:21:35.360 --> 02:21:43.120
for success. We don't lie awake
at nights pondering upon it. The second

1403
02:21:43.239 --> 02:21:48.479
characteristic of these men springs naturally from
the first. They are always on the

1404
02:21:48.600 --> 02:21:52.920
lookout. This does not mean that
they are industrious. I stated in a

1405
02:21:52.959 --> 02:21:58.399
previous article my belief that, as
a rule, successful men are not particularly

1406
02:21:58.440 --> 02:22:03.639
industrious. A man on a raft
with his shirt for a signal cannot be

1407
02:22:03.799 --> 02:22:07.799
termed industrious. But he will keep
his eyes open for a sail on the

1408
02:22:07.799 --> 02:22:13.559
horizon. If he simply lies down
and goes to sleep, he may miss

1409
02:22:13.600 --> 02:22:18.440
the chance of his life. In
a very special sense, the man with

1410
02:22:18.479 --> 02:22:22.120
the talent to succeed is the man
on the raft who never goes to sleep.

1411
02:22:22.840 --> 02:22:30.959
His indefatigable orb sweeps the man from
sunset to sunset. Having sighted a

1412
02:22:31.040 --> 02:22:35.639
sail, he gets up on his
hind legs and waves that shirt in so

1413
02:22:35.879 --> 02:22:39.120
determined a manner that the ship is
bound to see him and take him off.

1414
02:22:41.319 --> 02:22:46.159
Occasionally he plunges into the sea,
risking sharks and other perils. If

1415
02:22:46.159 --> 02:22:50.879
he doesn't get there, we hear
nothing of him. If he does,

1416
02:22:52.399 --> 02:22:56.959
some person will ultimately multiply by ten
the number of sharks that he braved.

1417
02:22:58.719 --> 02:23:07.280
That person is called a biographer.
Let me drop the metaphor. Another characteristic

1418
02:23:07.360 --> 02:23:11.959
of these men is that they seem
to have the exact contrary of what is

1419
02:23:13.040 --> 02:23:20.239
known as common sense. They will
become enamored of some enterprise which infallibly impresses

1420
02:23:20.280 --> 02:23:26.920
the average common sense person as a
mad and hopeless enterprise. The average common

1421
02:23:26.000 --> 02:23:33.000
sense person will demolish the hopes of
that enterprise by incontrovertible argument. He will

1422
02:23:33.040 --> 02:23:37.440
point out that it is foolish on
the face of it, that it has

1423
02:23:37.559 --> 02:23:41.079
never been attempted before, and that
it responds to no need of humanity.

1424
02:23:43.200 --> 02:23:48.159
He will say to himself, this
fellow with his precious enterprise has a twist

1425
02:23:48.200 --> 02:23:52.959
in his brain. He can't reply
to my arguments, and yet he obstinately

1426
02:23:52.040 --> 02:23:58.159
persists in going on. And the
man destined to success does go on.

1427
02:24:00.399 --> 02:24:05.840
Perhaps the enterprise fails, It often
fails, and then the average common sense

1428
02:24:05.959 --> 02:24:13.000
person expends much breath in I told
you, sos. But the man continues

1429
02:24:13.040 --> 02:24:18.159
to be on the look out.
His thirst is unassuaged, his taste for

1430
02:24:18.360 --> 02:24:26.239
enterprises foredoomed to failure is incurable.
And one day some enterprise for doomed to

1431
02:24:26.360 --> 02:24:33.600
failure develops into a success. We
all hear of it. We all open

1432
02:24:33.639 --> 02:24:39.200
our mouths and gape of the failures
we have heard nothing. Once the man

1433
02:24:39.360 --> 02:24:46.639
has achieved success, the thing becomes
a habit with him. The difference between

1434
02:24:46.639 --> 02:24:52.399
a success and a failure is often
so slight that a reputation for succeeding will

1435
02:24:52.440 --> 02:24:58.959
insure a success, and a reputation
for failing will insure a failure. Chance

1436
02:24:58.040 --> 02:25:03.479
plays an important part in such careers, but not a paramount part. One

1437
02:25:03.520 --> 02:25:07.360
can only say that it is more
useful to have luck at the beginning than

1438
02:25:07.440 --> 02:25:13.440
later on. These men of success
generally have pliable temperaments. They are not

1439
02:25:13.639 --> 02:25:20.360
frequently unmorl but they regard a conscience
as a good servant and a bad master.

1440
02:25:20.479 --> 02:25:28.920
They live in an atmosphere of compromise. There remains Class C of success,

1441
02:25:28.520 --> 02:25:35.319
the class of sheer high merit.
I am not a pessimist, nor

1442
02:25:35.440 --> 02:25:39.879
am I an optimist. I try
to arrive at the truth. And I

1443
02:25:39.920 --> 02:25:43.680
should say that in putting success C
at ten percent of the sum total of

1444
02:25:43.719 --> 02:25:50.200
all successes, I am being generous
to class C. Not that I believe

1445
02:25:50.319 --> 02:25:56.520
that vast quantities of merit go unappreciated. My reason for giving to class C

1446
02:25:56.840 --> 02:26:01.440
only a modest share is the fact
that there is so little sheer high merit,

1447
02:26:03.600 --> 02:26:07.280
and does it not stand to reason
that high merit must be very exceptional.

1448
02:26:09.360 --> 02:26:13.959
This sort of success needs no explanation, no accounting, for it is

1449
02:26:15.000 --> 02:26:20.639
the justification of our singular belief in
the principle of the triumph of justice,

1450
02:26:20.440 --> 02:26:26.079
and it is among natural phenomena,
perhaps the only justification that can be advanced

1451
02:26:26.079 --> 02:26:33.079
for that belief. And certainly,
when we behold the spectacle of genuine,

1452
02:26:33.200 --> 02:26:39.719
distinguished merit gaining without undue delay,
and without the sacrifice of dignity or of

1453
02:26:39.799 --> 02:26:45.959
conscience, the applause of the kind
hearted, but obtuse and insensible majority of

1454
02:26:46.000 --> 02:26:54.399
the human race, we have fair
reason to hug ourselves. End of chapter

1455
02:26:54.479 --> 02:27:11.559
seven, Chapter eight of Mental Efficiency. This LibriVox recording is in the public

1456
02:27:11.600 --> 02:27:18.479
domain recording by Ruth Golding. Mental
Efficiency and Other Hints to Men and Women

1457
02:27:18.639 --> 02:27:28.559
by Arnold Bennett, Chapter eight,
The petty Artificialities. The phrase petty artificialities,

1458
02:27:28.920 --> 02:27:33.959
employed by one of the correspondents in
the Great Simple Life argument, has

1459
02:27:33.040 --> 02:27:37.959
stuck in my mind. Although I
gave it a plain intimation that it was

1460
02:27:39.040 --> 02:27:43.799
no longer wanted there, perhaps it
sheds more light than I had at first

1461
02:27:43.799 --> 02:27:48.360
imagined on the mental state of the
persons who use it when they wish to

1462
02:27:48.479 --> 02:27:56.719
arraign the conditions of modern life.
Of vituperative epithet is capable of making a

1463
02:27:56.760 --> 02:28:03.559
big show. Artificiality is a sufficiently
scornful word. But when you add petty,

1464
02:28:05.120 --> 02:28:09.920
you somehow give the quietus to the
pretensions of modern life. Modern life

1465
02:28:11.000 --> 02:28:16.079
had better hide its diminished head.
After that, modern life is settled and

1466
02:28:16.200 --> 02:28:22.440
done for in the opinion of those
who have thrown the dart, only it

1467
02:28:22.600 --> 02:28:28.520
isn't done for really, you know, petty, after all, means nothing

1468
02:28:28.600 --> 02:28:33.799
in that connection. Are there then
artificialities which are not petty, which are

1469
02:28:33.920 --> 02:28:39.959
noble, large and grand. Petty
means merely that the users of the word

1470
02:28:39.959 --> 02:28:46.319
are just a little cross and out
of temper. What they think they object

1471
02:28:46.440 --> 02:28:50.799
to is artificialities of any kind,
and so to get rid of their spleen

1472
02:28:52.280 --> 02:28:56.959
they refer to petty artificialities. The
device is a common one, and as

1473
02:28:58.000 --> 02:29:05.559
brilliant as it is futile. Rude
adjectives are like blank cartridge. They impress

1474
02:29:05.639 --> 02:29:09.600
a vain people, including the birds
of the air, but they do no

1475
02:29:09.959 --> 02:29:16.399
execution. At the same time,
let me admit that I deeply sympathize with

1476
02:29:16.479 --> 02:29:24.079
the irritated users of the impolite phrase
petty artificialities, for it does at any

1477
02:29:24.159 --> 02:29:31.200
rate show a divine discontent. It
does prove a high dissatisfaction with conditions which,

1478
02:29:31.239 --> 02:29:35.920
at best are not the final expression
of the eternal purpose. It does

1479
02:29:37.040 --> 02:29:43.280
make for a sort of crude and
churlish righteousness. I well know that feeling

1480
02:29:43.520 --> 02:29:50.559
which induces one to spit out savagely
the phrase petty artificialities of modern life.

1481
02:29:50.879 --> 02:29:56.280
One has it usually either on getting
up or on going to bed. What

1482
02:29:56.479 --> 02:30:03.840
a petty artificial business it is?
Getting up even for a male shaving?

1483
02:30:03.559 --> 02:30:11.120
Why shave? And then going to
a draw and choosing a necktie? Fancy

1484
02:30:11.280 --> 02:30:18.840
an immortal soul? Fancy a fragment
of the eternal and indestructible energy which exists

1485
02:30:18.879 --> 02:30:28.040
from everlasting to everlasting, deliberately expending
its activity on the choice of a necktie.

1486
02:30:28.879 --> 02:30:35.319
Why a necktie? Then one goes
downstairs and exchanges banal phrases with other

1487
02:30:35.559 --> 02:30:43.680
immortals, And one can't start breakfast
immediately because some sleep immortal is late?

1488
02:30:45.520 --> 02:30:52.159
Why babble? Why wait? Why
not say straight out? Go to their

1489
02:30:52.319 --> 02:30:56.719
deuce? All of you here,
it's nearly ten o'clock, and me anxious

1490
02:30:56.760 --> 02:31:03.920
to begin living the higher life at
once instead of fiddling around in petty artificialities.

1491
02:31:03.719 --> 02:31:09.159
Shut up, every one of you. Give me my bacon instantly,

1492
02:31:09.360 --> 02:31:13.360
and let me gobble it down quick
and be off. I'm sick of your

1493
02:31:13.520 --> 02:31:18.520
ceremonies. This would at any rate
not be artificial. It would save time.

1494
02:31:20.360 --> 02:31:24.760
And if a similar policy were strictly
applied through the day, one could

1495
02:31:24.799 --> 02:31:28.520
retire to a well earned repose in
the full assurance that the day had been

1496
02:31:28.760 --> 02:31:35.280
simplified. The time for living the
higher life, the time for pushing forward

1497
02:31:35.360 --> 02:31:41.719
those vast schemes of self improvement which
we all cherish, would decidedly have been

1498
02:31:41.799 --> 02:31:48.319
increased. One would not have that
maddening feeling which one so frequently does have

1499
02:31:48.399 --> 02:31:52.760
when the shades of night are falling
fast, that the day had been frittered

1500
02:31:52.799 --> 02:32:03.040
away. And yet, and yet, I gravely doubt whether this wholesale massacre

1501
02:32:03.120 --> 02:32:09.959
of those poor petty artificialities would bring
us appreciably nearer the millennium. For there

1502
02:32:11.040 --> 02:32:16.559
is one thing, and a thing
of fundamental importance which the revolutionists against petty

1503
02:32:16.680 --> 02:32:22.879
artificialities always fail to appreciate, and
that is the necessity and the value of

1504
02:32:22.959 --> 02:32:31.040
convention. I cannot in a paragraph
deal effectively with this most difficult and complex

1505
02:32:31.159 --> 02:32:35.159
question. I can only point the
reader to analogous phenomena in the arts.

1506
02:32:37.200 --> 02:32:43.760
All the arts are a conventionalization,
an ordering of nature. Even in a

1507
02:32:43.799 --> 02:32:48.200
garden, you put the plants in
romes, and you subordinate the well being

1508
02:32:48.239 --> 02:32:52.799
of one to the general well being. The sole difference between a garden and

1509
02:32:52.879 --> 02:33:01.840
the wild woods is a petty artificiality. In writing a sonnet actually cramped the

1510
02:33:01.879 --> 02:33:07.639
profoundest emotional conceptions into a length and
a number of lines and a jingling of

1511
02:33:07.920 --> 02:33:16.680
like sounds arbitrarily fixed beforehand. Wordsworth's
The World Is Too Much with Us is

1512
02:33:16.719 --> 02:33:22.319
a solid, horrid mass of petty
artificiality. Why couldn't the fellows say what

1513
02:33:22.399 --> 02:33:26.159
he meant and have done with it
instead of making powers rhyme with hours and

1514
02:33:26.399 --> 02:33:33.680
worrying himself to use exactly one hundred
and forty syllables as for music. The

1515
02:33:33.719 --> 02:33:37.719
amount of time that must have been
devoted to petty artificiality in the construction of

1516
02:33:37.760 --> 02:33:46.639
an affair like Bach's Cha Khan is
simply staggering. Then look at pictures absurdly

1517
02:33:46.760 --> 02:33:52.319
confined in frames, with their ingenious
contrasts of light and shade and mass against

1518
02:33:52.399 --> 02:34:01.040
mass. Nothing but petty artificiality.
In other words, nothing but form,

1519
02:34:01.120 --> 02:34:07.319
form, which is the basis of
all beauty, whether material or otherwise.

1520
02:34:09.040 --> 02:34:18.000
Now what form is in art?
Conventions petty artificialities are in life. Just

1521
02:34:18.079 --> 02:34:22.399
as you can have too much form
in art, so you can have too

1522
02:34:22.479 --> 02:34:28.360
much convention in life. But no
art that is not planned in form is

1523
02:34:28.479 --> 02:34:33.399
worth consideration, and no life that
is not planned in convention can ever be

1524
02:34:33.520 --> 02:34:41.559
satisfactory. Convention is not the essence
of life, but it is the protecting

1525
02:34:41.719 --> 02:34:48.000
garment and preservative of life, and
it is also one very valuable means by

1526
02:34:48.079 --> 02:34:54.959
which life can express itself. It
is largely symbolic, and symbols, while

1527
02:34:54.000 --> 02:35:03.120
being expressive, are also great time
savers of petty artificialities should think of this.

1528
02:35:03.600 --> 02:35:11.920
Take the striking instance of that pettiest
artificiality leaving cards well search as after

1529
02:35:13.040 --> 02:35:18.760
the real what would you substitute for
it? If you dropped it and substituted

1530
02:35:18.799 --> 02:35:22.360
nothing, the result would tend towards
a loosening of the bonds of society,

1531
02:35:24.079 --> 02:35:28.920
and it would tend towards the diminution
of the number of your friends. And

1532
02:35:28.000 --> 02:35:33.959
if you dropped it and tried to
substitute something less artificial and more real,

1533
02:35:33.719 --> 02:35:39.680
you would accomplish no more than you
accomplished with cards. You would inconvenience everybody

1534
02:35:41.120 --> 02:35:46.120
and waste a good deal of your
own time. I cannot too strongly insist

1535
02:35:46.319 --> 02:35:52.040
that the basis of convention is a
symbolism primarily meant to display regard for the

1536
02:35:52.040 --> 02:35:58.079
feelings of other people. If you
do not display regard for the feelings of

1537
02:35:58.079 --> 02:36:01.680
other people, you may as well
go live on herbs in the desert.

1538
02:36:01.879 --> 02:36:05.840
And if you are to display such
a regard, you cannot do it more

1539
02:36:05.920 --> 02:36:13.200
expeditiously at a smaller outlay of time
and brains than via adopting the code of

1540
02:36:13.239 --> 02:36:20.559
convention now generally practiced. It comes
to this that you cannot have all the

1541
02:36:20.600 --> 02:36:24.440
advantages of living in the desert while
you are living in a society. It

1542
02:36:24.479 --> 02:36:31.239
would be delightful for you if you
could, but you can't. There are

1543
02:36:31.239 --> 02:36:37.319
two further reasons for the continuance of
conventionality, and one is the mysterious but

1544
02:36:37.440 --> 02:36:41.920
indisputable fact that the full beauty of
an activity is never brought out until it

1545
02:36:41.959 --> 02:36:50.479
is subjected to discipline and strict ordering
and nice balancing. A life without petty

1546
02:36:50.559 --> 02:36:54.799
artificiality would be the life of a
tiger in the forest, a beautiful life,

1547
02:36:54.799 --> 02:37:01.319
perhaps a life of burning bright,
but not reaching the highest ideal of

1548
02:37:01.399 --> 02:37:09.399
beauty. Laws and rules, forms
and ceremonies are good in themselves from a

1549
02:37:09.479 --> 02:37:16.120
merely esthetic point of view, apart
from their social value and necessity. And

1550
02:37:16.200 --> 02:37:20.760
the other reason is that one cannot
always be at the full strain of self

1551
02:37:20.799 --> 02:37:26.879
improvement and evolutionary progress and generally beating
the big drum. Human nature will not

1552
02:37:28.200 --> 02:37:33.120
stand it. There is, if
we will only be patient ample time for

1553
02:37:33.200 --> 02:37:39.200
the artificial as well as for the
real. Those people who think that there

1554
02:37:39.280 --> 02:37:46.520
isn't ought to return to school and
learn arithmetic. Supposing that all petty artificialities

1555
02:37:46.559 --> 02:37:50.680
were suddenly swept away and we were
able to show our regard and consideration for

1556
02:37:50.760 --> 02:37:56.360
our fellow creatures by the swift processes
of thought alone, we should find ourselves

1557
02:37:56.559 --> 02:38:01.319
with a terrible lot of time hanging
heavy on our hands. We can no

1558
02:38:01.440 --> 02:38:07.200
more spend all our waking hours in
consciously striving towards higher things than we can

1559
02:38:07.360 --> 02:38:16.239
dine exclusively off jam what frightful prigs
we should become if we had nothing to

1560
02:38:16.319 --> 02:38:24.040
do but cultivate our noblest faculties.
I beg the despisers of artificiality to reflect

1561
02:38:24.159 --> 02:38:31.120
upon these observations, however incomplete these
observations may be, and to consider whether

1562
02:38:31.159 --> 02:38:35.559
they would be quite content if they
got what they are crying out for.

1563
02:38:37.920 --> 02:38:48.920
End of Chapter eight, Chapter nine
of Mental Efficiency. This LibriVox recording is

1564
02:38:48.959 --> 02:38:56.520
in the public domain. Recording by
Ruth Golding. Mental Efficiency and Other Hints

1565
02:38:56.559 --> 02:39:03.120
to Men and Women by Arnold Bennett, Chapter nine, The Secret of Content.

1566
02:39:05.760 --> 02:39:09.760
I have said, lightly apropos of
the conclusion arrived at by several correspondents

1567
02:39:09.799 --> 02:39:13.840
and by myself, that the cry
for the simple life was merely a new

1568
02:39:15.000 --> 02:39:18.879
form of the old cry for happiness, that I would explain what it was

1569
02:39:18.959 --> 02:39:24.399
that made life worth living For me. The word has gone forth, and

1570
02:39:24.600 --> 02:39:30.840
I must endeavor to redeem my promise. But I do so with qualms and

1571
02:39:30.920 --> 02:39:37.040
with diffidence. First, there is
the natural instinct against speaking of that which

1572
02:39:37.120 --> 02:39:41.760
is in the core of one's mind. Second, there is the fear,

1573
02:39:41.280 --> 02:39:48.360
nearly amounting to certainty, of being
misunderstood or not comprehended at all. And

1574
02:39:48.559 --> 02:39:56.520
third, there is the absurd insufficiency
of space. However, for me spiritual

1575
02:39:56.639 --> 02:40:03.520
content, I will not use the
word happiness, which implies too much springs

1576
02:40:03.760 --> 02:40:11.559
essentially from no mental or physical facts. It springs from the spiritual fact that

1577
02:40:11.600 --> 02:40:16.040
there is something higher in man than
the mind, and that that something can

1578
02:40:16.120 --> 02:40:22.399
control the mind. Call that something
the soul, or what you will.

1579
02:40:22.680 --> 02:40:30.239
My sense of security amid the collisions
of existence lies in the firm consciousness that,

1580
02:40:30.520 --> 02:40:33.440
just as my body is the servant
of my mind, so is my

1581
02:40:33.639 --> 02:40:41.559
mind the servant of me. An
unruly servant, but a servant, and

1582
02:40:41.760 --> 02:40:48.959
possibly getting less unruly every day.
Often have I said to that restive brain,

1583
02:40:48.479 --> 02:40:54.360
Now, o mind, sole means
of communication between the divine Me and

1584
02:40:54.559 --> 02:41:01.959
all external phenomena. You are not
a free agent. You are a subordinate.

1585
02:41:01.399 --> 02:41:05.719
You are nothing but a piece of
machinery and a baymy you shall.

1586
02:41:07.799 --> 02:41:15.239
The mind can only be conquered by
regular meditation, by deciding beforehand what direction

1587
02:41:15.399 --> 02:41:20.920
its activity ought to take, and
insisting that its activity takes that direction.

1588
02:41:22.120 --> 02:41:28.920
Also by never leaving it idle,
undirected, masterless to play at random like

1589
02:41:28.959 --> 02:41:33.440
a child in the streets. After
dark. This is extremely difficult, but

1590
02:41:33.520 --> 02:41:39.319
it can be done, and it
is marvelously well worth doing. The fault

1591
02:41:39.399 --> 02:41:46.639
of the epoch is the absence of
meditativeness. A sagacious man will strive to

1592
02:41:46.680 --> 02:41:52.680
correct in himself the faults of his
epoch. In some deep ways. The

1593
02:41:52.799 --> 02:42:00.280
twelfth century had advantages over the twentieth. It practiced meditation. The twentieth does.

1594
02:42:00.440 --> 02:42:09.360
Sando exercises meditation. I speak only
for myself, is the least dispensable

1595
02:42:09.399 --> 02:42:13.399
of the day's doings. What do
I force my mind to meditate upon?

1596
02:42:15.600 --> 02:42:22.840
Upon various things, but chiefly upon
one, namely that force energy life.

1597
02:42:22.040 --> 02:42:28.840
The incomprehensible has many names, is
indestructible, and that, in the last

1598
02:42:28.879 --> 02:42:35.959
analysis, there is only one single
unique force energy life. Science is gradually

1599
02:42:37.040 --> 02:42:43.000
reducing all elements to one element.
Science is making it increasingly difficult to conceive

1600
02:42:43.280 --> 02:42:50.920
matter apart from spirit. Everything lives. Even my razor gets tired, and

1601
02:42:50.959 --> 02:42:56.079
the fatigue of my razor is no
more nor less explicable than my fatigue.

1602
02:42:56.319 --> 02:43:01.159
After a passage of arms with my
mind, the force in it and in

1603
02:43:01.280 --> 02:43:07.879
me has been transformed, not lost. All force is the same force.

1604
02:43:09.120 --> 02:43:15.159
Science just now has a tendency to
call it electricity. But I am indifferent

1605
02:43:15.200 --> 02:43:20.520
to such baptisms. The same force
pervades my razor my cow in my field,

1606
02:43:20.840 --> 02:43:26.920
and the central me which dominates my
mind, the same force in different

1607
02:43:28.000 --> 02:43:35.920
stages of evolution, and that force
persists for ever. In such paths.

1608
02:43:35.959 --> 02:43:41.079
Do I compel my mind to walk
daily daily? It has to recognize that

1609
02:43:41.120 --> 02:43:48.159
the mysterious ego controlling it is a
part of that divine force which exists from

1610
02:43:48.159 --> 02:43:54.920
everlasting to everlasting, and which,
in its ultimate atoms nothing can harm.

1611
02:43:56.600 --> 02:44:01.360
By such a course of training,
even the mind, the coarse, practical

1612
02:44:01.440 --> 02:44:09.760
mind, at last, perceives that
worldly accidents don't count. But you will

1613
02:44:09.799 --> 02:44:15.799
exclaim this is nothing but the immortality
of the soul over again. Well,

1614
02:44:16.079 --> 02:44:20.760
in a slightly more abstract form,
it is. I never said I had

1615
02:44:20.760 --> 02:44:26.399
discovered anything new. I do not
permit myself to be dogmatic about the persistence

1616
02:44:26.440 --> 02:44:33.000
of personality, or even of individuality
after death. But in basing my physical

1617
02:44:33.040 --> 02:44:39.079
and mental life on the assumption that
there is something in me which is indestructible

1618
02:44:39.360 --> 02:44:46.559
and essentially changeless, I go no
further than science points. Yes, if

1619
02:44:46.600 --> 02:44:50.520
it gives you pleasure, let us
call it the immortality of the soul.

1620
02:44:50.760 --> 02:44:56.840
If I miss my train, or
my tailor disgraces himself, or I lose

1621
02:44:56.920 --> 02:45:01.479
that earthly manifestation of force that happens
to be dearest to me, I say

1622
02:45:01.479 --> 02:45:07.000
to my mind, mind, concentrate
your powers upon the full realization of the

1623
02:45:07.040 --> 02:45:13.719
fact that I your master, am
immortal and beyond the reach of accidents,

1624
02:45:15.159 --> 02:45:18.799
and my mind, knowing by this
time that I am a hard master,

1625
02:45:18.200 --> 02:45:26.440
obediently does so. Am I a
portion of the infinite force that existed billions

1626
02:45:26.479 --> 02:45:31.600
of years ago, and which will
exist billions of years Hence going to allow

1627
02:45:31.719 --> 02:45:37.280
myself to be worried by any terrestrial, physical or mental event, I am

1628
02:45:37.399 --> 02:45:43.120
not As for the vicissitudes of my
body, that servant of my servant,

1629
02:45:43.399 --> 02:45:48.440
it had better keep its place and
not make too much fuss. Not that

1630
02:45:48.559 --> 02:45:54.600
any fuss occurring in either of these
outward envelopes of the eternal me could really

1631
02:45:54.639 --> 02:45:58.719
disturb me. The eternal is calm. It has the best reason for being

1632
02:45:58.799 --> 02:46:05.120
so, So you say to yourselves. Here is a man in a penny

1633
02:46:05.159 --> 02:46:13.079
weekly paper advocating daily meditation upon the
immortality of the soul as a cure for

1634
02:46:13.159 --> 02:46:20.879
discontent and unhappiness a strange phenomenon.
That it should be strange is an indictment

1635
02:46:22.000 --> 02:46:26.000
of the epoch. My only reply
to you is this, try it.

1636
02:46:28.440 --> 02:46:33.879
Of course, I freely grant that
such meditation, while it casts out fear,

1637
02:46:33.479 --> 02:46:39.040
slowly kills desire and makes for a
certain high indifference, and that the

1638
02:46:39.120 --> 02:46:45.719
extinguishing of desire with an accompanying indifference, be it high or low, is

1639
02:46:45.840 --> 02:46:50.479
bad for youth. But I am
not a use, and to day I

1640
02:46:50.520 --> 02:46:56.639
am writing for those who have tasted
disillusion, which youth has not yet.

1641
02:46:56.799 --> 02:47:00.840
I would not have you believe that
I scorn the brief joy of this world.

1642
02:47:01.959 --> 02:47:05.760
My attitude towards them would fain be
that of Socrates, as stated by

1643
02:47:05.760 --> 02:47:11.959
the incomparable Marcus Aurelius. He knew
how to lack and how to enjoy those

1644
02:47:13.000 --> 02:47:18.639
things in the lack whereof most men
show themselves weak and in the fruition intemperate.

1645
02:47:20.600 --> 02:47:26.600
Besides commanding my mind to dwell upon
the indestructibly and final omnipotence of the

1646
02:47:26.680 --> 02:47:31.920
force which is me, I command
it to dwell upon the logical consequence of

1647
02:47:31.959 --> 02:47:39.799
that unity of force, which science
is now beginning to teach the same essential

1648
02:47:39.959 --> 02:47:46.760
force that is me is also un
says the Indian proverb, I met a

1649
02:47:46.879 --> 02:47:50.559
hundred men on the road to Delhi, and they were all my brothers.

1650
02:47:50.840 --> 02:47:54.399
Yes, and they were all my
twin brothers, if I may so express

1651
02:47:54.440 --> 02:48:00.200
it, and a thousand times closer
to me even than the common conception of

1652
02:48:00.239 --> 02:48:05.360
twin brothers. We are all of
us the same in essence. What separates

1653
02:48:05.479 --> 02:48:13.520
us is merely differences in our respective
stages of evolution. Constant reflection upon this

1654
02:48:13.719 --> 02:48:22.520
fact must produce that universal sympathy which
alone can produce a positive content. It

1655
02:48:22.760 --> 02:48:28.680
must do away with such ridiculous feelings
as blame, irritation, anger, resentment.

1656
02:48:28.799 --> 02:48:35.079
It must establish in the mind an
all embracing tolerance, until a man

1657
02:48:35.319 --> 02:48:41.120
can look upon the drunkard in his
drunkenness, and upon the wife beater in

1658
02:48:41.200 --> 02:48:48.000
his brutality, with pure and calm
compassion, Until his heart goes out instinctively

1659
02:48:48.079 --> 02:48:54.360
to every other manifestation of the unique
force, until he is surcharged with an

1660
02:48:54.399 --> 02:49:03.120
eager and unconquerable benevolence towards everything that
lives, until he has utterly abandoned the

1661
02:49:03.159 --> 02:49:11.879
presumptuous practice of judging and condemning,
He will never attain real content. Ah,

1662
02:49:11.280 --> 02:49:16.600
you exclaim again, he has nothing
newer to tell us than that the

1663
02:49:16.719 --> 02:49:24.479
greatest of these is charity. I
have not. It may strike you as

1664
02:49:24.520 --> 02:49:31.879
excessively funny, but I have discovered
nothing newer than that. I merely remind

1665
02:49:31.920 --> 02:49:37.799
you of it. Thus it is
twins on the Road to Delhi, by

1666
02:49:37.920 --> 02:49:43.559
continual meditation upon the indestructibility of force, that I try to cultivate calm,

1667
02:49:45.360 --> 02:49:50.840
and by continual meditation upon the oneness
of force, that I tried to cultivate

1668
02:49:50.040 --> 02:49:58.239
charity, being fully convinced that in
calmness and in charity lies the secret of

1669
02:49:58.280 --> 02:50:03.879
a placid, if no not ecstatic
happiness. It is often said that no

1670
02:50:05.159 --> 02:50:11.239
thinking person can be happy in this
world. My view is that the more

1671
02:50:11.360 --> 02:50:16.159
a man thinks, the more happy
he is likely to be. I have

1672
02:50:16.360 --> 02:50:26.079
spoken. I am overwhelmingly aware that
I have spoken crudely, abruptly, inadequately,

1673
02:50:26.920 --> 02:50:35.159
confusedly. End of Chapter nine and
end of Mental Efficiency and Other Hints

1674
02:50:35.159 --> 02:50:41.000
to Men and Women by Arnold Bennett, recording by Rus Golding