Section one of mental efficiency. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings
are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
LibriVox dot org. Recording by Ruth Golding. Mental Efficiency and Other Hints to
Men and Women by Arnold Bennett, Section one Mental efficiency. The appeal if
there is any virtue in advertisements, and a journalist should be the last person
to say that there is not. The American nation is rapidly reaching a state
of physical efficiency of which the world has probably not seen the like since Sparta.
In all the American newspapers and all the American monthlies are innumerable illustrated announcements
of physical culture specialists who guarantee to make all the organs of the body perform
their dear duties with the mighty precision of a sixty horse power motor car that
never breaks down. I saw a book the other day written by one of
these specialists, to show how perfect health could be attained by devoting a quarter
of an hour a day to certain exercises. The advertisements multiply and increase in
size. They cost a great deal of money. Therefore, they must bring
in a great deal of business. Therefore, vast numbers of people must be
worried about the non efficiency of their bodies, and on the way to achieve
efficiency. In our more modest British fashion. We have the same phenomenon in
England, and it is growing. Our muscles are growing. Also, surprise
a man in his bedroom of a morning, and you will find him lying
on his back on the floor, or standing on his head, or whirling
clubs in pursuit of physical efficiency. I remember that once I went in for
physical efficiency myself, I too lay on the floor, my delicate epidermis,
separated from the carpet by only the thinnest of garments, and I contorted myself
according to the fifteen diagrams of a large chart believed to be the Magna carter
of physical efficiency. Daily after shaving. In three weeks, my collars would
not meet round my prize fighter's neck. My hozier reaped immense profits, and
I came to the conclusion that I had carried physical efficiency quite far enough.
A strange thing, was it, not? That I never had the idea
of devoting a quarter of an hour a day after shaving to the pursuit of
mental efficiency. The average body is a pretty complicated affair, sadly out of
order, but happily susceptible to culture. The average mind is vastly more complicated,
not less sadly out of order, but perhaps even more susceptible to culture.
We compare our arms to the arms of the gentleman illustrated in the physical
efficiency advertisement, and we murmur to ourselves the classic phrase, this will never
do. And we set about developing the muscles of our arms until we can
show them off through a frock coat to women at afternoon tea. But it
does not perhaps occur to us that the mind has its muscles, and a
lot of apparatus besides, and that these invisible yet paramount mental organs are far
less efficient than they ought to be, that some of them are atrophied,
others starved, others out of shape, et cetera. A man of sedentary
occupation goes for a very long walk on Easter Monday, and in the evening
it's so exhausted that he can scarcely eat. He wakes up to the inefficiency
of his body, caused by his neglect of it, and he is so
shocked that he determines on remedial measures either he will walk to the office,
or he will play golf, or he will execute the post shaving exercises.
But let the same man, after a prolonged sedentary course of newspapers, magazines,
and novels, take his mind out for a stiff climb among the rocks
of a scientific, philosophic, or artistic subject. What will he do?
Will he stay out all day and return in the evening, too tired even
to read his paper? Not he? It is ten to one that,
finding himself puffing for breath after a quarter of an hour, he won't even
persist till he gets his second wind, but will come back at once.
Will he remark with genuine concern that his mind is sadly out of condition,
and that he really must do something to get it into order. Not he?
It is a hundred to one that he will tranquility accept the status quo,
without shame and without very poignant regret. Do I make my meaning clear?
I say without a very poignant regret, Because a certain vague regret is
indubitably caused by realizing that one is handicapped by a mental inefficiency, which might,
without too much difficulty, be cured. That vague regret exudes like a
vapor from the more cultivating section of the public. It is to be detected
everywhere, and especially among people who are near the half way house of life.
They perceive the existence of immense quantities of knowledge, not the smallest particle
of which will they ever make their own. They stroll forth from their orderly
dwellings on a starlit night and feel dimly the wonder of the heavens. But
the still small voice is telling them that though they have read in a newspaper
that there are fifty thousand stars in the Plioides, they cannot even point to
the pliodes in the sky. How they would like to grasp the significance of
the nebular theory, the most overwhelming of all theories. And the years are
passing, and there are twenty four hours in every day, out of which
they work only six or seven. And it needs only an impulse, an
effort, a system, in order gradually to cure the mind of its slackness,
to give tone to its muscles, and to enable it to grapple with
the splendors of knowledge and sensation that await it. But the regret is not
poignant enough. They do nothing. They go on doing nothing. It is
as though they passed forever along the length of an endless table filled with delicacies,
and could not stretch out a hand to seize. Do I exaggerate?
Is there not deep in the consciousness of most of us a mournful feeling that
our minds are, like the liver of the advertisement, sluggish, And that
for the sluggishness of our minds there is the excuse neither of incompetence, nor
a lack of time, nor of lack of opportunity, nor of lack of
means. Why does not some mental efficiency specialist come forward and show us how
to make our minds do the work which our minds are certainly capable of doing.
I do not mean a quack. All the physical efficiency specialists who advertise
largely are not quacks. Some of them achieve very genuine results. If a
course of treatment can be devised for the body, a course of treatment can
be devised for the mind. Thus we might realize some of the ambitions which
all of us cherish in regard to the utilization in our spare time of that
magnificent machine which we allow to rust within our craniums. We have the desire
to perfect ourselves, to round off our careers with the graces of knowledge and
taste. How many people would not gladly undertake some branch of serious study,
so that they might not die under the approach of having lived and died without
ever really having known anything about anything. It is not the absence of desire
that prevents them. It is first the absence of willpower, not the will
to begin, but the will to continue, And second a mental apparatus which
is out of condition, puffy weedy through sheer neglect. The remedy then divides
itself into two parts, the cultivation of willpower and the getting into condition of
the mental apparatus, And these two branches of the cure must be worked concurrently.
I'm sure that the considerations which I have presented to you you must have
already presented themselves to tens of thousands of my readers, and that thousands must
have attempted the cure. I doubt not that many have succeeded. I shall
deem it a favor if those readers who have interested themselves in the question will
communicate to me at once the result of their experience, whatever its outcome,
I will make such use as I can of the letters I receive, and
afterwards I will give my own experience the replies. The correspondence which I have
received in answer to my appeal shows that at any rate I did not overstate
the case. There is, among a vast mass of reflecting people in this
country a clear consciousness of being mentally less than efficient, and a strong,
though ineffective desire that such mental inefficiency should cease to be. The desire is
stronger than I had imagined, but it does not seem to have led to
much hitherto and that course of treatment for the mind, by means of which
we are to realize some of the ambitions which all of us cherish in regard
to the utilization in our spare time of the magnificent machine which we allow to
rust within our craniums, that desiderated course of treatment has not apparently been devised
by any body. The sandeau of the brain has not yet loomed up above
the horizon. On the other hand, there appears to be a general expectancy
that I personally am going to play the role of the sandoa of the brain.
Vain thought. I have been very much interested in the letters, some
of which, as a statement of the matter in question, are admirable.
It is perhaps not surprising that the best of them come from women. For
genius apart, woman is usually more touchingly lyrical than man in the yearning for
the ideal. The most enthusiastic of all the letters I have received, however,
is from a gentleman whose notion is that we should be hypnotized into mental
efficiency after advocating the establishment of quote an institution of practical psychology, from whence
there can be graduated, fit and proper people whose efforts would be in the
direction of the subconscious mental mechanism of the child or even the adult end quote.
This hypnotist proceeds quote between the academician whose speciality is an inconsequential cobweb,
the medical man who has got it into his head that he is the logical
foster father for psychonomical matters, and the blatant professor who deals with monkey tricks
on a few some nambules on the musical stage, you are allowing to go
unrecognized one of the most potent factors of mental development end quote. Am I
I have not the least idea what this gentleman means, but I can assure
him that he is wrong. I can make more sense out of the remarks
of another correspondent, who, utterly despising the things of the mind, compares
a certain class of young men to a hapenny bloater with the row out,
and asserts that he himself got out of the groove by dint of having to
unload ten tons of coal in three hours and a half every day during several
years. This is interesting, and it is constructive, but it is just
a little beside the point. A lady, whose optimism is indicated by her
pseudonym Esperance, puts her finger on the spot, or rather on one of
the spots. In a very sensible letter, it appears to me, she
says that the great cause of mental inefficiency is lack of concentration, perhaps especially
in the case of women. I can trace my chief failures to this cause.
Concentration is a talent. It may be in a measure cultivated, but
it needs to be inborn. The greater number of us are in a state
of semi slumber, with minds which are only exerted to one half of their
capability. I thoroughly agree that inability to concentrate is one of the chief symptoms
of the mental machine being out of condition. Esperance's suggested cure is rather drastic.
She says, perhaps one of the best cures for mental sedentariness is arithmetic,
for there is nothing else which requires greater power of com concentration. Perhaps
arithmetic might be an effective cure, but it is not a practical cure because
no one, or scarcely any one, would practice it. I cannot imagine
the plain man, who, having a couple of hours to spare of a
night, and having also the sincere desire but not the will power to improve
his taste and knowledge, would deliberately sit down and work sums by way of
preliminary mental calisthenics. As Ibsen's puppet said, people don't do these things.
Why do they not? The answer is simply because they won't, simply because
human nature will not run to it. Esperance's suggestion of learning poetry is slightly
better. Certainly, the best letter I have had is from miss h D.
She says, this idea to avoid the reproach of living and dying without
ever really knowing anything about anything, came to me of itself from somewhere when
I was a small girl, and looking back, I fancy that the thought
itself spurred me to do something in this world, to get into line with
people who did things, people who painted pictures, wrote books, built bridges,
or did something beyond the ordinary. This only has seemed to me all
my life since. Worth while, here I must interject that such a statement
is somewhat sweeping. In fact, it sweeps a whole lot of fine and
legitimate ambitions straight into the rubbish heap of the not worth while, I think
the writer would wish to modify it. She continues. And when the day
comes in which I have not done some serious reading, however small the measure,
or some writing, or I have been too sad or dull to notice
the brightness of color of the sun, of grass and flowers of the sea,
or the moonlight on the water, I think the day ill spent.
So I must think the incentive to do a little each day beyond the ordinary,
towards the real culture of the mind is the beginning of the cure of
mental inefficiency. This is very ingenious and good. Further, the day comes
when the mental habit has become a part of our life and we value mental
work for the work's sake, but I am not sure about that. For
myself, I have never valued work for its own sake, and I never
shall. And I only value such mental work for the more full and more
intense consciousness of being alive which it gives me. Miss h D's remedies are
vague As to lack of will power. The first step is to realize your
weakness. The next step is to have ordinary shame that you are defective.
I doubt, I gravely doubt if these steps would lead to anything definite,
Nor is this very helpful. I would advise reading, observing, writing.
I would advise the use of every sense and every faculty by which we at
last learn the sacredness of life. This is begging the question. If people,
by merely wishing to do so, could regularly and seriously read, observe,
write, and use every faculty and sense, there would be very little
mental inefficiency. I see that I shall be driven to construct a program out
of my own bitter and ridiculous experiences the cure. But tasks in hours of
insight willed can be through hours of gloom fulfilled. The above lines from Matthew
Arnold are quoted by one of my very numerous correspondents to support a certain optimism
in this matter of a systematic attempt to improve the mind. They form part
of a beautiful and inspiring poem, but I gravely fear that they run counter
to the vast mass of earthly experience. More often than not, I have
found that a task willed in some hour of insight can not be fulfilled through
hours of gloom. No, no, and no to will is easy.
It needs but the momentary, bright contagion of a stronger spirit than one's own,
to fulfill morning after morning, or evening after evening, through months and
years. This is the very dickens And there is not one of my readers
that will not agree with me. Yet, such is the elastic quality of
human nature that most of my correspondents are quite ready to ignore the sad fact
and to demand at once, what shall we will? Tell us what we
must will. Some seem to think that they have solved the difficulty when they
have advocated certain systems of memory and mind training. Such systems may be in
themselves useful or useless. The evidence furnished to me is contradictory. But were
they perfect systems? A man cannot be intellectually born again merely by joining a
memory class. The best system depends utterly on the man's power of resolution.
And what really counts is not the system, but the spirit in which the
man handles it. Now, the proper spirit can only be induced by a
careful consideration and realization of the man's conditions, the limitations of his temperament,
the strengths of adverse influences, and the lessons of his past. Let me
take an average case. Let me take your case, O man or woman
of thirty living in comfort, with some cares and some responsibilities, and some
pretty hard daily work, but not too much of any The question of mental
efficiency is in the air. It interests you, It touches you nearly.
Your conscience tells you that your mind is less active and less informed than it
might be. You suddenly spring up from the garden seat, and you say
to yourself that you will take your mind in hand and do something with it.
Wait a moment, be so good as to sink back into that garden
seat and clutch that tennis racket a little longer. You have had these hours
of insight. Before you know, you have not arrived at the age of
thirty, without having tried to carry out noble resolutions and failed. What precautions
are you going to take against failure this time? For your will is probably
no stronger now than it was aforetime. You have admitted and accepted failure in
the past, and no wound is more cruel to the spirit of resolve than
that dealt by failure. You fancy the wound closed, but just at the
critical moment, it may reopen and mortally bleed you. What are your precautions?
Have you thought of them? No, you have not. I have
not the pleasure of your acquaintance, but I know you because I know myself.
Your failure in the past was due to one or more of three causes,
and the first was that you undertook too much at the beginning. You
started off with a magnificent program. You are something of an expert in physical
exercises. You would be ashamed not to be in these physical days, and
so you would never attempt to hurdle race or an uninterrupted hour's club whirling without
some preparation. The analogy between the body and the mind ought to have struck
you this time. Please do not form an elaborate program. Do not form
any program. Please content yourself with a preliminary canter, a ridiculously easy preliminary
canter, for example. And I give this merely as an example. You
might say to yourself. Within one month from this date, I will read
twice Herbert Spencer's Little Book on Education sixpence, and will make notes in pencil
inside the back cover of the things that particularly strike me. You remark that
that is nothing that you can do it on your head, and so on.
Well do it. When it is done, you will, at any
rate possess the satisfaction of having resolved to do something, and having done it,
your mind will have gained tone and healthy pride. You will be even
justified in setting yourself some kind of a simple program to extend over three months,
and you will have acquired some general principle by the light of which to
construct the program. But best of all, you will have avoided failure,
that dangerous wound. The second possible cause of previous failure was the disintegrating effect
on the willpower of the ironic superior smile of friends. Whenever a man turns
over a new leaf, he has this inane giggle to face the drunkard may
be less ashamed of getting drunk than of breaking to a crony the news that
he has signed the pledge. Strange, but true, and human nature must
be counted with. Of course, on a few stern spirits, the effect
of that smile is merely to harden the resolution, but on the majority,
its influence is deleterious. Therefore, don't go and nail your flag to the
mast, don't raise any flag, say nothing. Work as unobtrusively as you
can. When you have won a battle or two, you can begin to
wave the banner, and then you will find that that miserable, pitiful,
ironic, superior smile will die away ere it is borne. The third possible
cause was that you did not rearrange your day, idler and time wasted though
you have been still you had done something during the twenty four hours. You
went to work with a kind of dim idea that there were twenty six hours
in every day. Something large and definite has to be dropped. Some space
in the rank jungle of the day has to be cleared and swept up for
the new operations. Robbing yourself of sleep won't help you, nor trying to
squeeze in a time for study between two other times. Use the knife and
use it freely. If you mean to read or think. Half an hour
a day arranged for an hour one hundred percent margin is not too much for
a beginner. Do you ask me where the knife is to be used?
I should say that in nine cases out of ten, the rights of the
cult of the body might be abbreviated. I recently spent a weekend in a
London suburb, and I was staggered by the wholesale attention given to physical recreation
in all its forms. It was a gigantic debauch of the muscles on every
side. It shocked me, poor withering mind. I thought, cricket and
football, and boating and golf and tennis have their seasons. But not thou.
These considerations are general and preferatory. Now I must come to detail mental
calisthenics. I have dealt with the state of mind in which one should begin
a serious effort towards mental efficiency, and also with the probable causes of failure
in previous efforts. We come now to what I may call the calisthenics of
the business exercises, which may be roughly compared to the technical exercises necessary in
learning to play a musical instrument. It is curious that a person studying a
musical instrument will have no false shame whatever in doing mere exercises for the fingers
and wrists, while a person who is trying to get his mind into order
will almost certainly experience a false shame in going through performances which are undoubtedly good
for him. Herein lies one of the great obstacles to mental efficiency. Tell
a man that he should join a memory class, and he will hum and
haul and say, as I have already remarked, that memory isn't everything.
And in short, he won't join the memory class, partly from indolence,
I grant, but more from false shame. Is not this true? He
will even hesitate about learning things by heart. Yet there are few mental exercises
better than learning great poetry or prose by heart twenty lines a week for six
months. What a cure for debility. The chief, but not the only,
merit of learning by heart as an exercise is that it compels the mind
to concentrate, And the most important preliminary to self development is the faculty of
concentrating at will. Another excellent exercise is to read a page of no matter
what, and then immediately to write down in one's own words or in the
author's one's full recollection of it. A quarter of an hour a day,
no more, and it works like magic. This brings me to the department
of writing. I am a writer by profession, but I do not think
I have any prejudices in favor of the exercise of writing. Indeed, I
say to myself every morning that if there is one exercise in the world which
I hate, it is the exercise of writing. But I must assert that,
in my opinion, the exercise of writing is an indispensable part of any
genuine effort towards mental efficiency. I don't care much what you write, so
long as you compose sentences and achieve continuity. There are forty ways of writing
in an unprofessional manner, and they are all good. You may keep a
full diary, as mister Arthur Christopher Benson says he does. This is one
of the least good ways diaries, save in experienced hands like those of mister
Benson, are apt to get themselves done with the very minimum of mental effort.
They also tend to an exaggeration of egotism, and if they are left
lying about, they tend to strife. Further, one never knows when one
may not be compelled to produce them in a court of law. A journal
is better. Do not ask me to define the difference between a journal and
a diary. I will not, and I cannot. It is a difference
that one feels instinctively. A diary treats exclusively of one's self and one's doings.
A journal roams wider and notes whatever one has observed of interest. A
diary relates that one had lobster mayonnaise for dinner and rose the next morning with
a headache doubtless attributable to mental strain. A journal relates that Missus Blank,
whom one took in to dinner, had brown eyes and an agreeable trick of
throwing back her head after asking a question, and gives her account of her
husband's strange adventures in Colorado, et cetera. A diary is all iii itself.
I to quote a line of the transcendental poetry of Mary Baker g Eddy,
A journal is the large spectacle of life. A journal may be special
or general. I know a man who keeps a journal of all cases of
current superstition which he actually encounters. He began it without the slightest suspicion that
he was beginning a document of astounding interest and real scientific value. But such
was the fact. In default of a diary or a journal, one may
write essays, provided one has the moral courage, or one may simply make
notes on the book one reads. Or one may construct anthologies of passages which
have made an individual and particular appeal to one's tastes. Anthology construction is one
of the pleasantest hobbies that a person who is not mad about golf and bridge,
that is to say, a thinking person can possibly have, And I
recommend it to those who, discreetly, mistrusting their power to keep up a
fast pace from start to finish, are anxious to begin their intellectual course gently
and mildly. In any event, writing the act of writing is vital to
almost any scheme. I would say it was vital to every scheme without exception,
were I not sure that some kind correspondent would instantly point out a scheme
to which writing was obviously not vital. After writing comes thinking, the sequence
may be considered odd, but I adhere to it in this connection, I
cannot do better than quote an admirable letter which I have received from a correspondent
who wishes to be known only as an Oxford lecturer. The italics except the
last are mine, not his. He says, quote till a man has
got his physical brain completely under his control, in italics, suppressing its too
great receptivity, its tendencies to reproduce idly the thoughts of others, and to
be swayed by every passing gust of emotion. End of italics, I hold
that he cannot do a tense part of the work that he would then be
able to perform with little or no effort. Moreover, work apart, he
has not entered upon his kingdom, and unlimited possibilities of future development are barred
to him. Mental efficiency can be gained by constant practice in meditation, i
e. By concentrating the mind, say for but ten minutes daily, but
with absolute regularity, on some of the highest thoughts of which it is capable.
Failures will be frequent, but they must be regarded with simple indifference and
dogged perseverance in the path chosen. If that path be followed without intermission,
even for a few weeks, the results will speak for themselves. End quote.
I thoroughly agree with what this correspondent says, and am obliged to him
for having so ably stated the case. But I regard such a practice of
meditation as he indicates, as being rather an advanced exercise for a beginner.
After the beginner has got underweigh and gained a little confidence in his strength of
purpose, and acquired the skill to define his thoughts sufficiently to write them down,
then it would be time enough, in my view, to undertake what
an Oxford lecturer suggests. By the way, he highly recommends missus Annie Besant's
book Thought, Power, Its Control and Culture. He says that it treats
the subject with scientific clearness and gives a practical method of training the mind.
I endorse the latter part of the statement so much for the more or less
technical processes of stirring the mind from its sloth and making it exactly obedient to
the aspirations of the soul. And here I close. Numerous correspondents have asked
me to outline a course of reading for them. In other words, they
have asked me to particularize for them the aspirations of their souls. My subject
however, was not self development. My subject was mental efficiency as a means
to self development. Of course, one can only acquire mental efficiency in the
actual effort of self development. But I was concerned not with the choice of
route, rather with the manner of following the route. You say to me
that I am busying myself with the best method of walking and refusing to discuss
where to go precisely, One man cannot tell another man where the other man
wants to go. If he can't himself decide on a goal, he may
as well curl up and expire, for the root of the matter is not
in him. I will content myself with pointing out that the entire universe is
open for inspection. Too many people fancy that self development means literature. They
associate the higher life with an intimate knowledge of the life of Charlotte Bronte or
the order of the plays of Shakespeare. The higher life may just as well
be butterflies or funeral customs, or county boundaries, or street names, or
mosses or stars or slugs as Charlotte Bronte or Shakespeare. Choose what interests you.
Lots of finely organized, mentally efficient persons can't read Shakespeare at any price.
And if you asked them who was the author of the Tenant of Wildfell
Hall, they might proudly answer Emily Bronte, if they didn't say they never
heard of it. An accurate knowledge of any subject coupled with a carefully nurtured
sense that the relativity of that subject to other subjects implies an enormous self development.
With this hint, I conclude end of section one, Chapter two of
Mental Efficiency. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Ruth Golding.
Mental Efficiency and Other Hints to Men and Women by Arnold Bennett, Chapter
two, Expressing one's individuality. A most curious and useful thing to realize is
that one never knows the impression one is creating on other people. One may
often guess pretty accurately whether it is good, bad, or indifferent. Some
people render it unnecessary for one to guess. They practically inform one. But
that is not what I mean. I mean much more than that. I
mean that one has one's self no mental picture corresponding to the mental picture which
one's personality leaves in the minds of one's friends. Has it ever struck you
that there is a mysterious individual going around walking the streets, calling at houses
for tea, chatting, laughing, grumbling, arguing, and that all your
friends know him and have long since added him up and come to a definite
conclusion about him without saying more than a chance cautious word to you, And
that that person is you. Supposing that you came into a drawing room where
you were having tea, do you think you would recognize yourself as an individuality?
I think you would be apt to say to yourself, as guests do
when disturbed in drawing rooms by other guests whose this chap seems rather queer.
I hope you won't be a bore, and your first telling would be slightly
hostile. Why, even when you meet yourself in an unsuspected mirror, in
the very clothes that you have put on that very day and that you know
by heart, you are almost always shocked by the realization that you are you.
And now and then, when you have gone to the glass to arrange
your hair in the full sobriety of early morning, have you not looked on
an absolute stranger? And has not that stranger piqued your curiosity? And if
it is thus with precise external details of form, color, and movement.
What may it not be with the vague complex effect of the mental and moral
interval duality. A man honestly tries to make a good impression, what is
the result. The result merely is that his friends, in the privacy of
their minds, set him down as a man who tries to make a good
impression. If much depends on the result of a single interview or a couple
of interviews, a man may conceivably force another to accept an impression of himself
which he would like to convey. But if the receiver of the impression is
to have time at his disposal, then the giver of the impression may just
as well sit down and put his hands in his pockets, for nothing that
he can do will modify or influence in any way the impression that he will
ultimately give. The real impress is in the end given unconsciously, not consciously.
And further, it is received unconsciously not consciously. It depends partly on
both persons, and it is immutably fixed beforehand. There can be no final
deception. Take the extreme case that of the mother and her son. One
hears that the son hoodwinks his mother, not he If he is cruel,
neglectful, overbearing, she is perfectly aware of it. He does not deceive
her, and she does not deceive herself. I have often thought, if
a son could look into a mother's heart, what an eye opener he would
have? What he would cry? This cold, impartial judgment, this keen
vision for my faults, this implacable memory of little slights and injustices and callousnesses
committed long ago, in the breast of my mother. Yes, my friend,
in the breath of your mother. The only difference between your mother and
another person is that she takes you as you are and loves you for what
you are. She isn't blind. Do not imagine it. The marvel is
not that people are such bad judges of character, but that they are such
good judges, especially of what I may call fundamental character. The wiliest person
cannot forever conceal his fundamental character from the simplest, and people are very stern
judges too. Think of your best friends. Are you oblivious of their defects?
On the contrary, you are perhaps too conscious of them when you summon
them before your mind's eye. It is no ideal creation that you see when
you meet them and talk to them, you are constantly making reserv in their
disfavor, unless, of course, you happen to be a schoolgirl gushing over
like a fountain with enthusiasm. It is well when one is judging a friend
to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality.
It is well to grasp the fact that you are going through life under the
scrutiny of a band of acquaintances who are subject to very few illusions about you,
whose views of you are indeed apt to be harsh and even cruel.
Above all, it is advisable to comprehend thoroughly that the things in your individuality
which annoy your friends most are the things of which you are completely unconscious.
It is not until years have passed that one begins to be able to form
a dim idea of what one has looked like to one's friends. At forty
one goes back ten years, and one says, sadly, but with a
certain amusement, A, I must have been pretty blatant. Then I can
see how I must have exasperated them. And yet I hadn't the faintest notion
of it. At the time, my intentions were of the best, only
I didn't know enough. And one recollects some particularly crude action and kicks oneself.
Yes, that is all very well, and the enlightenment which has come
with increasing age is exceedingly satisfactory. But you are forty now what shall you
be saying of yourself at fifty? Such reflections foster humility, and they foster
also a reluctance which it is impossible to praise too highly to tread on other
people's toes. A moment ago I used the phrase fundamental character. It is
a reminiscence of Stephenson's phrase fundamental decency, and it is the final test by
which one judges one's friends. After all, he is a decent fellow.
We must be able to use that formula concerning our friends. Kindliness of heart
is not the greatest of human qualities, and its general effect on the progress
of the world is not entirely beneficent. But it is the greatest of human
qualities in friendship. It is the least dispensable quality. We come back to
it with relief from more brilliant qualities, and it has the great advantage of
always going with a broad mind. Narrow minded people are never kind hearted.
You may be inclined to dispute this statement, Please think it over. I
am inclined to uphold it. We can forgive the absence of any quality except
kindliness of heart, And when a man lacks that, we blame him,
we will not forgive him. This is, of course scandalous. A man
is born as he is born, and he can as easily add a cubit
to his stature as add kindliness to his heart. The feet never has been
done, and never will be done. And yet we blame those who have
not kindliness. We have the incredible, insufferable and odious audacity to blame them.
We think of them as though they had nothing to do but go into
a shop and buy kindliness. I hear you say that kindliness of heart can
be cultivated. Well, I hate to have even the appearance of contradicting you,
but it can only be cultivated in the botanical sense. You can't cultivate
violets on a nettle. A philosopher has enjoined us to suffer fools gladly.
He had more usefully enjoined us to suffer ill natured persons gladly. I see
that, in a fit of absent mindedness, I have strayed into the pulpit.
I descend end of chapter two, Chapter three of Mental Efficiency. This
LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Ruth Golding Mental Efficiency and
Other Hints to Men and Women by Arnold Bennett, Chapter three, Breaking with
the Past. On that dark morning, we woke up, and it instantly
occurred to us, or at any rate to those of us who have preserved
some of our illusions and our naivete that we had something to be cheerful about,
some cause for a gay and strenuous vivacity. And then we remembered that
it was New Year's Day, and there were those resolutions to put into force.
Of course, we all smile in a superior manner at the very mention
of New Year's resolutions. We pretend they are toys for children, and that
we have long since ceased to regard them seriously as a possible aid to conduct.
But we are such deceivers, such miserable moral cowards, in such terror
of appearing naive, that I for one am not to be taken in by
that smile and that pretense. The individual who scoffs at New Year's resolutions,
resembles the woman who says she doesn't look under the bed at nights. The
truth is not in him. And in the very moment of his lying,
could he his cranium suddenly become transparent. We should see resolutions burning brightly in
his brain like lamps in Trafalgar Square. Of this, I am convinced that
nineteen twentieths of us got out of bed that morning animated by that special feeling
of gay and strenuous vivacity which resolutions alone can produce, And nineteen twentieths of
us were also conscious of a high virtue, forgetting that it is not the
making of resolutions, but the keeping of them, which renders pardonable the consciousness
of virtue. And at this hour, while the activity of the resolution is
yet in full blast, I would wish to insist on the truism obvious perhaps,
but apt to be overlooked, that a man cannot go forward and stand
still at the same time. Just as moralists have often animadverted on the tendency
to live in the future, so I would anim advert upon the tendency to
live in the past, because all around me I see men carefully tying themselves
with an unbreakable rope to an immovable post at the bottom of a hill,
and then struggling to climb the hill. If there is one resolution more important
than another, it is the resolution to break with the past. If life
is not a continual denial of the past, then it is nothing. This
may seem a hard and callous doctrine, but you know, there are aspects
of common sense which decidedly are hard and callous, and one finds constantly in
plain common sense persons o rare and select band a surprising quality of ruthlessness mingled
with softer traits. Have you not noticed it? The past is absolutely intractable.
One can't do anything with it, and an exaggerated attention to it is
like an exaggerated attention to sepulchers, a sign of barbarism. Moreover, the
past is usually the enemy of cheerfulness, and cheerfulness is a most precious attainment.
Personally, I could even go so far as to exhibit hostility towards grief
and a marked hostility towards remorse, two states of mind which feed on the
past instead of on the present. Remorse, which is not the same thing
as repentance serves no purpose that I have ever been able to discover what one
has done. One has done, and there's an end of it. As
a great prelate unforgettably said quote, things are what they are, and the
consequences of them will be what they will be. Why then, attempt to
deceive ourselves? End? Quote that remorse for wickedness is a useful and praiseworthy
exercise, much better to forget. As a matter of fact, people indulge
in remorse. It is a somewhat vicious form of spiritual pleasure. Grief,
of course, is different, and it must be handled with delicate consideration.
Nevertheless, when I see, as one does, see a man or a
woman dedicating existence to sorrow for the loss of a beloved creature, and the
world tacitly applauding, my feeling is certainly inimical to my idea that man or
woman is not honoring but dishonoring the memory of the departed. Society suffers,
the individual suffers, and no earthly or heavenly good is achieved. Grief is
of the past, it mars the present. It is a form of indulgence,
and it ought to be bridled much more than it often is. The
human heart is so large that mere remembrance should not be allowed to tyrannize over
every part of it. But cases of remorse and absorbing grief are comparatively rare.
What is not rare is that misguided loyalty to the past which dominates the
lives of so many of us. I do not speak of leading principles,
which are not likely to incommode us by changing. I speak of secondary,
yet still important things. We will not do so and so because we have
never done it, as if that was a reason, or we have always
done so, and so therefore we must always do it as if that was
This disposition to an irrational toryism is curiously discoverable in advanced radicals, and it
will show itself in the various trifles. I remember such a man whose wife
objected to his form of hat. Not that I would call so crowning an
affair as a hat a trifle, my dear, he protested, I have
always worn this sort of hat. It may not suit me, but it
is absolutely impossible for me to alter it now. However, she took him,
by means of an omnibus to a hat shop, and bought him another
hat and put it on his head, and made a present of the old
one to the shop assistant, and marked him out of the shop. There
she said, you see how impossible it is. This is a parable and
I will not insult your intelligence by a plan eyeing it. The faculty that
we chiefly need when we are in the resolution making mood is the faculty of
imagination, the faculty of looking at our lives as though we had never looked
at them before, freshly with a new eye. Supposing that you had been
born mature and full of experience, and that yesterday had been the first day
of your life, you would regard it to day as an experiment. You
would challenge each act in it, and you would probably arrange to morrow in
a manner that showed a healthy disrespect for yesterday. You certainly would not say,
I have done so and so once. Therefore I must keep on doing
it. The past is never more than an experiment. A genuine appreciation of
this fact will make our new resolutions more valuable and drastic than they usually are.
I have a dim notion that the most useful resolution for most of us
would be to break quite fifty percent of all the vowels we have ever made.
Quote. Do not accustom yourself to enchain your volatility with vows. Take
this warning. It is of great importance. End quote. The wisdom is
Johnson's, but I flatter myself on the italics end of chapter three, Chapter
four of Mental Efficiency. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording
by Ruth Golding. Mental Efficiency and Other Hints to Men and Women by Arnold
Bennett, Chapter four, Settling down in life. The other day a well
known English novelist asked me how old I thought she was? Really well,
I said to myself, since she has asked for it, she shall have
it. I will be as true to life as her novels, so I
replied audaciously, thirty eight. I fancied I was erring, if at all
on the side of really, and I trembled. She laughed triumphantly. I
am forty three. She said. The incident might have passed off entirely to
my satisfaction had she not proceeded. And now tell me how old you are.
That was like a woman. Women imagine that men have no reticences,
no pretty little vanities. What an error, of course, I could not
be beaten in candor by a woman. I had to offer myself a burnt
sacrifice to her curiosity, and I did it bravely, but not unflinchingly.
And then afterwards the fact of my age remained with me, worried me,
obsessed me. I saw more clearly than ever before, that age was telling
on me. I could not be blind to the deliberation of my movements in
climbing stairs and in dressing. Once upon a time, the majority of persons
I met in the street seemed much older than myself. It is different now.
The change has come unperceived. There is a generation younger than mine that
smokes cigars and falls in love. Astounding. Once I could play left wing
forward for an hour and a half without dropping down dead. Once I could
swim one hundred and fifty feet submerged at the bottom of a swimming bath.
Incredible, simply incredible. Can it be that I have already lived and lo?
I, at the age of nearly forty, am putting to myself the
old questions concerning the intrinsic value of life, the fundamentally important questions, What
have I got out of it? What am I likely to get out of
it, In a word, what's it worth? If a man can ask
himself a question more momentous, radical, and critical than these questions, I
would like to know what it is? Innumerable philosophers have tried to answer these
questions in a general way for the average individual, and possibly they have succeeded
pretty well. Possibly I might derive benefit from a perusal of their answers.
But do you suppose I am going to read them? Not? I.
Do you suppose that I can recall the wisdom that I happen already to have
read? Not I. My mind is a perfect blank at this moment in
regard to the wisdom of others on the essential question? Strange is it not?
But quite a common experience? I believe. Besides, I don't actually
care tuppence what any other philosopher has replied to my question. In this each
man must be his own philosopher. There is an instinct in the profound egoism
of human nature which prevents us from accepting such ready made answers. What is
it to us? What Plato thought? Nothing? And thus the question remains
ever new, and ever unanswered, and ever of dramatic interest. The singular,
the highly singular thing is. And here I arrive at my point that
so few people put the question to themselves in time, that so many put
it too late, or even die without putting it. I am firmly convinced
that an immense proportion of my instructed fellow creatures do not merely omit to strike
the balance sheet of their lives. They omit even the preliminary operation of taking
stock. They go on and on and on buying and selling. They know
not what at unascertained prices, dropping money into the till and taking it out.
They don't know what goods are in the shop, nor what amount is
in the till. But they have a clear impression that the living room behind
the shop is by no means as luxurious and as well ventilated as they would
like it to be. And the years pass and that beautiful furniture and that
system of ventilation are not achieved. And then one day they die, and
friends come to the funeral and remark, dear me, how stuffy this room
is, and the shops practically full of trash. Or some little time before
they are dead, they stay later than usual in the shop one evening and
make up their minds to take stock and count the till, and the disillusion
lays them low, and they struggle into the living room and murmur, I
shall never have that beautiful furniture, and I shall never have that system of
ventilation. If I had known earlier, I would have at least got a
few inexpensive cushions to go on wars, and I would have put my fist
through a pane in the window. But it's too late. Now. I'm
used to windsor chairs, and I should feel the draft horribly if I were
a preacher, and if I hadn't got more than enough to do in minding
my own affairs, and if I could look anyone in the face and deny
that I too had pursued for nearly forty years the great British policy of muddling
through and hoping for the best. In short, if things were not what
they are, I would hire the Alhambra Theater or Exeter Hall of a Sunday
night, preferably the Alhambra, because more people would come to my entertainment,
and I would invite all men and women over twenty six. I would supply
the seething crowd with what they desired in the way of bodily refreshment, except
spirits, I would draw the line at poisons, and having got them and
myself into a nice, amiable, expansive frame of mind, I would thus
address them, of course, in ringing eloquence that John Bright might have ended.
Men and women, I would say, companions in the universal pastime of
hiding one's head in the sand. I am about to impart to you the
very essence of human wisdom. It is not abstract. It is a principle
of daily application, affecting the daily round in its entirety, from the strap
hanging on the district railway in the morning to the strap hanging on the district
railway the next morning. Beware of hope and beware of ambition. Each is
excellently tonic, like German competition in moderation. But all of you are suffering
from self indulgence in the first, and very many of you are ruining your
constitutions with the second. Be it known unto you, my dear men and
women, that existence, rightly considered is a fair compromise between two instincts,
the instinct of hoping one day to live and the instinct to live here and
now. In most of you the first instinct has simply got the other by
the throat and is throttling it. Prepare to live by all means, But
for Heaven's sake, do not forget to live. You will never have a
better chance than you have at present. You may think you will have,
but you are mistaken. Pardon this bluntness. Surely you are not so naive
as to imagine that the road on the other side of that hill there is
more beautiful than the piece you are now traversing. Hopes are never realized,
for in the act of realization they become something else. Ambitions may be attained,
but ambitions attained are rather like burnt coal. Ninety percent of the heat
generated has gone up the chimney instead of into the room. Nevertheless, indulge
in hopes and ambitions, which, though deceiving, are agreeable deceptions. Let
them cheat you a little a lot, but do not let them cheat you
too much. This that you are living now is life itself. It is
much more life itself than that which you will be living twenty years. Hence,
grasp that truth, dwell on it, absorb it, let it influence
your conduct to the end that neither the present nor the future be neglected you
search for happiness. Happiness is chiefly a matter of temperament. It is exceedingly
improbable that you will, by struggling, gain more happiness than you already possess
in fine settled down at once into life loud cheers. The cheers would of
course be for the refreshments. There is no doubt that the mass of the
audience would consider that I had missed my vocation and ought to have been a
caterer instead of a preacher. But once started I would not be discouraged.
I would keep on Sunday night after Sunday night. Our leading advertisers have ritually
proved that the public will believe anything if they are told of it often enough.
I would practice iteration, always with refreshments. In the result, it
would dawn upon the corporate mind that there was some glimmering of sense in my
doctrine, and people would at last begin to perceive the folly of neglecting to
savor the present, the folly of assuming that the future can be essentially different
from the present, the fatuity of dying before they have begun to live.
End of Chapter four, Chapter five of Mental Efficiency. This LibriVox recording is
in the public domain. Recording by Ruth Golding, Mental Efficiency and other hints
to men and women by Arnold Bennett, Chapter five Marriage the duty of it.
Every now and then it becomes necessary to deal faithfully with that immortal type
of person, the praiser of the past, at the expense of the present.
I will not quote Horace, as by all the traditions of letters I
ought to do, because Horace, like the incurable trimmer that he was hedged
on this question, and I do not admire him much either. The Praiser
of the Past has been very rife lately. He has told us that pauperism
and lunacy are mightily increasing, And though the exact opposite has been proved to
be the case, and he has apologized, he will have forgotten the correction
in a few months and will break out again into renewed lamentation. He has
told us that we are physically deteriorating, and in such awful tones that we
have shuddered, and many of us have believed and considering that the death rate
is decreasing, that slums are decreasing, that disease is decreasing, that the
agricultural laborer eats more than ever he did. Our credence does not do much
credit to our reasoning powers, does it. Of course, there is that
terrible influx into the towns. But I, for one, should be much
interested to know wherein the existence of the rustic in times past was healthier than
the existence of the town dwellers of today. The personal appearance of agricultural veterans
does not help me. They resemble starved bus drivers twisted out of shape by
lightning. But the pierres de resistance of the praiser of the past is now
marriage. With discreet hints about the birth rate, the praiser of the past
is going to have a magnificent time with the subject of marriage. The first
moaning of the tempest have already been heard. Bishops have looked askance at the
birth rate, and have mentioned their displeasure. The matter is serious, as
the phrase goes, It strikes at the root. We are marrying later,
my friends. Some of us, in the hurry and preoccupation of business,
are quite forgetting to marry. It is the duty of the citizen to marry
and have children, and we are neglecting our duty. We are growing selfish.
No longer are produced the glorious quiverfalls of old times. Our fathers married
at twenty, we marry at thirty five. Why because a gross and enervating
luxury has overtaken us? What will become of England? If this continues,
there will be no England. Hence we must look to it and so on.
In the same strain, I should like to ask all those who have
raised and will raise such outcries, have you read X now? The book
that I refer to as X is a mysterious work written rather more than a
hundred years ago by an English curate. It is a classic of English science.
Indeed, it is one of the great scientific books of the world.
It has immensely influenced all the scientific thought of the nineteenth century, especially Darwin's.
Mister H. G. Wells, as cited in Chambers Cyclopedia of English
Literature, describes it as the most shattering book that ever has or will be
written. If I may make a personal reference, I would say that it
affected me more deeply than any other scientific book that I have read. Although
it is perfectly easy to understand and free from the slightest technicality, it is
the most misunderstood book in English literature. Simply because it is not read.
The current notion about it is utterly false. It might be a powerful instrument
of education, general and sociological, but publishers will not reprint it, at
least they do not. And yet it is forty times more interesting and four
hundred times more educational than Gilbert White's remarks on the Birds of Selborne. I
will leave you to guess what X is. But I do not offer a
prize for the solution of a problem which a vast number of my readers will
certainly solve at once. If those who are worrying themselves about the change in
our system of marriage would read X, they would probably cease from worrying,
for they would perceive that they had been putting the cart before the horse,
that they had elevated to the dignity of fundamental principles, certain average rules of
conduct, which had sprung solely from certain average instincts in certain average conditions,
and that they were now frightened because the conditions, having changed, the rules
of conduct had changed with them. One of the truths that X makes clear
is that conduct conforms to conditions and not conditions. To conduct, the payment
of taxes is a duty which the citizen owes to the state. Marriage with
the begetting of children is not a duty which the citizen owes to the state.
Marriage with its consequences is a matter of personal inclination and convenience. It
never has been anything else, and it never will be anything else. How
could it be otherwise? If a man goes against inclination and convenience in a
matter where inclination is of the essence of the contract, he merely presents the
state with a discontented citizen, if not too in exchange for a contented one.
The happiness of the state is the sum of the happiness of all its
citizens. To decrease one's own happiness, then, is a singular way of
doing one's duty to the state. Do you imagine that when people married early
and much, they did so from a sense of duty to the state,
a sense of duty which our modern luxury has weakened. I imagine they married
simply because it's suitedom. They married from sheer selfishness, as all decent people
do marry, And do those who clatter about the duty of marriage kiss the
girls of their hearts with an eye to the general welfare. I can fancy
them saying my angel, I love you from a sense of duty to the
state. Let us rear innumerable progeny from a sense of duty to the state.
How charmed the girls would be if the marrying age changes, if the
birth rate shows a sympathetic tendency to follow the death rate as it must see
X, no one need be alarmed. Elementary principles of right and wrong are
not trembling on their basis. The human conscience is not silenced, The nation
is not going to the dogs. Conduct is adjusting itself to new conditions,
and that is all. We may not be able to see exactly how conditions
are changing. That is a detail our descendants will see exactly. Meanwhile,
the change in our conduct affords us some clue. And although certain nervous persons
do get alarmed and do preach and do take measures, the rest of us
may remain placid, in the sure faith that measures will avail nothing whatever.
If there are two things set high above legislation, movements, crusades, and
preaching, one is the marrying age, and the other is the birth rate.
For there the supreme instinct comes along and stamps ruthlessly on all insincere reasonings
and sham altruisms, stamps on everything in fact, and blandly remarks. I
shall suit my own convenience, and no one but nature herself with a big
bee n shall talk to me. Don't pester me with right and wrong.
I am right and wrong. Having thus attempted to clear the ground a little
of fudge, I propose next to offer a few simple remarks on marriage,
the adventure of it. Having endeavored to show that men do not and should
not marry from a sense of duty to the state or to mankind, but
simply and solely from an egoistic inclination to marry, I now proceed to the
individual case of the man who is in a position to marry, and whose
affections are not employed. Of course, if he has fallen in love,
unless he happens to be a person of extremely powerful will, he will not
weigh the pros and cons of marriage. He will merely marry, and forty
thousand cons will not prevent him, and he will be absolutely right and justified,
just as the straw, as it rushes down the current, is absolutely
right and justified. But the privilege of falling in love is not given to
everybody, and the inestimable privilege of falling deeply in love is given to few.
However, the man whom circumstances permit to marry, but who is not
in love or is only slightly amorous, will still think of marriage. How
will he think of it? I will tell you. In the first place,
if he has reached the age of thirty unscathed by aphrodite, he will
reflect that that peculiar feeling of romantic expectation with which he gets up every morning
would cease to exist after marriage, and it is a highly agreeable feeling in
its stead. In moments of depress, he would have the feeling of having
done something irremediable, of having definitely closed an avenue for the outlet of his
individuality. Kindly remember that I am not describing what this human man ought to
think. I am describing what he does think. In the second place,
he will reflect that after marriage he could no longer expect the charming welcomes which
bachelors so often receive from women. He would be done with as a possibility,
and he does not relish the prospect of being done with as a possibility.
Such considerations all connected more or less with the loss of freedom, Oh,
mysterious and thrilling word, will affect his theoretical attitude, and be it
known that even the freedom to be lonely and melancholy is still freedom. Other
ideas will suggest themselves. One morning, while brushing his hair, he will
see a gray hair, and, however young he may be, the anticipation
of old age will come to him a solitary old age, a senility dependent
for its social and domestic requirements on condescending nephews and nieces or even more distant
relations awful unthinkable, And his first movement, especially if he has read that
terrible novel for compla more of de Moutpasson, is to rush out into the
street and propose to the first girl he encounters, in order to avoid this
dreadful nightmare of a solitary old age. But before he has got as far
as the doorstep, he reflects further. Suppose he marries, and after twenty
years his wife dies and leaves him a widower. He will still have a
solitary old age, and a vastly more tragical one than if he had remained
single. Marriage is not therefore a sure remedy for a solitary old age,
it may intensify the evil children. But suppose he doesn't have any children.
Suppose they're being children, they die? What anguish? Suppose merely that they
are seriously ill and recover? What an aging experience? Suppose they prove a
disappointment? What endless regret? Suppose they turn out badly? Children doom?
What shame? Suppose he finally becomes dependent upon the grudging kindness of an ungrateful
child. What a supreme humiliation? All these things are occurring constantly everywhere.
Suppose his wife, having loved him, ceased to love him, or suppose
he ceased to love his wife. Say sure's nussir commande de pas. These
things do not command themselves. Personally, I should estimate that in not one
percent even of romantic marriages, are the husband and wife capable of passion for
each other after three years. So brief is the violence of love. In
perhaps thirty three percent, passion settles down into a tranquil affection, which is
ideal. In fifty percent it sinks into sheer indifference, and one becomes used
to one's wife or one's husband as to one's other habits. And in the
remains sixteen percent it develops into dislike or detestation. Do you think my percentages
are wrong? You who have been married a long time and know what the
world is, well, you may modify them a little. You won't want
to modify them much. The risk of finding oneself ultimately among the sixteen percent
can be avoided by the simple expedient of not marrying them, and by the
same expedient the other risks can be avoided, together with yet others that I
have not mentioned. It is entirely obvious. Then, in fact, I
beg pardon for mentioning it that the attitude towards marriage of the heart free bachelor
must be at best a highly cautious attitude. He knows he is already in
the frying pan. None knows better, But considering the propinquity of the fire,
he doubts whether he had not better stay where he is. His life
will be calmer, more like that of a hibernating snake. His sensibilities will
be dulled, but the chances of poignant suffering will be very materially reduced,
so that the bachelor, in a position to marry but not in love,
will assuredly decide in theory against marriage that is to say, if he is
timid, if he prefers frying pans, if he is lacking in initiative,
if he has the soul of a rat, if he wants to live as
little as possible, if he hates his kind, if his egoism is of
the miserable sort that dares not mingle with another's. But if he has been
more happily gifted, he will decide that the magnificent adventure is worth plunging into
the ineradicable, and fine gambling instinct in him will urge him to take,
at the first chance a ticket in the only lottery permitted by the British government,
Because after all, the mutual sense of ownership felt by the normal husband
and the normal wife is something unique, something the like of which cannot be
obtained without marriage. I saw a man and a woman at as sail the
other day. I was too far off to hear them, but I could
perceive they were having a most lively argument. Perhaps it was only about initials
on pillow cases. They were absorbed in themselves. The world did not exist
for them, And I thought, what miraculous, exquisite force is it that
brings together that strange somber, laconic organism in a silk hat and a loose
overcoat, and that strange, bright, vivacious, querulous, irrational organism in
brilliant fur and feathers. And when they moved away, the most interesting phenomenon
in the universe moved away. And I thought, just as no beer is
bad, but some beer is better than other beer, so no marriage is
bad. The chief reward of marriage is something which marriage is bound to give,
companionship whose mysterious interestingness nothing can stale. A man may hate his wife
so that she can't thread a needle without annoying him. But when he dies
or she dies, he will say, well, I was interested, And
one always is, said a bachelor of forty six to me the other night.
Anything is better than the void. The two ways of it, sabine
and other summary methods of marrying, being now abandoned by all nice people,
there remain two broad general ways. The first is the English way. We
let nature take her course. We give heed to the heart's cry. When
amid the hazards and accidents of the world, two souls find each other,
we rejoice. Our instinctive wish is that they shall marry. If the matter
can anyhow be arranged. We frankly recognize the claim of romance in life,
and we are prepared to make sacrifices to it. We see a young couple
at the altar. They are in love, good, they are poor,
so much the worse, but nevertheless we feel that love will pull them through.
The revolting French system of bargain and barter. Is the one thing that
we can neither comprehend nor pardon in the customs of our great neighbors. We
endeavor to be polite about that system, we simply cannot. It shocks our
finest tenderest feelings. It is so obviously contrary to nature. The second is
the French way just alluded to us, bargain and barter. Now, if
there is one thing a Frenchman can neither comprehend nor pardon in the customs of
a race so marvelously practical and sagacious as ourselves, it is the English marriage
system. He endeavors to be polite about it, and he succeeds, but
it shocks his finest tenderest feelings. He admits that it is in accordance with
nature, but he is apt to argue that the whole progress of civilization has
been the result of an effort to get away from nature. What leave the
most important relation into which a man can enter, to the mercy chance when
a mere gesture may arouse passion or the color of a corsage induced desire.
No, you English, you who are so self controlled, You are not
going seriously to defend that. You talk of lover as though it lasted for
ever. You talk of sacrificing to love. But what you really sacrifice,
or risk sacrificing, is the whole of the latter part of married existence.
For the sake of the first two or three years. Marriage is not one
long honeymoon we wish it were. When you agree to a marriage, you
fix your eyes on the honeymoon. When we agree to a marriage, we
try to see it as it will be five or ten years. Hence we
assert that in the average instance, five years after the wedding, it doesn't
matter whether or not the parties were in love on the wedding day. Hence
we will not yield to the gusts of the moment. Your system is.
Moreover, if we may be permitted the observation a premium on improvidence, it
is to some extent the result of improvidence. You can marry your daughters without
dowries, and the ability to do so tempts you to neglect your plain duty
to your daughters, and you do not always resist the temptation. Do your
marriages of romance turn out better than our marriages of prudence, of careful thought,
of long foresight. We do not think they do so much, for
the two ways, patriotism being the last refuge of a scoundrel. According to
doctor Johnson, I have no intention of judging between them, as my heart
prompts me to do, lest I should be accused of it. Nevertheless,
I may hint that, while perfectly convinced by the admirable logic of the French,
I am still with the charming illogicalness of the English in favor of romantic
marriages, it being of course understood that dowries ought to be far more plentiful
than they are in England. If a Frenchman accuses me of being ready to
risk sacrificing the whole of the latter part of married life for the sake of
the first two or three years, I would unhesitatingly reply, yes, I
am ready to risk that sacrifice. I reckon the first two or three years
are worth it. But then I am English and therefore romantic by nature.
Look at London, that city who's out standing quality is its romantic quality.
And look at the English women going their ways in the wonderful streets thereof their
very eyes are full of romance. They may they do lack chic, but
they are heroines of drama. Then look at Paris. There is little romance
in the fine right lines of Paris. Look at the Parisiennes. They are
the most astounding and adorable women yet invented by nature. But they aren't romantic.
You know, they don't know what romance is. They are so matter
of fact that when you think of their matter of factness, it gives you
a shiver in the small of your back. To return, one may view
the two ways in another light. Perhaps the difference between them is fundamentally less
a difference between the ideas of two races than a difference between the ideas of
two times of life. And in France, the elderly attitude predominates as people
get on in years, even English people, they are more and more in
favor of the marriage of reason as against the marriage of romance. Young people,
even French people, object strongly to the theory and practice of the marriage
of reason. But with them the unique and precious ecstasy of youth is not
past. Whereas their elders have forgotten its savor. Which is right, no
one will ever be able to decide, But neither the one system nor the
other will apply itself well to all or nearly all cases. There have been
thousands of romantic marriages in England, of which it may be said that it
would have been better had the French system been in force to prevent their existence.
And equally, thousands of possible romantic marriages have been prevented in France,
which, had the English system prevailed there would have turned out excellently. The
prevalence of diaries in England would not render the English system perfect, for it
must be remembered that money is only one of several ingredients in the French marriage,
but it would considerably improve it. However, we are not a provident
race, and we are not likely to become one, so our young men
must reconcile themselves to the continued absence of diaries. The reader may be excused
for imagining that I am at the end of my remarks, I am not
all. That precedes is a mere preliminary to what follows. I want to
regard the case of the man who has given the English system a fair trial
and found it futile. We wait on chance in England, we wait for
love to arrive. Suppose it doesn't arrive. Where is the English system?
Then? Assume that a man in a position to marry reaches thirty five or
forty without having fallen in love, why should he not try the French system
for a change. Any marriage is better than none at all. Naturally in
England he couldn't go up to the chosen fair and announce I am not precisely
in love with you, but will you marry me? He would put it
differently, and she would understand, and do you think she would refuse?
End of chapter five, Chapter six of Mental Efficiency. This LibriVox recording is
in the public domain. Recording by Ruth Golding. Mental Efficiency and Other Hints
to Men and Women by Arnold Bennett. Chapter six, Books, the physical
side. The chief interest of many of my readers is avowedly books. They
may they probably do profess other interests, but they are primarily bookmen and when
one is a bookman, one is a bookman during about twenty three and three
quarter hours in every day. Now, book men are capable of understanding things
about books which cannot be put into words. They're not like mere subscribers to
circulating libraries. For them, a book is not just a book. It
is a book. If these lines should happen to catch the eye of any
person's not bookmen, such persons may imagine that I am writing nonsense. But
I trust that the bookmen will comprehend me. And I venture then to offer
a few reflections upon an aspect of modern bookishness that is becoming more and more
actual as the enterprise of publishers and the beneficent effects of education grow and increase
together. I refer to popular editions of classics. Now I am very grateful
to the devisors of cheap and handy editions. The first book I ever bought
was the first volume of the first modern series of presentable and really cheap reprints,
namely Macaulay's Warren Hastings in Castle's National Library sixpence in cloth. That foundation
stone of my library has unfortunately disappeared beneath the successive deposits, But another volume
of the same series. F. T. Palgrave's Visions of England, an
otherwise scarce book, still remains to me through the vicissitudes of seventeen years of
sale, purchase and exchange, and I would not care to part with it.
I have over two hundred volumes of that inestimable and incomparable series, the
Temple Classics, besides several hundred assorted volumes of various other series. And when
I heard of the new Everyman's Library projected by that benefactor of bookman, mister
J. M. Dent, my first impassioned act was to sit down and
write a postcard to my bookseller ordering George Finley's The Byzantine Empire, a work
which has waited sixty years for popular recognition, so that I cannot be said
to be really antagonistic to cheap reprints. Strong in this consciousness, I beg
to state that cheap and handy reprints are all very well in their way,
which is a manner of saying that they are not the alpha and omega of
bookishness. By expending twenty pounds yearly during the next five years, a man
might collect in cheap and handy reprints all that was worth having in classic English
literature. But I, for one, would not be willing to regard such
a library as a real library. I would regard it as only a cheap
edition of a library. There would be something about it that would arouse in
me a certain benevolent disdain, even though every volume was well printed on good
paper and inoffensively bound. Why well, although it is my profession in life
to seay say what I feel in plain words, I do not know that
in this connection I can say what I feel in plain words. I have
to rely on a sympathetic comprehension of my attitude in the bookish breasts of my
readers. In the first place, I have an instinctive antipathy to a series.
I do not want the Golden Legend and the essays of Eliah uniformed alike
in a regiment of books. It makes me think of conscription and barracks.
Even the noblest series of reprints ever planned not at all cheap either nor heterogeneous
in matter. The Tudor translations faintly annoys me in the mass its appearances in
a series seems to me to rob a book of something very delicate and subtle
in the aroma of its individuality, something which it being inexplicable, I will
not try to explain. In the second place, most cheap and handy reprints
are small in size. They may be typographically excellent with large type and opaque
paper. They may be convenient to handle. They may be surpassingly suitable for
the pocket and the very thing for travel. They may save precious space where
shelf room is limited. But they are small in size, and there is,
as regards most literature, a distinct moral value in size. Do I
carry my audience with me? I hope so let Paradise Last be so produced
that you can put it in your waistcoat pocket, and it is no more
Paradise lost. Milton needs a solid octavo form with stout paper and long primer
type. I have Walpole's Letters in Nun's thin paper classics, a marvelous volume
of near nine hundred pages, with a portrait and a good index and a
beautiful binding for three and six. And I am exceedingly indebted to Messrs Newns
for creating that volume. It was sheer genius on their part to do so.
I get charming sensations from it, but sensations not so charming as I
should get from Missus Paget Toynbee's many, volumed and grandiose edition, even aside
from Missus Toynbee's erudite notes and the extra letters which she has been able to
print, the same letter in Missus Toynbee's edition would have a higher esthetic and
moral value for me than in the additional of Messrs Neuns. The one cheap
series which satisfies my desire for size is my Millan's Library of English Classics,
in which I have the travels of that mythical personage Sir John Mandeville. But
it is only in paying for it that you know this edition to be cheap,
for it measures nine inches by six inches by two inches. And in
the third place, when one by his series, one only partially chooses one's
books. They are mainly chosen for one by the publisher, and even if
they are not chosen for one by the publisher, they are suggested to one
by the publisher. Not so does the genuine bookman form his library. The
genuine bookman begins by having specific desires. His study of authorities gives him a
demand, and the demand forces him to find the supply He does not let
the supply create the demand. Such a state of affairs would be almost humiliating,
almost like the parvenus who calls in the wholesale furniture and decorator to provide
him with a home. A library must be primarily the expression of the owner's
personality. Let me assert again that I am strongly in favor of cheap series
of reprints. Their influence, though not the very finest, is indisputably good.
They are as great a boon as cheap bread. They are indispensable where
money or space is limited, and in traveling. They decidedly help to educate
a taste for books that are neither cheap nor handy, and the most luxurious
collectors may not afford to ignore them entirely. But they have their limitations,
their disadvantages. They cannot form the backbone of a proper library. They make,
however admirable embroidery to a library. My own would look rather plain if
it was stripped of the the philosophy of book buying. For some considerable time
I have been living, as regards books, with the minimum of comfort and
decency, with in fact the bare necessaries of life. Such necessaries being in
my case, sundry dictionaries Boswell and Atlas, Wordsworth, an Encyclopedia Shakespeare,
Whittaker, so De moutperson, a poetical anthology, Verlen Baudlaire, a natural
history of my native county, an old directory of my native town Sir Thomas
Brown, Poe Wolpole's letters, and a book of memoirs that I will not
name, A curious list. You will say, well, never mind.
We do not all care to eat beef steak and chip potatoes off an oak
table with a foaming court to the right hand. We have our idiosyncrasies.
The point is that I existed on the bare necessaries of life, very healthy,
doctors say, for a long time, and then just lately I summoned
energy and caused fifteen hundred volumes to be transported to me, and I arranged
them on shelves, and I rearranged them on shelves, and I left them
to arrange themselves on shelves. Well, you know, the way that I
walk up and down in front of these volumes, whose faces I had half
forgotten, is perfectly infantile. It is like the way of a child at
a menagerie there in its cage Is that eighteen thirty nine edition of Shelley,
edited by Missus Shelley, that I once nearly sold to the British Museum because
the keeper of printed books thought he hadn't got a copy. Only he had,
and there in a cage by himself because of his terrible hugeness. Is
the sixteen fifty two Paris edition of Montaigne's Essays. And so I might continue.
And so I would continue, were it not essential that I come to
my argument. Do you suppose that the presence of these books, after our
long separation is making me read more than I did? Do you suppose I
am engaged in looking up my favorite passages? Not a bit? The other
evening I had a long tram journey, and before starting I tried to select
a book to take with me. I couldn't find one to suit just the
tram mood. As I had to catch the tram, I was obliged to
settle on something, and in the end I went off with nothing more original
than Hamlet, which I am really too familiar with. Then I bought an
evening paper and read it all through, including advertisements. So I said to
myself, this is a nice result of all my trouble to resume company with
some of my books. However, as I have long since ceased to be
surprised at the eccentric manner in which human nature refuses to act as one would
have expected it to act, I was able to keep calm and unashamed during
this extraordinary experience. And I am still walking up and down in front of
my books and enjoying them without reading them. I wish to argue that a
great deal of cant is talked and written about reading papers such as the Athenaeum,
which nevertheless I peruse with joy from end to end every week, can
scarcely notice a new edition of a classic without expressing an aggrieved and pessimistic tone
the fear that more people buy these agreeable editions than read them. And if
it is so, what then are we only to buy the books that we
read. The question has merely to be thus bluntly put, and it answers
itself. All impassioned book men, except a few who devote their whole lives
to reading, have rows of books on their shelves which they have never read,
and which they never will read. I know that I have hundred such
My eye rests on the works of Berkeley in three volumes, with a preface
by the right Honorable Arthur James Balfour. I cannot conceive the circumstances under which
I shall ever read Berkeley. But I do not regret having bought him in
a good edition, and I would buy him again if I had him not,
for when I look at him, some of his virtue passes into me.
I am the better for him. A certain aroma of philosophy informs my
soul, and I am less crude than I should otherwise be. This is
not fancy but fact. Taking Berkeley simply as an instance, I will utilize
him a little further. I ought to have read Berkeley, you say,
just as I ought to have read Spencer, Ben Jonson, George Eliot,
Victor Hugo. Not at all. There is no aught about it. If
the mass of obtainable first class literature were, as it was perhaps a century
ago, not too large to be assimilated by a man of ordinary limited leisure
in his leisure and during the first half of his life, then possibly there
might be an aught about it. But the mass has grown unmanageable even by
those robust professional readers who can grapple with whole libraries. And I am not
a professional reader. I am a writer, just as I might be a
hotel keeper, a solicitor, a doctor, a grocer, or an earthenware
manufacturer. I read in my scanty spare time, and I don't read in
all my spare time either. I have other distractions. I read what I
feel inclined to read, and I am conscious of no duty to finish a
book that I don't care to finish. I read in my leisure, not
from a sense of duty, not to improve myself, but solely because it
gives me pleasure to read. Sometimes it takes me a month to get through
one book. I expect my case is quite an average case. But am
I going to fetter my buying to my reading. Not exactly. I want
to have lots of books on my show because I know they are good,
because I know they would amuse me, because I like to look at them,
and because one day I might have a caprice to read them. Berkeley,
even thy turn may come. In short, I want them because I
want them, and shall I be deterred from possessing them by the fear of
some sequestered and singular person some person who has read vastly, but who doesn't
know the difference between a J. S. Muria cigar and an RP.
Muria strolling in and bullying me with the dreadful query, sir, do you
read your books? Therefore, I say, in buying a book, be
influenced by two considerations. Only. Are you reasonably sure that it is a
good book? Have you a desire to possess it? Do not be influenced
by the probability or the improbability of your reading it. After all, one
does read a certain proportion of what one buys, and further instinct counts the
man who spends half a crown on Stubbs's Early Plantagenets instead of going into the
gaiety pit to see the spring chicken will probably be the sort of man who
can suck goodness out of Stubbs's Early Plantagenets years before he bestirs himself to read
it. End of chapter six, Chapter seven of Mental Efficiency. This LibriVox
recording is in the public domain. Recording by Ruth Golding. Mental Efficiency and
Other Hints to Men and Women by Arnold Bennett. Chapter seven success candid remarks
there are times when the whole free and enlightened press of the United Kingdom seems
to become strangely interested in the subject of success, of getting on in life.
We are passing through such a period now. It would be difficult to
name the prominent journalists who have not lately written in some form or another about
success. Most singular phenomenon of all, Doctor Emil Reich has left Plato,
Duchesses and Clarage's hotel in order to instruct the million readers of a morning paper
in the principles of success. What the million readers thought of the doctor's stirring
and strenuous sentences, I will not imagine, but I know what I thought
as a plain man, after taking due cognizance of his airy play with the
constants and variables of success, After watching him treat energetics, his wonderful new
name for the science of success, as though because he had made it end
in ix it resembled mathematics, I thought that the sublime and venerable art of
mystification could no further go If my fellow pilgrim through this vale of woe.
The average young man who arrives at Waterloo at nine forty every morning with a
cigarette in his mouth, and a second class season over his heart, and
vague aspirations in his soul was half as mystified as I was. He has
probably air this decided that the science of success has all the disadvantages of algebra,
without any of the advantages of cricket, and that he may as well
leave it alone, lest evil should befall him. On the off chance that
he has come as yet to no decision about the science of success, I
am determined to deal with the subject in a disturbingly can manner. I feel
that it is as dangerous to tell the truth about success as it is to
tell the truth about the United States. But being thoroughly accustomed to the whistle
of bullets around my head, I will nevertheless try. Most writers on success
are, through sheer goodness of heart, wickedly disingenuous, for the basis of
their argument is that nearly anyone who gives his mind to it can achieve success.
This is, to put it briefly untrue. The very central idea of
success is separation from the multitude of plain men. It is perhaps the only
idea common to all the various sorts of success. Differentiation from the crowd.
To address the population at large and tell it how to separate itself from itself
is merely silly. I am now, of course, using the word success
in its ordinary sense. If human nature were more perfect than it is,
success in life would mean an intimate knowledge of one's self and the achievement of
a philosophic inward calm. And such a goal might well be reached by the
majority of mortals. But to us success signifies something else. It may be
divided into four branches. One distinction in pure or applied science. This is
the least gross of all forms of success as we regard it, for it
frequently implies poverty, and it does not, by any means always imply fame.
Two distinction in the arts. Fame and adulation are usually implied in this,
though they do not commonly bring riches with them. Three direct influence and
power over the material lives of other men, that is to say, distinction
in politics, national or local. For success in amassing money. This last
is the commonest and easiest. Most forms of success will fall under one of
these heads. Are they possible to that renowned and much flattered person the man
in the street, They are not, And well you know it. All,
you, professors of the science of success, only a small minority of
us can even become rich happily. While it is true that success in its
common acceptation is by its very essence impossible to the majority, there is an
accompanying truth which adjusts the balance to wit that the majority do not desire success.
This may seem a bold saying, but it is in accordance with the
facts. Conceive the man in the streets suddenly, by some miracle, invested
with political power, and of course under the obligation to use it, he
would be so upset, worried, wearied, and exasperated at the end of
a week that he would be ready to give the eyes out of his head
in order to get rid of it. As for success in science or in
art, the average person's interest in such matters is so slight compared with that
of the man of science or the artist, that he cannot be said to
have an interest in them, And supposing that distinction in them were thrust upon
him, he would rapidly lose that distinction by simple indifference and neglect. The
average person certainly wants some money, and the average person does not usually rest
until he has got as much as is needed for the satisfaction of his instinctive
needs. He will move the heaven and earth of his environment to earn sufficient
money for marriage in the station to which he has been accustomed, and precisely
at that point his genuine desire for money will cease to be active. The
average man has this in common with the most exceptional genius, that his career,
in its main contours, is governed by his instincts. The average man
flourishes and finds his ease in an atmosphere of peaceful routine. Men destined for
success flourish and find their ease in an atmosphere of collision and disturbance. The
two temperaments are diverse. Naturally, the average man dreams vaguely. Upon occasion,
he dreams how nice it would be to be famous and rich. We
all dream vaguely upon such things. But to dream vaguely is not to desire.
I often tell myself that I would give anything to be the equal of
Chinque Valley the juggler, or to be the captain of the largest atlantic liner.
But the reflective part of me tells me that my yearning to emulate these
astonishing personages is not a genuine desire, and that its realization would not increase
my happiness. To obtain a passably true notion of what happens to the mass
of mankind in its progress from the cradle to the grave, one must not
attempt to survey a whole nation, nor even a great metropolis, nor even
a very big city like Manchester or Liverpool. These panoramas are so immense and
confusing that they defeat the observing eye. It is better to take a small
town of say twenty or thirty thousand inhabitants. Such a town, as most
of us know more or less intimately, the extremely few individuals whose instincts mark
them out to take part in the struggle for success can be identified at once.
For the first thing they do is to leave the town. The air
of the town is not bracing enough for them. Their nostrils dilate for something
keener. Those who are left form a microcosm which is representative enough of the
world at large. Between the ages of thirty and forty, they begin to
sort themselves out in their own sphere. They take their places. A dozen
or so politicians form the town council and rule the town. Half a dozen
business men stand for the town's commercial activity and its wealth. A few others
teach science and art, or are locally known as botanists, geologists, amateurs
of music, or amateurs of some other art. These are the distinguished,
and it will be perceived that they cannot be more numerous than them. They
are. What of the rest? Have they struggled for success and been beaten?
Not they? Do? They, as they grow old, resemble disappointed
men? Not they? They have fulfilled themselves modestly. They have got what
they genuinely tried to get. They have never even gone near the outskirts of
the battle for success, but they have not failed. The number of failures
is surprisingly small. You see a shabby, disappointed aging man flit down the
main street, and someone replies to your inquiry that so and so one of
life's failures, poor fellow, And the very tone in which the words are
uttered, proves the excessive rarity of the real failure. It goes without saying
that the case of the handful who have left the town in search of the
success with the capital s has a tremendous interest of curiosity. For the mass
who remains, I will consider it the successful and the unsuccessful Having boldly stated
that success is not and cannot be, within grasp of the majority, I
now proceed to state, as regards the minority, that they do not achieve
it in the manner in which they are commonly supposed to achieve it, and
I may add an expression of my thankfulness that they do not. The popular
delusion is that success is attained by what I may call the Benjamin Franklin method.
Franklin was a very great man. He united in his character a set
of splendid qualities, as various in their different ways as those possessed by Leonardo
da Vinci. I have an immense admiration for him, but his autobiography does
make me angry. His autobiography is understood to be a classic, and if
you say a word against it in the United States, you are apt to
get killed. I do, not, however, contemplate an immediate visit to
the United States, and I shall venture to assert that Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography is
a detestable book and a misleading book. I can recall only two other volumes
which I would more willingly revile. One is Samuel Budget, The Successful Merchant,
and the other is from log Cabin to White House, being the history
of President Garfield. Such books may impose on boys, and it is conceivable
that they do not harm boys. Franklin, by the way, began his
autobiography in the form of a letter to his son. But the grown man,
who can support them without nausea, ought to go and see a doctor,
for there is something wrong with him. I began, now blandly,
remarks Franklin, to have some acquaintance among the young people of the town that
were lovers of reading, with whom I spent my evenings very pleasantly in italics,
and gained money by my industry and frugality. End of italics, or
again quote. It was about this time I conceived the bold and arduous project
of arriving at moral perfection. I made a little book in which I allotted
a page for each of the virtues. I ruled each page with red ink,
so as to have seven columns, one for each day of the week.
I crossed these columns with thirteen red lines, marking the beginning of each
line with the first letter of one of the virtues on which line and in
its proper column I might mark by a little black spot every fault I found,
upon examining it, to have been committed respecting that virtue upon that day
end shade of Franklin, where ere thou art, this is really a little
bit stiff. A man may be excused even such infamies of priggishness, But
truly he ought not to go and write them down, especially to his son.
And why the detail about red Ink. If Franklin's son was not driven
to evil courses by the perusal of that monstrous autobiography, he must have been
a man almost as astounding as his father. Now, Franklin could only have
written his immortal classic from one of three motives. One sheer conceit he was
a prig, but he was not conceited to a desire that others should profit
by his mistakes. He never made any mistakes. Now and again he emphasizes
some trifling error, but that is only his fun. Three, a desire
that others should profit by the recital of his virtuous sagacity to reach a similar
success. The last was undoubtedly his principal motive. Honest fellow who happened to
be a genius. But the point is that his success was in no way
the result of his virtuous sagacity. I would go further and say that his
dreadful, virtuous sagacity often hindered his success. No one is a worse guide
to success than your typical successful man. He seldom understands the reasons of his
own success. And when he is asked by a popular magazine to give his
experiences for the benefit of the use of a whole nation, it is impossible
for him to be natural and sincere. He knows the kind of thing that
is expected from him. And if he didn't come to London with half a
crown in his pocket, he probably did something equally silly. And he puts
that down, and the note of the article or interview is struck, and
goodbye to genuine truth. There recently appeared in a daily paper an autobiographic didactic
article by one of the world's richest men, which was the most inadequate article
of the sort that I have ever come across. Successful men forget so much
of their lives. Moreover, nothing is easier than to explain an accomplished fact
in a nice, agreeable, conventional way. The entire business of success is
a gigantic tacit conspiracy on the part of the minority to deceive the majority.
Are successful men more industrious, frugal, and intelligent than men who are not
successful. I maintain that they are not, and I have studied successful men
at close quarters. One of the commonest characteristics of the successful man is his
idleness, his immense capacity for wasting time. I stoutly assert that, as
a rule, successful men are by habit comparatively idle. As for brugality,
it is practically unknown among the successful classes. This statement applies with particular force
to financiers. As for intelligence, I have over and over again been startled
by the lack of intelligence in successful men. They are indeed capable of stupidities
that would be the ruin of a plain clerk. And much of the talk
in those circles which surround the successful man is devoted to the enumeration of instances
of his life lack of intelligence. Another point. Successful men seldom succeed as
the result of an ordered arrangement of their lives. They are the least methodical
of creatures. Naturally, when they have arrived, they amuse themselves and impress
the majority by being convinced that right from the start, with a steady eye
on the goal, they had carefully planned every foot of the route. No
great success never depends on the practice of the humbler virtues, though it may
occasionally depend on the practice of the prouder vices. Use industry, frugality and
common sense by all means, but do not expect that they will help you
to success, because they will not. I shall no doubt be told that
what I have just written has an immoral tendency and is a direct encouragement to
slots, blessness, et cetera. One of our chief national faults is our
hypocritical desire to suppress the truth on the pretext that to admit it would encourage
sin, whereas the real explanation is that we are afraid of the truth.
I will not be guilty of that fault. I do like to look a
fact in the face without blinking. I am fully persuaded that per head,
there is more of the virtues in the unsuccessful majority than in the successful minority.
In London alone, are there not hundreds of miles of streets crammed with
industry, frugality and prudence. Some of the most brilliant men I have known
have been failures, and not through lack of character either. And some of
the least gifted have been marvelously successful. It is impossible to point to a
single branch of human activity in which success can be explained by the conventional principles
that find general acceptance. I hear you, o reader, murmuring to yourself,
this is all very well, But he is simply being paradoxical for his
own diversion. I would that I could persuade you of my intense seriousness.
I have endeavored to show what does not make success. I will next endeavor
to show what does make it. But my hope is forlorn the inwardness of
success. Of course, one can no more explain success than one can explain
Beethoven's C Minor Symphony. One may state what key it is written in,
and make expert reflections upon its form, and catalog its themes, and relate
it to symphonies that preceded it and symphonies that followed it. But in the
end one is reduced to saying that the C Minor Symphony is beautiful because it
is in the same manner. One is reduced to saying that the sole real
difference between success and failure is that success succeeds This being frankly admitted at the
outset, I will allow myself to assert that there are three sorts of success.
Success A is the accidental sort. It is due to the thing we
call chance, and to nothing else. We are all of us still very
superstitious, and the caprices of chance have a singular effect upon us. Suppose
that I go to Monte Carlo and announce to a friend my firm conviction that
Red will turn up next time, and I back Red for the maximum,
and Red does turn up, my friend, in spite of his intellect,
will vaguely attribute to me a mysterious power. Yet chance alone would be responsible.
If I did that six times running, all the players at the table
would be interested in me. If I did it a dozen times, all
the players in the casino would regard me with all. Yet chance alone would
be responsible. If I did it eighteen times, my name would be in
every newspaper in Europe. Yet chance alone would be responsible. I should be
in that department of human activity, an extremely successful man, and the vast
majority of people would instinctively credit me with gifts that I do not possess.
If such phenomena of superstition can occur in an affair where the agency of chance
is open and avowed, how much more probable is it that people should refuse
to be satisfied with the explanation of sheer accident in affairs where it is to
the interest of the principal actors to conceal the role played by chance. Nevertheless,
there can be no doubt in the minds of persons who have viewed success
at close quarters that a proportion of it is due solely and utterly to chance.
Successful men flourish to day, and have flourished in the past, who
have no quality whatever to differentiate them from the multitude red has turned up for
them a sufficient number of times, and the universal superstitious instinct not to believe
in chance has accordingly surrounded them with a halo. It is merely ridiculous to
say, as some do, say, that success is never due to chance
alone, because nearly everybody is personally acquainted with reasonable proof on a great or
a small scale. To the contrary, the second sort of success b is
that made by men who, while not gifted with first class talents, have
beyond doubt the talent to succeed. I should describe these men by saying that
though they deserve something, they do not deserve the dazzling reward known as success.
They strike us as overpaid. We meet them in all professions and trades,
and we do not really respect them. They excite our curiosity and perhaps
are envy. They may rise very high, indeed, but they must always
be unpleasantly conscious of a serious reservation in our attitude towards them. And if
they could read their obituary notices, they would assuredly discern therein a certain chilliness.
However, kindly we acted up to our great national motto of de mortuis
nil nist buncom. It is this class of success which puzzles a social student.
How comes it that men without any other talent possess a mysterious and indefinable
talent to succeed well? It seems to me that such men always display certain
characteristics, and the chief of these characteristics is the continual insatiable wish to succeed.
They are preoccupied with the idea of succeeding. We others are not so
preoccupied. We dream of success at intervals, but we have not the passion
for success. We don't lie awake at nights pondering upon it. The second
characteristic of these men springs naturally from the first. They are always on the
lookout. This does not mean that they are industrious. I stated in a
previous article my belief that, as a rule, successful men are not particularly
industrious. A man on a raft with his shirt for a signal cannot be
termed industrious. But he will keep his eyes open for a sail on the
horizon. If he simply lies down and goes to sleep, he may miss
the chance of his life. In a very special sense, the man with
the talent to succeed is the man on the raft who never goes to sleep.
His indefatigable orb sweeps the man from sunset to sunset. Having sighted a
sail, he gets up on his hind legs and waves that shirt in so
determined a manner that the ship is bound to see him and take him off.
Occasionally he plunges into the sea, risking sharks and other perils. If
he doesn't get there, we hear nothing of him. If he does,
some person will ultimately multiply by ten the number of sharks that he braved.
That person is called a biographer. Let me drop the metaphor. Another characteristic
of these men is that they seem to have the exact contrary of what is
known as common sense. They will become enamored of some enterprise which infallibly impresses
the average common sense person as a mad and hopeless enterprise. The average common
sense person will demolish the hopes of that enterprise by incontrovertible argument. He will
point out that it is foolish on the face of it, that it has
never been attempted before, and that it responds to no need of humanity.
He will say to himself, this fellow with his precious enterprise has a twist
in his brain. He can't reply to my arguments, and yet he obstinately
persists in going on. And the man destined to success does go on.
Perhaps the enterprise fails, It often fails, and then the average common sense
person expends much breath in I told you, sos. But the man continues
to be on the look out. His thirst is unassuaged, his taste for
enterprises foredoomed to failure is incurable. And one day some enterprise for doomed to
failure develops into a success. We all hear of it. We all open
our mouths and gape of the failures we have heard nothing. Once the man
has achieved success, the thing becomes a habit with him. The difference between
a success and a failure is often so slight that a reputation for succeeding will
insure a success, and a reputation for failing will insure a failure. Chance
plays an important part in such careers, but not a paramount part. One
can only say that it is more useful to have luck at the beginning than
later on. These men of success generally have pliable temperaments. They are not
frequently unmorl but they regard a conscience as a good servant and a bad master.
They live in an atmosphere of compromise. There remains Class C of success,
the class of sheer high merit. I am not a pessimist, nor
am I an optimist. I try to arrive at the truth. And I
should say that in putting success C at ten percent of the sum total of
all successes, I am being generous to class C. Not that I believe
that vast quantities of merit go unappreciated. My reason for giving to class C
only a modest share is the fact that there is so little sheer high merit,
and does it not stand to reason that high merit must be very exceptional.
This sort of success needs no explanation, no accounting, for it is
the justification of our singular belief in the principle of the triumph of justice,
and it is among natural phenomena, perhaps the only justification that can be advanced
for that belief. And certainly, when we behold the spectacle of genuine,
distinguished merit gaining without undue delay, and without the sacrifice of dignity or of
conscience, the applause of the kind hearted, but obtuse and insensible majority of
the human race, we have fair reason to hug ourselves. End of chapter
seven, Chapter eight of Mental Efficiency. This LibriVox recording is in the public
domain recording by Ruth Golding. Mental Efficiency and Other Hints to Men and Women
by Arnold Bennett, Chapter eight, The petty Artificialities. The phrase petty artificialities,
employed by one of the correspondents in the Great Simple Life argument, has
stuck in my mind. Although I gave it a plain intimation that it was
no longer wanted there, perhaps it sheds more light than I had at first
imagined on the mental state of the persons who use it when they wish to
arraign the conditions of modern life. Of vituperative epithet is capable of making a
big show. Artificiality is a sufficiently scornful word. But when you add petty,
you somehow give the quietus to the pretensions of modern life. Modern life
had better hide its diminished head. After that, modern life is settled and
done for in the opinion of those who have thrown the dart, only it
isn't done for really, you know, petty, after all, means nothing
in that connection. Are there then artificialities which are not petty, which are
noble, large and grand. Petty means merely that the users of the word
are just a little cross and out of temper. What they think they object
to is artificialities of any kind, and so to get rid of their spleen
they refer to petty artificialities. The device is a common one, and as
brilliant as it is futile. Rude adjectives are like blank cartridge. They impress
a vain people, including the birds of the air, but they do no
execution. At the same time, let me admit that I deeply sympathize with
the irritated users of the impolite phrase petty artificialities, for it does at any
rate show a divine discontent. It does prove a high dissatisfaction with conditions which,
at best are not the final expression of the eternal purpose. It does
make for a sort of crude and churlish righteousness. I well know that feeling
which induces one to spit out savagely the phrase petty artificialities of modern life.
One has it usually either on getting up or on going to bed. What
a petty artificial business it is? Getting up even for a male shaving?
Why shave? And then going to a draw and choosing a necktie? Fancy
an immortal soul? Fancy a fragment of the eternal and indestructible energy which exists
from everlasting to everlasting, deliberately expending its activity on the choice of a necktie.
Why a necktie? Then one goes downstairs and exchanges banal phrases with other
immortals, And one can't start breakfast immediately because some sleep immortal is late?
Why babble? Why wait? Why not say straight out? Go to their
deuce? All of you here, it's nearly ten o'clock, and me anxious
to begin living the higher life at once instead of fiddling around in petty artificialities.
Shut up, every one of you. Give me my bacon instantly,
and let me gobble it down quick and be off. I'm sick of your
ceremonies. This would at any rate not be artificial. It would save time.
And if a similar policy were strictly applied through the day, one could
retire to a well earned repose in the full assurance that the day had been
simplified. The time for living the higher life, the time for pushing forward
those vast schemes of self improvement which we all cherish, would decidedly have been
increased. One would not have that maddening feeling which one so frequently does have
when the shades of night are falling fast, that the day had been frittered
away. And yet, and yet, I gravely doubt whether this wholesale massacre
of those poor petty artificialities would bring us appreciably nearer the millennium. For there
is one thing, and a thing of fundamental importance which the revolutionists against petty
artificialities always fail to appreciate, and that is the necessity and the value of
convention. I cannot in a paragraph deal effectively with this most difficult and complex
question. I can only point the reader to analogous phenomena in the arts.
All the arts are a conventionalization, an ordering of nature. Even in a
garden, you put the plants in romes, and you subordinate the well being
of one to the general well being. The sole difference between a garden and
the wild woods is a petty artificiality. In writing a sonnet actually cramped the
profoundest emotional conceptions into a length and a number of lines and a jingling of
like sounds arbitrarily fixed beforehand. Wordsworth's The World Is Too Much with Us is
a solid, horrid mass of petty artificiality. Why couldn't the fellows say what
he meant and have done with it instead of making powers rhyme with hours and
worrying himself to use exactly one hundred and forty syllables as for music. The
amount of time that must have been devoted to petty artificiality in the construction of
an affair like Bach's Cha Khan is simply staggering. Then look at pictures absurdly
confined in frames, with their ingenious contrasts of light and shade and mass against
mass. Nothing but petty artificiality. In other words, nothing but form,
form, which is the basis of all beauty, whether material or otherwise.
Now what form is in art? Conventions petty artificialities are in life. Just
as you can have too much form in art, so you can have too
much convention in life. But no art that is not planned in form is
worth consideration, and no life that is not planned in convention can ever be
satisfactory. Convention is not the essence of life, but it is the protecting
garment and preservative of life, and it is also one very valuable means by
which life can express itself. It is largely symbolic, and symbols, while
being expressive, are also great time savers of petty artificialities should think of this.
Take the striking instance of that pettiest artificiality leaving cards well search as after
the real what would you substitute for it? If you dropped it and substituted
nothing, the result would tend towards a loosening of the bonds of society,
and it would tend towards the diminution of the number of your friends. And
if you dropped it and tried to substitute something less artificial and more real,
you would accomplish no more than you accomplished with cards. You would inconvenience everybody
and waste a good deal of your own time. I cannot too strongly insist
that the basis of convention is a symbolism primarily meant to display regard for the
feelings of other people. If you do not display regard for the feelings of
other people, you may as well go live on herbs in the desert.
And if you are to display such a regard, you cannot do it more
expeditiously at a smaller outlay of time and brains than via adopting the code of
convention now generally practiced. It comes to this that you cannot have all the
advantages of living in the desert while you are living in a society. It
would be delightful for you if you could, but you can't. There are
two further reasons for the continuance of conventionality, and one is the mysterious but
indisputable fact that the full beauty of an activity is never brought out until it
is subjected to discipline and strict ordering and nice balancing. A life without petty
artificiality would be the life of a tiger in the forest, a beautiful life,
perhaps a life of burning bright, but not reaching the highest ideal of
beauty. Laws and rules, forms and ceremonies are good in themselves from a
merely esthetic point of view, apart from their social value and necessity. And
the other reason is that one cannot always be at the full strain of self
improvement and evolutionary progress and generally beating the big drum. Human nature will not
stand it. There is, if we will only be patient ample time for
the artificial as well as for the real. Those people who think that there
isn't ought to return to school and learn arithmetic. Supposing that all petty artificialities
were suddenly swept away and we were able to show our regard and consideration for
our fellow creatures by the swift processes of thought alone, we should find ourselves
with a terrible lot of time hanging heavy on our hands. We can no
more spend all our waking hours in consciously striving towards higher things than we can
dine exclusively off jam what frightful prigs we should become if we had nothing to
do but cultivate our noblest faculties. I beg the despisers of artificiality to reflect
upon these observations, however incomplete these observations may be, and to consider whether
they would be quite content if they got what they are crying out for.
End of Chapter eight, Chapter nine of Mental Efficiency. This LibriVox recording is
in the public domain. Recording by Ruth Golding. Mental Efficiency and Other Hints
to Men and Women by Arnold Bennett, Chapter nine, The Secret of Content.
I have said, lightly apropos of the conclusion arrived at by several correspondents
and by myself, that the cry for the simple life was merely a new
form of the old cry for happiness, that I would explain what it was
that made life worth living For me. The word has gone forth, and
I must endeavor to redeem my promise. But I do so with qualms and
with diffidence. First, there is the natural instinct against speaking of that which
is in the core of one's mind. Second, there is the fear,
nearly amounting to certainty, of being misunderstood or not comprehended at all. And
third, there is the absurd insufficiency of space. However, for me spiritual
content, I will not use the word happiness, which implies too much springs
essentially from no mental or physical facts. It springs from the spiritual fact that
there is something higher in man than the mind, and that that something can
control the mind. Call that something the soul, or what you will.
My sense of security amid the collisions of existence lies in the firm consciousness that,
just as my body is the servant of my mind, so is my
mind the servant of me. An unruly servant, but a servant, and
possibly getting less unruly every day. Often have I said to that restive brain,
Now, o mind, sole means of communication between the divine Me and
all external phenomena. You are not a free agent. You are a subordinate.
You are nothing but a piece of machinery and a baymy you shall.
The mind can only be conquered by regular meditation, by deciding beforehand what direction
its activity ought to take, and insisting that its activity takes that direction.
Also by never leaving it idle, undirected, masterless to play at random like
a child in the streets. After dark. This is extremely difficult, but
it can be done, and it is marvelously well worth doing. The fault
of the epoch is the absence of meditativeness. A sagacious man will strive to
correct in himself the faults of his epoch. In some deep ways. The
twelfth century had advantages over the twentieth. It practiced meditation. The twentieth does.
Sando exercises meditation. I speak only for myself, is the least dispensable
of the day's doings. What do I force my mind to meditate upon?
Upon various things, but chiefly upon one, namely that force energy life.
The incomprehensible has many names, is indestructible, and that, in the last
analysis, there is only one single unique force energy life. Science is gradually
reducing all elements to one element. Science is making it increasingly difficult to conceive
matter apart from spirit. Everything lives. Even my razor gets tired, and
the fatigue of my razor is no more nor less explicable than my fatigue.
After a passage of arms with my mind, the force in it and in
me has been transformed, not lost. All force is the same force.
Science just now has a tendency to call it electricity. But I am indifferent
to such baptisms. The same force pervades my razor my cow in my field,
and the central me which dominates my mind, the same force in different
stages of evolution, and that force persists for ever. In such paths.
Do I compel my mind to walk daily daily? It has to recognize that
the mysterious ego controlling it is a part of that divine force which exists from
everlasting to everlasting, and which, in its ultimate atoms nothing can harm.
By such a course of training, even the mind, the coarse, practical
mind, at last, perceives that worldly accidents don't count. But you will
exclaim this is nothing but the immortality of the soul over again. Well,
in a slightly more abstract form, it is. I never said I had
discovered anything new. I do not permit myself to be dogmatic about the persistence
of personality, or even of individuality after death. But in basing my physical
and mental life on the assumption that there is something in me which is indestructible
and essentially changeless, I go no further than science points. Yes, if
it gives you pleasure, let us call it the immortality of the soul.
If I miss my train, or my tailor disgraces himself, or I lose
that earthly manifestation of force that happens to be dearest to me, I say
to my mind, mind, concentrate your powers upon the full realization of the
fact that I your master, am immortal and beyond the reach of accidents,
and my mind, knowing by this time that I am a hard master,
obediently does so. Am I a portion of the infinite force that existed billions
of years ago, and which will exist billions of years Hence going to allow
myself to be worried by any terrestrial, physical or mental event, I am
not As for the vicissitudes of my body, that servant of my servant,
it had better keep its place and not make too much fuss. Not that
any fuss occurring in either of these outward envelopes of the eternal me could really
disturb me. The eternal is calm. It has the best reason for being
so, So you say to yourselves. Here is a man in a penny
weekly paper advocating daily meditation upon the immortality of the soul as a cure for
discontent and unhappiness a strange phenomenon. That it should be strange is an indictment
of the epoch. My only reply to you is this, try it.
Of course, I freely grant that such meditation, while it casts out fear,
slowly kills desire and makes for a certain high indifference, and that the
extinguishing of desire with an accompanying indifference, be it high or low, is
bad for youth. But I am not a use, and to day I
am writing for those who have tasted disillusion, which youth has not yet.
I would not have you believe that I scorn the brief joy of this world.
My attitude towards them would fain be that of Socrates, as stated by
the incomparable Marcus Aurelius. He knew how to lack and how to enjoy those
things in the lack whereof most men show themselves weak and in the fruition intemperate.
Besides commanding my mind to dwell upon the indestructibly and final omnipotence of the
force which is me, I command it to dwell upon the logical consequence of
that unity of force, which science is now beginning to teach the same essential
force that is me is also un says the Indian proverb, I met a
hundred men on the road to Delhi, and they were all my brothers.
Yes, and they were all my twin brothers, if I may so express
it, and a thousand times closer to me even than the common conception of
twin brothers. We are all of us the same in essence. What separates
us is merely differences in our respective stages of evolution. Constant reflection upon this
fact must produce that universal sympathy which alone can produce a positive content. It
must do away with such ridiculous feelings as blame, irritation, anger, resentment.
It must establish in the mind an all embracing tolerance, until a man
can look upon the drunkard in his drunkenness, and upon the wife beater in
his brutality, with pure and calm compassion, Until his heart goes out instinctively
to every other manifestation of the unique force, until he is surcharged with an
eager and unconquerable benevolence towards everything that lives, until he has utterly abandoned the
presumptuous practice of judging and condemning, He will never attain real content. Ah,
you exclaim again, he has nothing newer to tell us than that the
greatest of these is charity. I have not. It may strike you as
excessively funny, but I have discovered nothing newer than that. I merely remind
you of it. Thus it is twins on the Road to Delhi, by
continual meditation upon the indestructibility of force, that I try to cultivate calm,
and by continual meditation upon the oneness of force, that I tried to cultivate
charity, being fully convinced that in calmness and in charity lies the secret of
a placid, if no not ecstatic happiness. It is often said that no
thinking person can be happy in this world. My view is that the more
a man thinks, the more happy he is likely to be. I have
spoken. I am overwhelmingly aware that I have spoken crudely, abruptly, inadequately,
confusedly. End of Chapter nine and end of Mental Efficiency and Other Hints
to Men and Women by Arnold Bennett, recording by Rus Golding