and the pure earnestness of it makes it almost desecration to touch
it. It is to keep a private note-book with columns for the days of the
week, and a list of virtues, with spaces against each for marks. This,
with many stern rules for preface, is stored away in a secret place,
and from time to time, at nightfall, the soul is arraigned before it
as before a private judgment bar.
This living by code was Franklin's method; and I suppose thousands
more could tell how they had hung up in their bedrooms, or hid in
locked-fast drawers, the rules which one solemn day they drew up to
shape their lives.
This method is not erroneous, only somehow its success is poor. You
bear me witness that it fails. And it fails generally for very
matter-of-fact reasons--most likely because one day we forget the
rules.
All these methods that have been named--the self-sufficient method,
the self-crucifixion method, the mimetic method, and the diary
method--are perfectly human, perfectly natural, perfectly ignorant,
and as they stand perfectly inadequate. It is not argued, I repeat,
that they must be abandoned. Their harm is rather that they distract
attention from the true working method, and secure a fair result at
the expense of the perfect one. What that perfect method is we shall
now go on to ask.