"Yes, he's one of those men that don't know how to manage. Good
situation. Regular income. Quite enough for luxuries as well as
needs. Not really extravagant. And yet the fellow's always in
difficulties. Somehow he gets nothing out of his money. Excellent
flat--half empty! Always looks as if he'd had the brokers in. New
suit--old hat! Magnificent necktie--baggy trousers! Asks you to
dinner: cut glass--bad mutton, or Turkish coffee--cracked cup! He
can't understand it. Explanation simply is that he fritters his income
away. Wish I had the half of it! I'd show him--"
So we have most of us criticised, at one time or another, in our
superior way.
We are nearly all chancellors of the exchequer: it is the pride of the
moment. Newspapers are full of articles explaining how to live on
such-and-such a sum, and these articles provoke a correspondence whose
violence proves the interest they excite. Recently, in a daily organ,
a battle raged round the question whether a woman can exist nicely in
the country on L85 a year. I have seen an essay, "How to live on eight
shillings a week." But I have never seen an essay, "How to live on
twenty-four hours a day." Yet it has been said that time is money.
That proverb understates the case. Time is a great deal more than
money. If you have time you can obtain money--usually. But though you
have the wealth of a cloak-room attendant at the Carlton Hotel, you
cannot buy yourself a minute more time than I have, or the cat by the
fire has.
Philosophers have explained space. They have not explained time. It is
the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible;
without it, nothing. The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, an
affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it. You wake up in the
morning, and lo! your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours
of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life! It is
yours. It is the most precious of possessions. A highly singular
commodity, showered upon you in a manner as singular as the commodity
itself!
For remark! No one can take it from you. It is unstealable. And no
one receives either more or less than you receive.
Talk about an ideal democracy! In the realm of time there is no
aristocracy of wealth, and no aristocracy of intellect. Genius is
never rewarded by even an extra hour a day. And there is no
punishment. Waste your infinitely precious commodity as much as you
will, and the supply will never be withheld from you. No mysterious
power will say:--"This man is a fool, if not a knave. He does not
deserve time; he shall be cut off at the meter." It is more certain
than consols, and payment of income is not affected by Sundays.
Moreover, you cannot draw on the future. Impossible to get into debt!
You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot waste to-morrow; it
is kept for you. You cannot waste the next hour; it is kept for you.