II

A few hours later, however, I spoke to the young creature as follows:

‘It seems to me that you may have been running your delightful head

up against an impossible proposition. Perhaps you have been hoping to

_create_ energy in yourself. Now, you cannot create energy, either

in yourself or elsewhere. Nobody can. You can only set energy free,

loosen it, transform it, direct it.

‘You may take a ton of coal and warm a house with it. The heat-energy

of the coal is transformed, set free, and directed to a certain

purpose. But if you try to warm the house by means of open coal fires

in old-fashioned fire-grates, you will warm the chimneys and some of

the air above the chimneys--and yet the rooms of the house will not be

appreciably warmer than they were when you began. On the other hand,

you may take a ton of exactly the same kind of coal and by means of

a steam-heating system in the cellar warm the rooms of the house to

such an extent that you have to wear your summer clothes in the depth

of winter. The steam-heating system, however, has not increased the

heat-energy of the coal; it has merely set free, utilised, and directed

the heat-energy of the coal in a common-sense--that is to say, a

scientific--manner. No amount of common sense and ingenuity will get

as much heat-energy out of half a ton as out of a ton of coal. You may

devise the most marvellous steam-heating system that exists on this

side of the grave, but if there is no fuel in the furnace, or if there

is in the furnace a quantity of coal inadequate to the size of the

house, the house will never be comfortable except for polar bears and

lovers. The available coal is the prime factor.

‘Well, an individual is born with a certain amount of energy--and

no more. Just as you cannot pour five quarts out of a gallon (as a

rule, you cannot pour even four quarts), so you cannot extract from

that individual more energy than there is in him. And, what is more

important, you cannot put additional quantities of energy into him. You

may sometimes seem to be putting energy into him, but you are not; you

are simply setting his original energy free, applying a match to the

coal or fanning the fire. An individual is an island on whose rocky

shores no ship can ever land that most mysterious commodity--energy.

You may transfuse blood, but not the inexplicable force that makes the

heart beat and defies circumstance.

‘Some individuals appear to lack energy, when, as a fact, they are full

of energy which is merely dormant, waiting for the match, or waiting

for direction. Other individuals appear to lack energy, and, in fact,

do lack energy. And you cannot supply their need any more than you can

stop their hair from growing.

‘No, young lady; it is useless to interrupt me by asking me to define

what I mean by the word “energy.” To define some words is to cripple

them. You know well enough what I mean by energy. I mean the most

fundamental thing in you.

‘Being a reasonable woman, you admit this--and then go on to demand,

first, how you can be quite sure whether you have been born with a

large or medium or a small quantity of energy, and, second, how you can

be quite sure that you have not lots of energy lying dormant within

you. You cannot be quite sure of anything. This is not a perfect world.

‘But, as regards the second part of your question, you can be

reasonably sure after a certain number of years--I will not suggest

how many--that energy is not lying dormant within you, awaiting the

match. It is impossible for anybody indefinitely to continue to wander

in a world full of lighted matches without one day encountering the

particular match that will set fire to _his_ fuel. And beware of

that match, for sometimes the result of the contact is an explosion

which shatters everything in the vicinity. If you have dormant energy,

one day it will wake up and worry you, and you will know it is there.

‘As regards the first part of your question, the usual index of the

amount of energy possessed by an individual is the intensity of the

desires of that individual. It is desire that uses energy. Strong

desires generally betoken much energy, and they are definite desires.

Without desires, energy is rendered futile. Nobody will consume energy

in action unless he desires to perform the action, either for itself or

as a means to a desired end.

‘But now you complain that I am once more avoiding your case. You

assert that you have desires without the corresponding energy or

corresponding will to put them into execution. I doubt it. I do not

admit it. You must not confuse vague, general aspirations with desire.

A real desire is definite, concrete. If you have a real desire, you

know what you want. You cannot merely want--you are bound to want

something.

‘Further, to want something only at intervals, when the mind is

otherwise unoccupied, is no proof of a real desire; it amounts to

nothing more than a sweet, sad diversion, a spiritual pastime, a simple

and pleasant way of making yourself believe that you are a serious

person. The desire which indicates great energy is always there,

worrying. It is an obsession; it is a nuisance; it is a whip and a

scorpion; it has no mercy.

‘And individuals having immense energy have commonly been actuated by

a single paramount desire, which monopolises and canalises all their

force. The pity is that these individuals have become the special

symbols of success. When they have achieved their single paramount

desire, they are said to have “got on,” to have succeeded. And every

one points an admiring finger at them and cries, “This is success in

life!” And the majority of books about success in life deal with this

particular brand of success, and assume that it is the only brand

of success worth a bilberry, and exhort all people to imitate the

notorious exemplars of the art of “getting on” and in that narrow

sense. Which is absurd.

‘And now, perhaps, we both feel that I am at last approaching your case.

‘But I do not wish to be personal. Let us take the case of Mr. Flack,

who died last week, unknown. His discerning friends said of him:

“He had a wonderful financial gift. If he’d concentrated on it, he

might have rivalled Harriman. But he wouldn’t concentrate either on

that or on anything else. He was interested in too many different

subjects--books, pictures, music, travel, physical science, love,

economics--in fact, everything interested him, and he was always

interested in something. He was too all-round. He frittered his

energy away, and wasted enormous quantities of time. And so he never

succeeded.”

‘Such was the verdict of some of Flack’s admirers. But it occurs to me

that Flack may have succeeded after all. Certainly he did not succeed

in being a financial magnate. But he succeeded in being interested

in a large number of things, and therefore in having a wide mind. He

succeeded in being always interested. And he succeeded in not being

lop-sided, which men of one supreme desire as a rule are. (Men who are

successful in the narrow sense generally pay a fearful price for their

success.) His friends regret that he wasted his time, but really, if he

accomplished all that he admittedly did accomplish, he couldn’t have

wasted a very great deal of time.

‘Quite possibly the late Mr. Flack used to wake up in the night and

curse himself because he could not concentrate, and because he could

not stick to one thing, and because he wasted his time, and because,

with all his gifts, he did not materially progress, and because he made

no impression on the great public. Quite possibly, in moments of gloom,

he had regrets about the dissipation of his energy. But he could not

honestly have regarded himself as a failure.

‘I should like to know why it is necessarily more righteous to confine

one’s energy to a single direction than to let it spread out in various

directions. It is not more righteous. If a man has one imperious

desire, his righteousness is to satisfy it fully. But if a man has many

mild, equal desires, _his_ righteousness is to satisfy all of them

as reasonably well as circumstances permit. And I see no reason why

one should be deemed more successful than the other.

‘Yes, young woman; I know what your excellent modesty is going to

say. It is going to say that the late Mr. Flack did show energy,

though he “frittered it away,” and that you do not show energy.

Now, I do not want to defend you against yourself (for possibly

you enjoy denouncing yourself and proving that you are worthless).

Nevertheless, I would point out that energy is often used in ways quite

unsuspected. Energy is a very various thing. Some people use energy

in arranging time-tables and sticking to them, and in clenching their

teeth and making terrific resolves and executing them, and in never

wasting a moment, and in climbing--climbing. And this is all very

laudable. But energy can be used in other ways--in contemplation, in

self-understanding, in understanding other people, in pleasing other

people, in appreciating the world, in lessening the friction of life.

‘I have personally come across persons--especially women--who were

idle, who were mentally inefficient, who made no material contribution

to the enterprise of remaining alive, but whose mere manner of

existence was such that I would say to them in my heart, “It is enough

for me that you exist.”

‘We have all of us come across such persons. And the world would be a

markedly inferior sort of place if they did not exist exactly as they

are.

‘You, dear young woman, may or may not be one of these. I cannot

decide. But, anyhow, if you are not one of the hard-striving, resolute,

persevering, teeth-clenching, totally efficient, one-ideaed, ambitious

species, you need not despair.

‘Imagine what the world would be like if we were all ruthlessly

set on “succeeding”! It would be like a scene of carnage. And it is

conceivable that you are, in fact, much more efficient than you think,

and that you are wasting much less time than you think, and that you

are employing much more energy than you think. You complained that

you lacked resolution, which means that you lacked one steady desire.

But perhaps your steady desire and resolution are so instinctive, so

profoundly a part of you, that they function without being noticed.

And if you do indeed lack one steady desire and the energy firmly to

resolve--well, you just do. And you will have to be content with your

lot. Why envy others? An over-mastering desire and its accompanying

energy are not necessarily to be envied.

‘A dangerous doctrine, you say. You say that I am leaving the door open

to sloth and slackness and other evils. You say that I am finding an

excuse for every unserious person under the sun. Perhaps so; but what

I have said is true, and I will not be afraid of the truth because it

happens to be dangerous. Moreover, every person ought to know in his

heart whether or not he is conducting his existence satisfactorily. But

he must interrogate his conscience fairly. It is not fair, either to

one’s conscience or to oneself, to listen to it always, for example, in

the desolating dark hour before the dawn, and never to listen to it,

for example, after one has had a good meal or a good slice of any sort

of honest pleasure.

‘And, lastly, I have mentioned envy. We are apt to mistake mere envy

of the successful for an individual desire to succeed. Yet an envious

realisation of all the advantages (and none of the disadvantages) of

success is scarcely the same thing as a genuine instinct for “getting

on”--is it?’