Few people--in fact, very few people indeed--ever realize the
priceless value of the ancient counsel: "Know thyself." It seems so
trite, so ordinary. It seems so easy to acquire, this knowledge. Does
not every one possess it? Can it not be got by simply sitting down in
a chair and yielding to a mood? And yet this knowledge is just about
as difficult to acquire as a knowledge of Chinese. Certainly nine
hundred and ninety-nine people out of a thousand reach the age of
sixty before getting the rudiments of it. The majority of us die in
almost complete ignorance of it. And none may be said to master it in
all its exciting branches. Why, you can choose any of your
friends--the wisest of them--and instantly tell him something
glaringly obvious about his own character and actions--and be rewarded
for your trouble by an indignantly sincere denial! You had noticed it;
all his friends had noticed it. But he had not noticed it. Far from
having noticed it, he is convinced that it exists only in your
malicious imagination. For example, go to a friend whose sense of
humour is notoriously imperfect, and say gently to him: "Your sense of
humour is imperfect, my friend," and see how he will receive the
information! So much for the rarity of self-knowledge.
Self-knowledge is difficult because it demands intellectual honesty.
It demands that one shall not blink the facts, that one shall not hide
one's head in the sand, and that one shall not be afraid of anything
that one may happen to see in looking round. It is rare because it
demands that one shall always be able to distinguish between the man
one thinks one ought to be and the man one actually is. And it is rare
because it demands impartial detachment and a certain quality of fine
shamelessness--the shamelessness which confesses openly to oneself and
finds a legitimate pleasure in confessing. By way of compensation for
its difficulty, the pursuit of self-knowledge happens to be one of the
most entrancing of all pursuits, as those who have seriously practised
it are well aware. Its interest is inexhaustible and grows steadily.
Unhappily, the Anglo-Saxon racial temperament is inimical to it. The
Latins like it better. To feel its charm one should listen to a
highly-cultivated Frenchman analysing himself for the benefit of an
intimate companion. Still, even Anglo-Saxons may try it with
advantage.
The branch of self-knowledge which is particularly required for the
solution of the immediate case of the plain man now under
consideration is not a very hard one. It does not involve the
recognition of crimes or even of grave faults. It is simply the
knowledge of what interests him and what bores him.
Let him enter upon the first section of it with candour. Let him be
himself. And let him be himself without shame. Let him ever remember
that it is not a sin to be bored by what interests others, or to be
interested in what bores others. Let him in this private inquiry give
his natural instincts free play, for it is precisely the gradual
suppression of his natural instincts which has brought him to his
present pass. At first he will probably murmur in a fatigued voice
that he cannot think of anything at all that interests him. Then let
him dig down among his buried instincts. Let him recall his bright
past of dreams, before he had become a victim imprisoned in the
eternal groove. Everybody has, or has had, a secret desire, a hidden
leaning. Let him discover what his is, or was--gardening, philosophy,
reading, travel, billiards, raising animals, training animals, killing
animals, yachting, collecting pictures or postage-stamps or autographs
or snuff-boxes or scalps, astronomy, kite-flying, house-furnishing,
foreign languages, cards, swimming, diary-keeping, the stage,
politics, carpentry, riding or driving, music, staying up late,
getting up early, tree-planting, tree-felling, town-planning, amateur
soldiering, statics, entomology, botany, elocution, children-fancying,
cigar-fancying, wife-fancying, placid domestic evenings, conjuring,
bacteriology, thought-reading, mechanics, geology, sketching,
bell-ringing, theosophy, his own soul, even golf....
I mention a few of the ten million directions in which his secret
desire may point or have pointed. I have probably not mentioned the
right direction. But he can find it. He can perhaps find several right
directions without too much trouble.
And now he says:
"I suppose you mean me to 'take up' one of these things?"
I do, seeing that he has hitherto neglected so clear a duty. If he had
attended to it earlier, and with perseverance he would not be in the
humiliating situation of exclaiming bitterly that he has no pleasure
in life.
"But," he resists, "you know perfectly well that I have no time!"
To which I am obliged to make reply:
"My dear sir, it is not your wife you are talking to. Kindly be honest
with me."
I admit that his business is very exhausting and exigent. For the sake
of argument I will grant that he cannot safely give it an instant's
less time than he is now giving it. But even so his business does not
absorb at the outside more than seventy hours of the hundred and ten
hours during which he is wide awake each week. The rest of the time he
spends either in performing necessary acts in a tedious way or in
performing acts which are not only tedious to him, but utterly
unnecessary (for his own hypothesis is that he gets no pleasure out of
life)--visiting, dinner-giving, cards, newspaper-reading, placid
domestic evenings, evenings out, bar-lounging, sitting aimlessly
around, dandifying himself, week-ending, theatres, classical concerts,
literature, suburban train-travelling, staying up late, being in the
swim, even golf. In whatever manner he is whittling away his leisure,
it is the wrong manner, for the sole reason that it bores him.
Moreover, all whittling of leisure is a mistake. Leisure, like work,
should be organized, and it should be organized in large pieces.
The proper course clearly is to substitute acts which promise to be
interesting for acts which have proved themselves to produce nothing
but tedium, and to carry out the change with brains, in a business
spirit. And the first essential is to recognize that something has
definitely to go by the board.
He protests:
"But I do only the usual things--what everybody else does! And then
it's time to go to bed."
The case, however, is his case, not everybody else's case. Why should
he submit to everlasting boredom for the mere sake of acting like
everybody else?
He continues in the same strain:
"But you are asking me to change my whole life--at my age!"
Nothing of the sort! I am only suggesting that he should begin to
live.
And then finally he cries:
"It's too drastic. I haven't the pluck!"
Now we are coming to the real point.