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MENTAL EFFICIENCY
+--------------------------------------------+
| BY ARNOLD BENNETT |
| |
| _Novels_ |
| |
| THE OLD WIVES' TALE |
| HELEN WITH THE HIGH HAND |
| THE BOOK OF CARLOTTA |
| BURIED ALIVE |
| A GREAT MAN |
| LEONORA |
| WHOM GOD HATH JOINED |
| A MAN FROM THE NORTH |
| ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS |
| THE GLIMPSE |
| |
| _Pocket Philosophies_ |
| |
| HOW TO LIVE ON 24 HOURS A DAY |
| THE HUMAN MACHINE |
| LITERARY TASTE |
| MENTAL EFFICIENCY |
| |
| _Miscellaneous_ |
| |
| CUPID AND COMMONSENSE: A Play |
| WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS: A Play |
| THE TRUTH ABOUT AN AUTHOR |
| THE FEAST OF ST. FRIEND |
| |
| GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY |
| NEW YORK |
+--------------------------------------------+
MENTAL EFFICIENCY
AND OTHER HINTS
TO
MEN AND WOMEN
BY
ARNOLD BENNETT
Author of "How to Live on 24 Hours a Day"
"The Old Wives' Tale," etc.
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Copyright, 1911
By George H. Doran Company
CONTENTS
Page
I. Mental Efficiency 7
The Appeal 7
The Replies 13
The Cure 19
Mental Calisthenics 24
II. Expressing One's Individuality 32
III. Breaking with the Past 39
IV. Settling Down in Life 45
V. Marriage 53
The Duty of It 53
The Adventure of It 59
The Two Ways of It 65
VI. Books 72
The Physical Side 72
The Philosophy of Book Buying 78
VII. Success 84
Candid Remarks 84
The Successful and the Unsuccessful 91
The Inwardness of Success 97
VIII. The Petty Artificialities 104
IX. The Secret of Content 112
I
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 duties with the mighty
precision of a 60 h.p. motor-car that never breaks down. I saw a book
the other day written by one of these specialists, to show how perfect
health could be attained by devoting a quarter of an hour a day to
certain exercises. The advertisements multiply and increase in size.
They cost a great deal of money. Therefore they must bring in a great
deal of business. Therefore vast numbers of people must be worried
about the non-efficiency of their bodies, and on the way to achieve
efficiency. In our more modest British fashion, we have the same
phenomenon in England. And it is growing. Our muscles are growing
also. Surprise a man in his bedroom of a morning, and you will find
him lying on his back on the floor, or standing on his head, or
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 charta_ of
physical efficiency) daily after shaving. In three weeks my collars
would not meet round my prize-fighter's neck; my hosier reaped immense
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, etc. A man of
sedentary occupation goes for a very long walk on Easter Monday, and
in the evening is so exhausted that he can scarcely eat. He wakes up
to the inefficiency of his body, caused by his neglect of it, and he
is so shocked that he determines on remedial measures. Either he 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 tranquilly
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 vapour from the more cultivated
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 Pleiades, they cannot even point to the Pleiades 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
splendours of knowledge and sensation that await it! But the regret is
not poignant enough. They do nothing. They go on doing nothing. It is
as though they passed for ever along the length of an endless table
filled with delicacies, and could not stretch out a hand to seize. Do
I exaggerate? Is there not deep in the consciousness of most of us a
mournful feeling that our minds are like the liver of the
advertisement--sluggish, and that for the sluggishness of our minds
there is the excuse neither of incompetence, nor of 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 reproach of having
lived and died without ever really having known anything about
anything! It is not the absence of desire that prevents them. It is,
first, the absence of will-power--not the will to begin, but the will
to continue; and, second, a mental apparatus which is out of
condition, "puffy," "weedy," through sheer neglect. The remedy, then,
divides itself into two parts, the cultivation of will-power, and the
getting into condition of the mental apparatus. And these two branches
of the cure must be worked concurrently.
I am sure that the considerations which I have presented to 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 favour if those readers who have
interested themselves in the question will communicate to me at once
the result of their experience, whatever its outcome. I will make such
use as I can of the letters I receive, and afterwards I 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
anybody. The Sandow 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 Sandow 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
hypnotised into mental efficiency. After advocating the establishment
of "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," this hypnotist proceeds: "Between the academician, whose
specialty 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 somnambules on the music-hall stage, you are allowing to go
unrecognized one of the most potent factors of mental development." Am
I? I have not the least idea what this gentleman means, but I can
assure him that he is wrong. I can make more sense out of the remarks
of another correspondent who, utterly despising the things of the
mind, compares a certain class of young men to "a halfpenny bloater
with the roe out," and asserts that he himself "got out of the groove"
by dint of having to unload ten tons of coal in three hours and a half
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
concentration." Perhaps arithmetic might be an effective cure, but it
is not a practical cure, because no one, or scarcely any one, would
practise it. I cannot imagine the plain man who, having a couple of
hours to spare of a night, and having also the sincere desire but not
the will-power to improve his taste and knowledge, would deliberately
sit down and work sums by way of preliminary mental calisthenics. As
Ibsen's puppet said: "People don't do these things." Why do they not?
The answer is: Simply because they won't; simply because human nature
will not run to it. "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 colour
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 programme
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 fulfil, morning after morning, or evening after evening,
through months and years--this is the very dickens, and there is not
one of my readers that will not agree with me. Yet such is the elastic
quality of human nature that most of my correspondents are quite ready
to ignore the sad fact and to demand at once: "what shall we will?
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 strength 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 programme. You are
something of an expert in physical exercises--you would be ashamed
not to be, in these physical days--and so you would never attempt a
hurdle race or an uninterrupted hour's club-whirling without some
preparation. The analogy between the body and the mind ought to have
struck you. _This_ time, please do not form an elaborate programme. Do
not form any programme. Simply content yourself with a preliminary
canter, a ridiculously easy preliminary canter. For example (and I
give this merely as an example), you might say to yourself: "Within
one month from this date I 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 programme to
extend over three months. And you will have acquired some general
principles by the light of which to construct the programme. 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 will-power of the ironic, superior smile of friends.
Whenever a man "turns over a new leaf" he has this inane giggle to
face. The drunkard may be less ashamed of getting drunk than of
breaking to a crony the news that he has signed the pledge. Strange,
but true! And human nature must be counted with. Of course, on a few
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 born.
The third possible cause was that you did not rearrange your day.
Idler and time-waster 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, arrange for
an hour. A hundred per cent. 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 rites of the cult of the body might be
abbreviated. I recently spent a week-end 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 prefatory. 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 haw, and say, as I
have already remarked, that memory isn't everything; and, in short, he
won't join the memory class, partly from indolence, I grant, but more
from false shame. (Is not this true?) He will even hesitate about
learning things by heart. Yet there are few mental exercises better
than learning great poetry or prose by heart. Twenty lines a week for
six months: what a "cure" for debility! The chief, but not the only,
merit of learning by heart as an exercise is that it compels the mind
to concentrate. And the most important preliminary to self-development
is the faculty of 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 favour of the
exercise of writing. Indeed, I say to myself every morning that if
there is one exercise in the world which I hate, it is the exercise of
writing. But I must assert that in my opinion the exercise of writing
is an indispensable part of any genuine effort towards mental
efficiency. I don't care much what you write, so long as you 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 Mr. Arthur Christopher Benson says he does. This is one of
the least good ways. Diaries, save in experienced hands like those of
Mr. Benson, are apt to get themselves done with the very minimum of
mental effort. They also tend to an exaggeration of egotism, and if
they are left lying about they tend to strife. Further, one never
knows when one may not be 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
Mrs. ----, whom one took into 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, etc. A diary
is
All I, I, I, I, itself I
(to quote a line of the transcendental poetry of Mary Baker G. Eddy).
A journal is the large spectacle of life. 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 connexion I cannot do better than quote an
admirable letter which I have received from a correspondent who wishes
to be known only as "An Oxford Lecturer." The italics (except the
last) are mine, not his. He says: "Till a man has got his physical
brain completely under his control--_suppressing its too-great
receptivity, its tendencies to reproduce idly the thoughts of others,
and to be swayed by every passing gust of emotion_--I hold that he
cannot do a tenth part of the work that he would then be able to
perform with little or no effort. Moreover, work apart, he has not
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." 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 under
way, and gained a little confidence in his strength of purpose, and
acquired the skill to define his thoughts sufficiently to write them
down--then it would be time enough, in my view, to undertake what "An
Oxford Lecturer" suggests. By the way, he highly recommends Mrs. Annie
Besant's book, _Thought Power: Its Control and Culture_. He says that
it treats the subject with scientific clearness, and gives a practical
method of training the mind, I endorse the latter part of the
statement.
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 of
the relativity of that subject to other subjects, implies an enormous
self-development. With this hint I conclude.
II
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 not. You would be apt to say to yourself, as
guests do when disturbed in drawing-rooms by other guests: "Who's this
chap? Seems rather queer, I hope he won't be a bore." And your first
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, colour, and movement, what may it not be
with the vague complex effect of the mental and moral individuality?
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 breast of your mother. The only
difference between your mother and another person is that she takes
you as you are, and loves you for what you are. She isn't blind: do
not imagine it.
The marvel is, not that people are such bad judges of character, but
that they are such good judges, especially of what I may call
fundamental character. The wiliest person cannot for ever conceal his
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
reservations in their disfavour--unless, of course, you happen to be a
schoolgirl gushing over like a fountain with enthusiasm. It is well,
when one is judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with
the same godlike and superior impartiality. It is well to grasp the
fact that you are going through life under the scrutiny of a band of
acquaintances who are subject to very few illusions about you, whose
views of you are, indeed, apt to be harsh and even cruel. Above all
it is 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: "I must have been pretty blatant
then. I can see how I must have exasperated 'em. And yet I hadn't the
faintest notion of it at the time. My intentions were of the best.
Only I didn't know enough." And one recollects some particularly crude
action, and kicks one's self.... Yes, that is all very well; and the
enlightenment which has come with increasing age is exceedingly
satisfactory. But you are forty now. What shall you be saying of
yourself at fifty? Such reflections foster humility, and they foster
also a reluctance, which it is impossible to praise too highly, to
tread on other people's toes.
A moment ago I used the phrase "fundamental character." It is a
reminiscence of Stevenson's phrase "fundamental decency." And it is
the final test by which one judges one's friends. "After all, he's a
decent fellow." We must be able to use that formula concerning our
friends. Kindliness of heart is not the greatest of human
qualities--and its general effect on the progress of the world is not
entirely beneficent--but it is the greatest of human qualities in
friendship. It is the least dispensable quality. We come back to it
with relief from more brilliant qualities. And it has the great
advantage of always going with a broad mind. Narrow-minded people are
never kind-hearted. You may be inclined to dispute this statement:
please think it over; I am inclined to uphold it.
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
feat 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 absentmindedness I have strayed into the pulpit.
I descend.
III
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 pretence. The
individual who scoffs at New Year's Resolutions resembles the woman
who says she doesn't look under the bed at nights; the truth is not in
him, and in the very moment of his lying, could his cranium suddenly
become transparent, we should see 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 upon the tendency
to live in the future, so I would animadvert upon the tendency to live
in the past. Because all around me I see men carefully tying
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 sepulchres--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, "Things are what
they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be. Why,
then, attempt to deceive ourselves"--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 honouring,
but dishonouring, 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 logic! This
disposition to an irrational Toryism is curiously discoverable in
advanced Radicals, and it will show itself in the veriest trifles. I
remember such a man whose wife objected to his form of hat (not that I
would 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 marched him out of the shop. "There!" she said,
"you see how impossible it is." This is a parable. And I will not
insult your intelligence by applying it.
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 per cent. of all the vows
we have ever made. "Do not accustom yourself to enchain your
_volatility_ with vows.... Take this warning; it is of great
importance." (The wisdom is Johnson's, but I flatter myself on the
italics.)
IV
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 candour by a woman. I had to offer myself a
burnt sacrifice to her curiosity, and I did it, bravely but not
unflinchingly. And then afterwards the fact of my age remained with
me, worried me, obsessed me. I saw more clearly than ever before that
age was telling on me. I could not be blind to the deliberation of my
movements in climbing stairs and in dressing. Once upon a time the
majority of persons I met in the street seemed much older than myself.
It is different now. The change has come unperceived. There is a
generation younger than mine that smokes cigars and falls in love.
Astounding! Once I could play left-wing forward for an hour and a half
without dropping down dead. Once I could swim a hundred and fifty feet
submerged at the bottom of a swimming-bath. 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 twopence what any other
philosopher has replied to my question. In this, each man must be his
own philosopher. There is an instinct in the profound egoism of human
nature which prevents us from accepting such ready-made answers. What
is it to us what Plato thought? Nothing. And thus the question remains
ever new, and ever unanswered, and ever of dramatic interest. The
singular, the highly singular thing is--and here I arrive at my
point--that so few people put the question to themselves in time, that
so many put it too late, or even die without putting it.