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How to Live on TwentyFour Hours a Day.....................................................................................................1

This preface, though placed at the beginning, as a preface must be, should be read at the end of the book.

I have received a large amount of correspondence concerning this small work, and many reviews of itsome

of them nearly as long as the book itselfhave been printed. But scarcely any of the comment has been

adverse. Some people have objected to a frivolity of tone; but as the tone is not, in my opinion, at all

frivolous, this objection did not impress me; and had no weightier reproach been put forward I might almost

have been persuaded that the volume was flawless! A more serious stricture has, however, been offerednot

in the press, but by sundry obviously sincere correspondentsand I must deal with it. A reference to page 43

will show that I anticipated and feared this disapprobation. The sentence against which protests have been

made is as follows: "In the majority of instances he [the typical man] does not precisely feel a passion for

his business; at best he does not dislike it. He begins his business functions with some reluctance, as late as

he can, and he ends them with joy, as early as he can. And his engines, while he is engaged in his business,

I am assured, in accents of unmistakable sincerity, that there are many business mennot merely those in

high positions or with fine prospects, but modest subordinates with no hope of ever being much better

offwho do enjoy their business functions, who do not shirk them, who do not arrive at the office as late as

depart as early as possible, who, in a word, put the whole of their force into their day's work and are

I am ready to believe it. I do believe it. I know it. I always knew it. Both in London and in the provinces it

has been my lot to spend long years in subordinate situations of business; and the fact did not escape me that

a certain proportion of my peers showed what amounted to an honest passion for their duties, and that while

engaged in those duties they were really *living* to the fullest extent of which they were capable. But I

remain convinced that these fortunate and happy individuals (happier perhaps than they guessed) did not and

do not constitute a majority, or anything like a majority. I remain convinced that the majority of decent

average conscientious men of business (men with aspirations and ideals) do not as a rule go home of a night

genuinely tired. I remain convinced that they put not as much but as little of themselves as they

conscientiously can into the earning of a livelihood, and that their vocation bores rather than interests them.

Nevertheless, I admit that the minority is of sufficient importance to merit attention, and that I ought not to

have ignored it so completely as I did do. The whole difficulty of the hardworking minority was put in a

single colloquial sentence by one of my correspondents. He wrote: "I am just as keen as anyone on doing

something to 'exceed my programme,' but allow me to tell you that when I get home at six thirty p.m. I am

Now I must point out that the case of the minority, who throw themselves with passion and gusto into their

daily business task, is infinitely less deplorable than the case of the majority, who go halfheartedly and

feebly through their official day. The former are less in need of advice "how to live." At any rate during their

official day of, say, eight hours they are really alive; their engines are giving the full indicated "h.p." The

other eight working hours of their day may be badly organised, or even frittered away; but it is less disastrous

to waste eight hours a day than sixteen hours a day; it is better to have lived a bit than never to have lived at

all. The real tragedy is the tragedy of the man who is braced to effort neither in the office nor out of it, and to

this man this book is primarily addressed. "But," says the other and more fortunate man, "although my

ordinary programme is bigger than his, I want to exceed my programme too! I am living a bit; I want to live

The fact is, I, the author, ought to have foreseen that I should appeal most strongly to those who already had

an interest in existence. It is always the man who has tasted life who demands more of it. And it is always the

Well, you of the minority, let us assume that the intensity of your daily moneygetting will not allow you to

carry out quite all the suggestions in the following pages. Some of the suggestions may yet stand. I admit that

you may not be able to use the time spent on the journey home at night; but the suggestion for the journey to

the office in the morning is as practicable for you as for anybody. And that weekly interval of forty hours,

from Saturday to Monday, is yours just as much as the other man's, though a slight accumulation of fatigue

may prevent you from employing the whole of your "h.p." upon it. There remains, then, the important portion

of the three or more evenings a week. You tell me flatly that you are too tired to do anything outside your

programme at night. In reply to which I tell you flatly that if your ordinary day's work is thus exhausting, then

the balance of your life is wrong and must be adjusted. A man's powers ought not to be monopolised by his

The obvious thing to do is to circumvent your ardour for your ordinary day's work by a ruse. Employ your

engines in something beyond the programme before, and not after, you employ them on the programme itself.

Briefly, get up earlier in the morning. You say you cannot. You say it is impossible for you to go earlier to

bed of a nightto do so would upset the entire household. I do not think it is quite impossible to go to bed

earlier at night. I think that if you persist in rising earlier, and the consequence is insufficiency of sleep, you

will soon find a way of going to bed earlier. But my impression is that the consequences of rising earlier will

not be an insufficiency of sleep. My impression, growing stronger every year, is that sleep is partly a matter

of habitand of slackness. I am convinced that most people sleep as long as they do because they are at a

loss for any other diversion. How much sleep do you think is daily obtained by the powerful healthy man

who daily rattles up your street in charge of Carter Patterson's van? I have consulted a doctor on this point.

He is a doctor who for twentyfour years has had a large general practice in a large flourishing suburb of

London, inhabited by exactly such people as you and me. He is a curt man, and his answer was curt:

He went on to give his opinion that nine men out of ten would have better health and more fun out of life if

Other doctors have confirmed this judgment, which, of course, does not apply to growing youths.

Rise an hour, an hour and a half, or even two hours earlier; andif you mustretire earlier when you can.

In the matter of exceeding programmes, you will accomplish as much in one morning hour as in two evening

hours. "But," you say, "I couldn't begin without some food, and servants." Surely, my dear sir, in an age when

an excellent spiritlamp (including a saucepan) can be bought for less than a shilling, you are not going to

allow your highest welfare to depend upon the precarious immediate cooperation of a fellow creature!

Instruct the fellow creature, whoever she may be, at night. Tell her to put a tray in a suitable position over

night. On that tray two biscuits, a cup and saucer, a box of matches and a spiritlamp; on the lamp, the

saucepan; on the saucepan, the lid but turned the wrong way up; on the reversed lid, the small teapot,

containing a minute quantity of tea leaves. You will then have to strike a matchthat is all. In three minutes

the water boils, and you pour it into the teapot (which is already warm). In three more minutes the tea is

infused. You can begin your day while drinking it. These details may seem trivial to the foolish, but to the

thoughtful they will not seem trivial. The proper, wise balancing of one's whole life may depend upon the

"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 flathalf empty! Always looks as if he'd had the brokers in. New

suitold hat! Magnificent necktiebaggy trousers! Asks you to dinner: cut glassbad mutton, or Turkish

coffeecracked cup! He can't understand it. Explanation simply is that he fritters his income away. Wish I

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 suchandsuch 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 twentyfour 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 moneyusually. But though you have the wealth of a cloakroom attendant at the Carlton Hotel, you

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 twentyfour 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

For remark! No one can take it from you. It is unstealable. And no one receives either more or less than you

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. Mo

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.

You have to live on this twentyfour hours of daily time. Out of it you have to spin health, pleasure, money,

content, respect, and the evolution of your immortal soul. Its right use, its most effective use, is a matter of

the highest urgency and of the most thrilling actuality. All depends on that. Your happinessthe elusive

prize that you are all clutching for, my friends! depends on that. Strange that the newspapers, so

enterprising and upto date as they are, are not full of "How to live on a given income of time," instead of

"How to live on a given income of money"! Money is far commoner than time. When one reflects, one

perceives that money is just about the commonest thing there is. It encumbers the earth in gross heaps.

If one can't contrive to live on a certain income of money, one earns a little moreor steals it, or advertises

for it. One doesn't necessarily muddle one's life because one can't quite manage on a thousand pounds a year;

one braces the muscles and makes it guineas, and balances the budget. But if one cannot arrange that an

income of twentyfour hours a day shall exactly cover all proper items of expenditure, one does muddle one's

life definitely. The supply of time, though gloriously regular, is cruelly restricted.

Which of us lives on twentyfour hours a day? And when I say "lives," I do not mean exists, nor "muddles

through." Which of us is free from that uneasy feeling that the "great spending departments" of his daily life

are not managed as they ought to be? Which of us is quite sure that his fine suit is not surmounted by a

shameful hat, or that in attending to the crockery he has forgotten the quality of the food? Which of us is not

saying to himselfwhich of us has not been saying to himself all his life: "I shall alter that when I have a

We never shall have any more time. We have, and we have always had, all the time there is. It is the

realisation of this profound and neglected truth (which, by the way, I have not discovered) that has led me to

"But," someone may remark, with the English disregard of everything except the point, "what is he driving at

with his twentyfour hours a day? I have no difficulty in living on twentyfour hours a day. I do all that I

want to do, and still find time to go in for newspaper competitions. Surely it is a simple affair, knowing that

one has only twentyfour hours a day, to content one's self with twentyfour hours a day!"

To you, my dear sir, I present my excuses and apologies. You are precisely the man that I have been wishing

to meet for about forty years. Will you kindly send me your name and address, and state your charge for

telling me how you do it? Instead of me talking to you, you ought to be talking to me. Please come forward.

That you exist, I am convinced, and that I have not yet encountered you is my loss. Meanwhile, until you

appear, I will continue to chat with my companions in distressthat innumerable band of souls who are

haunted, more or less painfully, by the feeling that the years slip by, and slip by, and slip by, and that they

If we analyse that feeling, we shall perceive it to be, primarily, one of uneasiness, of expectation, of looking

forward, of aspiration. It is a source of constant discomfort, for it behaves like a skeleton at the feast of all our

enjoyments. We go to the theatre and laugh; but between the acts it raises a skinny finger at us. We rush

violently for the last train, and while we are cooling a long age on the platform waiting for the last train, it

promenades its bones up and down by our side and inquires: "O man, what hast thou done with thy youth?

What art thou doing with thine age?" You may urge that this feeling of continuous looking forward, of

But there are degrees. A man may desire to go to Mecca. His conscience tells him that he ought to go to

Mecca. He fares forth, either by the aid of Cook's, or unassisted; he may probably never reach Mecca; he may

drown before he gets to Port Said; he may perish ingloriously on the coast of the Red Sea; his desire may

remain eternally frustrate. Unfulfilled aspiration may always trouble him. But he will not be tormented in the

same way as the man who, desiring to reach Mecca, and harried by the desire to reach Mecca, never leaves

It is something to have left Brixton. Most of us have not left Brixton. We have not even taken a cab to

Ludgate Circus and inquired from Cook's the price of a conducted tour. And our excuse to ourselves is that

If we further analyse our vague, uneasy aspiration, we shall, I think, see that it springs from a fixed idea that

we ought to do something in addition to those things which we are loyally and morally obliged to do. We are

obliged, by various codes written and unwritten, to maintain ourselves and our families (if any) in health and

comfort, to pay our debts, to save, to increase our prosperity by increasing our efficiency. A task sufficiently

difficult! A task which very few of us achieve! A task often beyond our skill! yet, if we succeed in it, as we

And even when we realise tat the task is beyond our skill, that our powers cannot cope with it, we feel that we

should be less discontented if we gave to our powers, already overtaxed, something still further to do.

And such is, indeed, the fact. The wish to accomplish something outside their formal programme is common

Until an effort is made to satisfy that wish, the sense of uneasy waiting for something to start which has not

started will remain to disturb the peace of the soul. That wish has been called by many names. It is one form

of the universal desire for knowledge. And it is so strong that men whose whole lives have been given to the

systematic acquirement of knowledge have been driven by it to overstep the limits of their programme in

search of still more knowledge. Even Herbert Spencer, in my opinion the greatest mind that ever lived, was

I imagine that in the majority of people who are conscious of the wish to livethat is to say, people who

have intellectual curiositythe aspiration to exceed formal programmes takes a literary shape. They would

like to embark on a course of reading. Decidedly the British people are becoming more and more literary. But

I would point out that literature by no means comprises the whole field of knowledge, and that the disturbing

thirst to improve one's selfto increase one's knowledgemay well be slaked quite apart from literature.

With the various ways of slaking I shall deal later. Here I merely point out to those who have no natural

Now that I have succeeded (if succeeded I have) in persuading you to admit to yourself that you are

constantly haunted by a suppressed dissatisfaction with your own arrangement of your daily life; and that the

primal cause of that inconvenient dissatisfaction is the feeling that you are every day leaving undone

something which you would like to do, and which, indeed, you are always hoping to do when you have "more

time"; and now that I have drawn your attention to the glaring, dazzling truth that you never will have "more

time," since you already have all the time there isyou expect me to let you into some wonderful secret by

which you may at any rate approach the ideal of a perfect arrangement of the day, and by which, therefore,

that haunting, unpleasant, daily disappointment of things left undone will be got rid of!

I have found no such wonderful secret. Nor do I expect to find it, nor do I expect that anyone else will ever

find it. It is undiscovered. When you first began to gather my drift, perhaps there was a resurrection of hope

in your breast. Perhaps you said to yourself, "This man will show me an easy, unfatiguing way of doing what

I have so long in vain wished to do." Alas, no! The fact is that there is no easy way, no royal road. The path

to Mecca is extremely hard and stony, and the worst of it is that you never quite get there after all.

The most important preliminary to the task of arranging one's life so that one may live fully and comfortably

within one's daily budget of twenty four hours is the calm realisation of the extreme difficulty of the task, of

the sacrifices and the endless effort which it demands. I cannot too strongly insist on this.

If you imagine that you will be able to achieve your ideal by ingeniously planning out a timetable with a pen

on a piece of paper, you had better give up hope at once. If you are not prepared for discouragements and

disillusions; if you will not be content with a small result for a big effort, then do not begin. Lie down again

It is very sad, is it not, very depressing and sombre? And yet I think it is rather fine, too, this necessity for the

tense bracing of the will before anything worth doing can be done. I rather like it myself. I feel it to be the

"Well," you say, "assume that I am braced for the battle. Assume that I have carefully weighed and

comprehended your ponderous remarks; how do I begin?" Dear sir, you simply begin. There is no magic

method of beginning. If a man standing on the edge of a swimmingbath and wanting to jump into the cold

water should ask you, "How do I begin to jump?" you would merely reply, "Just jump. Take hold of your

As I have previously said, the chief beauty about the constant supply of time is that you cannot waste it in

advance. The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoilt, as if you

had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your career. Which fact is very gratifying and

reassuring. You can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose. Therefore no object is served in waiting

till next week, or even until tomorrow. You may fancy that the water will be warmer next week. It won't. It

Let me principally warn you against your own ardour. Ardour in welldoing is a misleading and a

treacherous thing. It cries out loudly for employment; you can't satisfy it at first; it wants more and more; it is

eager to move mountains and divert the course of rivers. It isn't content till it perspires. And then, too often,

when it feels the perspiration on its brow, it wearies all of a sudden and dies, without even putting itself to the

Beware of undertaking too much at the start. Be content with quite a little. Allow for accidents. Allow for

A failure or so, in itself, would not matter, if it did not incur a loss of self esteem and of selfconfidence.

But just as nothing succeeds like success, so nothing fails like failure. Most people who are ruined are ruined

by attempting too much. Therefore, in setting out on the immense enterprise of living fully and comfortably

within the narrow limits of twentyfour hours a day, let us avoid at any cost the risk of an early failure. I will

not agree that, in this business at any rate, a glorious failure is better than a petty success. I am all for the

petty success. A glorious failure leads to nothing; a petty success may lead to a success that is not petty.

So let us begin to examine the budget of the day's time. You say your day is already full to overflowing.

How? You actually spend in earning your livelihoodhow much? Seven hours, on the average? And in

actual sleep, seven? I will add two hours, and be generous. And I will defy you to account to me on the spur

In order to come to grips at once with the question of timeexpenditure in all its actuality, I must choose an

individual case for examination. I can only deal with one case, and that case cannot be the average case,

because there is no such case as the average case, just as there is no such man as the average man. Every man

But if I take the case of a Londoner who works in an office, whose office hours are from ten to six, and who

spends fifty minutes morning and night in travelling between his house door and his office door, I shall have

got as near to the average as facts permit. There are men who have to work longer for a living, but there are

Fortunately the financial side of existence does not interest us here; for our present purpose the clerk at a

Now the great and profound mistake which my typical man makes in regard to his day is a mistake of general

attitude, a mistake which vitiates and weakens twothirds of his energies and interests. In the majority of

instances he does not precisely feel a passion for his business; at best he does not dislike it. He begins his

business functions with reluctance, as late as he can, and he ends them with joy, as early as he can. And his

engines while he is engaged in his business are seldom at their full "h.p." (I know that I shall be accused by

angry readers of traducing the city worker; but I am pretty thoroughly acquainted with the City, and I stick to

Yet in spite of all this he persists in looking upon those hours from ten to six as "the day," to which the ten

hours preceding them and the six hours following them are nothing but a prologue and epilogue. Such an

unconscious though it be, of course kills his interest in the odd sixteen hours, with the result that, even if he

This general attitude is utterly illogical and unhealthy, since it formally gives the central prominence to a

patch of time and a bunch of activities which the man's one idea is to "get through" and have "done with." If a

man makes twothirds of his existence subservient to onethird, for which admittedly he has no absolutely

If my typical man wishes to live fully and completely he must, in his mind, arrange a day within a day. And

this inner day, a Chinese box in a larger Chinese box, must begin at 6 p.m. and end at 10 a.m. It is a day of

sixteen hours; and during all these sixteen hours he has nothing whatever to do but cultivate his body and his

soul and his fellow men. During those sixteen hours he is free; he is not a wageearner; he is not preoccupied

with monetary cares; he is just as good as a man with a private income. This must be his attitude. And his

attitude is all important. His success in life (much more important than the amount of estate upon what his

What? You say that full energy given to those sixteen hours will lessen the value of the business eight? Not

so. On the contrary, it will assuredly increase the value of the business eight. One of the chief things which

my typical man has to learn is that the mental faculties are capable of a continuous hard activity; they do not

I shall now examine the typical man's current method of employing the sixteen hours that are entirely his,

beginning with his uprising. I will merely indicate things which he does and which I think he ought not to do,

postponing my suggestions for "planting" the times which I shall have clearedas a settler clears spaces in a

In justice to him I must say that he wastes very little time before he leaves the house in the morning at 9.10.

In too many houses he gets up at nine, breakfasts between 9.7 and 9.9 1/2, and then bolts. But immediately he

bangs the front door his mental faculties, which are tireless, become idle. He walks to the station in a

condition of mental coma. Arrived there, he usually has to wait for the train. On hundreds of suburban

stations every morning you see men calmly strolling up and down platforms while railway companies

unblushingly rob them of time, which is more than money. Hundreds of thousands of hours are thus lost

every day simply because my typical man thinks so little of time that it has never occurred to him to take

He has a solid coin of time to spend every daycall it a sovereign. He must get change for it, and in getting

Supposing that in selling him a ticket the company said, "We will change you a sovereign, but we shall

charge you three halfpence for doing so," what would my typical man exclaim? Yet that is the equivalent of

You get into the morning train with your newspaper, and you calmly and majestically give yourself up to

your newspaper. You do not hurry. You know you have at least half an hour of security in front of you. As

your glance lingers idly at the advertisements of shipping and of songs on the outer pages, your air is the air

of a leisured man, wealthy in time, of a man from some planet where there are a hundred and twentyfour

hours a day instead of twentyfour. I am an impassioned reader of newspapers. I read five English and two

French dailies, and the newsagents alone know how many weeklies, regularly. I am obliged to mention this

personal fact lest I should be accused of a prejudice against newspapers when I say that I object to the reading

of newspapers in the morning train. Newspapers are produced with rapidity, to be read with rapidity. There is

no place in my daily programme for newspapers. I read them as I may in odd moments. But I do read them.

The idea of devoting to them thirty or forty consecutive minutes of wonderful solitude (for nowhere can one

more perfectly immerse one's self in one's self than in a compartment full of silent, withdrawn, smoking

males) is to me repugnant. I cannot possibly allow you to scatter priceless pearls of time with such Oriental

lavishness. You are not the Shah of time. Let me respectfully remind you that you have no more time than I

have. No newspaper reading in trains! I have already "put by" about threequarters of an hour for use.

Now you reach your office. And I abandon you there till six o'clock. I am aware that you have nominally an

hour (often in reality an hour and a half) in the midst of the day, less than half of which time is given to

eating. But I will leave you all that to spend as you choose. You may read your newspapers then.

I meet you again as you emerge from your office. You are pale and tired. At any rate, your wife says you are

pale, and you give her to understand that you are tired. During the journey home you have been gradually

working up the tired feeling. The tired feeling hangs heavy over the mighty suburbs of London like a virtuous

and melancholy cloud, particularly in winter. You don't eat immediately on your arrival home. But in about

an hour or so you feel as if you could sit up and take a little nourishment. And you do. Then you smoke,

seriously; you see friends; you potter; you play cards; you flirt with a book; you note that old age is creeping

on; you take a stroll; you caress the piano.... By Jove! a quarter past eleven. You then devote quite forty

minutes to thinking about going to bed; and it is conceivable that you are acquainted with a genuinely good

whisky. At last you go to bed, exhausted by the day's work. Six hours, probably more, have gone since you

That is a fair sample case. But you say: "It's all very well for you to talk. A man *is* tired. A man must see

his friends. He can't always be on the stretch." Just so. But when you arrange to go to the theatre (especially

with a pretty woman) what happens? You rush to the suburbs; you spare no toil to make yourself glorious in

fine raiment; you rush back to town in another train; you keep yourself on the stretch for four hours, if not

five; you take her home; you take yourself home. You don't spend threequarters of an hour in "thinking

about" going to bed. You go. Friends and fatigue have equally been forgotten, and the evening has seemed so

exquisitely long (or perhaps too short)! And do you remember that time when you were persuaded to sing in

the chorus of the amateur operatic society, and slaved two hours every other night for three months? Can you

deny that when you have something definite to look forward to at eventide, something that is to employ all

your energythe thought of that something gives a glow and a more intense vitality to the whole day?

What I suggest is that at six o'clock you look facts in the face and admit that you are not tired (because you

are not, you know), and that you arrange your evening so that it is not cut in the middle by a meal. By so

doing you will have a clear expanse of at least three hours. I do not suggest that you should employ three

hours every night of your life in using up your mental energy. But I do suggest that you might, for a

commencement, employ an hour and a half every other evening in some important and consecutive

cultivation of the mind. You will still be left with three evenings for friends, bridge, tennis, domestic scenes,

odd reading, pipes, gardening, pottering, and prize competitions. You will still have the terrific wealth of

fortyfive hours between 2 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. Monday. If you persevere you will soon want to pass

four evenings, and perhaps five, in some sustained endeavour to be genuinely alive. And you will fall out of

that habit of muttering to yourself at 11.15 p.m., "Time to be thinking about going to bed." The man who

begins to go to bed forty minutes before he opens his bedroom door is bored; that is to say, he is not living.

But remember, at the start, those ninety nocturnal minutes thrice a week must be the most important minutes

in the ten thousand and eighty. They must be sacred, quite as sacred as a dramatic rehearsal or a tennis match.

Instead of saying, "Sorry I can't see you, old chap, but I have to run off to the tennis club," you must say,

"...but I have to work." This, I admit, is intensely difficult to say. Tennis is so much more urgent than the

I have incidentally mentioned the vast expanse of fortyfour hours between leaving business at 2 p.m. on

Saturday and returning to business at 10 a.m. on Monday. And here I must touch on the point whether the

week should consist of six days or of seven. For many yearsin fact, until I was approaching fortymy

own week consisted of seven days. I was constantly being informed by older and wiser people that more

And it is certainly true that now, with one day in seven in which I follow no programme and make no effort

save what the caprice of the moment dictates, I appreciate intensely the moral value of a weekly rest.

Nevertheless, had I my life to arrange over again, I would do again as I have done. Only those who have lived

at the full stretch seven days a week for a long time can appreciate the full beauty of a regular recurring

idleness. Moreover, I am ageing. And it is a question of age. In cases of abounding youth and exceptional

energy and desire for effort I should say unhesitatingly: Keep going, day in, day out.

But in the average case I should say: Confine your formal programme (superprogramme, I mean) to six days

a week. If you find yourself wishing to extend it, extend it, but only in proportion to your wish; and count the

time extra as a windfall, not as regular income, so that you can return to a sixday programme without the

Let us now see where we stand. So far we have marked for saving out of the waste of days, half an hour at

least on six mornings a week, and one hour and a half on three evenings a week. Total, seven hours and a half

I propose to be content with that seven hours and a half for the present. "What?" you cry. "You pretend to

show us how to live, and you only deal with seven hours and a half out of a hundred and sixtyeight! Are you

going to perform a miracle with your seven hours and a half?" Well, not to mince the matter, I amif you

will kindly let me! That is to say, I am going to ask you to attempt an experience which, while perfectly

natural and explicable, has all the air of a miracle. My contention is that the full use of those

sevenandahalf hours will quicken the whole life of the week, add zest to it, and increase the interest

which you feel in even the most banal occupations. You practise physical exercises for a mere ten minutes

morning and evening, and yet you are not astonished when your physical health and strength are beneficially

affected every hour of the day, and your whole physical outlook changed. Why should you be astonished that

an average of over an hour a day given to the mind should permanently and completely enliven the whole

More time might assuredly be given to the cultivation of one's self. And in proportion as the time was longer

the results would be greater. But I prefer to begin with what looks like a trifling effort.

It is not really a trifling effort, as those will discover who have yet to essay it. To "clear" even seven hours

and a half from the jungle is passably difficult. For some sacrifice has to be made. One may have spent one's

time badly, but one did spend it; one did do something with it, however illadvised that something may have

And habits are the very dickens to change! Further, any change, even a change for the better, is always

accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts. If you imagine that you will be able to devote seven hours and a

half a week to serious, continuous effort, and still live your old life, you are mistaken. I repeat that some

sacrifice, and an immense deal of volition, will be necessary. And it is because I know the difficulty, it is

because I know the almost disastrous effect of failure in such an enterprise, that I earnestly advise a very

humble beginning. You must safeguard your selfrespect. Selfrespect is at the root of all purposefulness,

and a failure in an enterprise deliberately planned deals a desperate wound at one's selfrespect. Hence I

When you have conscientiously given seven hours and a half a week to the cultivation of your vitality for

three monthsthen you may begin to sing louder and tell yourself what wondrous things you are capable of

Before coming to the method of using the indicated hours, I have one final suggestion to make. That is, as

regards the evenings, to allow much more than an hour and a half in which to do the work of an hour and a

half. Remember the chance of accidents. Remember human nature. And give yourself, say, from 9 to 11.30

People say: "One can't help one's thoughts." But one can. The control of the thinking machine is perfectly

possible. And since nothing whatever happens to us outside our own brain; since nothing hurts us or gives us

pleasure except within the brain, the supreme importance of being able to control what goes on in that

mysterious brain is patent. This idea is one of the oldest platitudes, but it is a platitude who's profound truth

and urgency most people live and die without realising. People complain of the lack of power to concentrate,

And without the power to concentratethat is to say, without the power to dictate to the brain its task and to

ensure obediencetrue life is impossible. Mind control is the first element of a full existence.

Hence, it seems to me, the first business of the day should be to put the mind through its paces. You look

after your body, inside and out; you run grave danger in hacking hairs off your skin; you employ a whole

army of individuals, from the milkman to the pigkiller, to enable you to bribe your stomach into decent

behaviour. Why not devote a little attention to the far more delicate machinery of the mind, especially as you

will require no extraneous aid? It is for this portion of the art and craft of living that I have reserved the time

"What? I am to cultivate my mind in the street, on the platform, in the train, and in the crowded street again?"

Precisely. Nothing simpler! No tools required! Not even a book. Nevertheless, the affair is not easy.

When you leave your house, concentrate your mind on a subject (no matter what, to begin with). You will not

have gone ten yards before your mind has skipped away under your very eyes and is larking round the corner

Bring it back by the scruff of the neck. Ere you have reached the station you will have brought it back about

forty times. Do not despair. Continue. Keep it up. You will succeed. You cannot by any chance fail if you

persevere. It is idle to pretend that your mind is incapable of concentration. Do you not remember that

morning when you received a disquieting letter which demanded a very carefullyworded answer? How you

kept your mind steadily on the subject of the answer, without a second's intermission, until you reached your

office; whereupon you instantly sat down and wrote the answer? That was a case in which *you* were roused

by circumstances to such a degree of vitality that you were able to dominate your mind like a tyrant. You

would have no trifling. You insisted that its work should be done, and its work was done.

By the regular practice of concentration (as to which there is no secret save the secret of perseverance) you

can tyrannise over your mind (which is not the highest part of *you*) every hour of the day, and in no matter

what place. The exercise is a very convenient one. If you got into your morning train with a pair of

dumbbells for your muscles or an encyclopaedia in ten volumes for your learning, you would probably

excite remark. But as you walk in the street, or sit in the corner of the compartment behind a pipe, or

"straphang" on the Subterranean, who is to know that you are engaged in the most important of daily acts?

I do not care what you concentrate on, so long as you concentrate. It is the mere disciplining of the thinking

machine that counts. But still, you may as well kill two birds with one stone, and concentrate on something

useful. I suggestit is only a suggestiona little chapter of Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus.

Do not, I beg, shy at their names. For myself, I know nothing more "actual," more bursting with plain

commonsense, applicable to the daily life of plain persons like you and me (who hate airs, pose, and

nonsense) than Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus. Read a chapterand so short they are, the chapters! in the

Yes, my friend, it is useless for you to try to disguise the fact. I can hear your brain like a telephone at my ear.

You are saying to yourself: "This fellow was doing pretty well up to his seventh chapter. He had begun to

interest me faintly. But what he says about thinking in trains, and concen tration, and so on, is not for me. It

It is for you, I passionately repeat; it is for you. Indeed, you are the very man I am aiming at.

Throw away the suggestion, and you throw away the most precious suggestion that was ever offered to you.

It is not my suggestion. It is the suggestion of the most sensible, practical, hardheaded men who have

walked the earth. I only give it you at secondhand. Try it. Get your mind in hand. And see how the process

cures half the evils of life especially worry, that miserable, avoidable, shameful diseaseworry!

The exercise of concentrating the mind (to which at least half an hour a day should be given) is a mere

preliminary, like scales on the piano. Having acquired power over that most unruly member of one's complex

organism, one has naturally to put it to the yoke. Useless to possess an obedient mind unless one profits to the

furthest possible degree by its obedience. A prolonged primary course of study is indicated.

Now as to what this course of study should be there cannot be any question; there never has been any

question. All the sensible people of all ages are agreed upon it. And it is not literature, nor is it any other art,

nor is it history, nor is it any science. It is the study of one's self. Man, know thyself. These words are so

hackneyed that verily I blush to write them. Yet they must be written, for they need to be written. (I take back

my blush, being ashamed of it.) Man, know thyself. I say it out loud. The phrase is one of those phrases with

which everyone is familiar, of which everyone acknowledges the value, and which only the most sagacious

put into practice. I don't know why. I am entirely convinced that what is more than anything else lacking in

We do not reflect. I mean that we do not reflect upon genuinely important things; upon the problem of our

happiness, upon the main direction in which we are going, upon what life is giving to us, upon the share

which reason has (or has not) in determining our actions, and upon the relation between our principles and

The chances are that you have not. The chances are that you have already come to believe that happiness is

unattainable. But men have attained it. And they have attained it by realising that happiness does not spring

from the procuring of physical or mental pleasure, but from the development of reason and the adjustment of

I suppose that you will not have the audacity to deny this. And if you admit it, and still devote no part of your

day to the deliberate consideration of your reason, principles, and conduct, you admit also that while striving

for a certain thing you are regularly leaving undone the one act which is necessary to the attainment of that

Do not fear that I mean to thrust certain principles upon your attention. I care not (in this place) what your

principles are. Your principles may induce you to believe in the righteousness of burglary. I don't mind. All I

urge is that a life in which conduct does not fairly well accord with principles is a silly life; and that conduct

can only be made to accord with principles by means of daily examination, reflection, and resolution. What

leads to the permanent sorrow fulness of burglars is that their principles are contrary to burglary. If they

genuinely believed in the moral excellence of burglary, penal servitude would simply mean so many happy

years for them; all martyrs are happy years for them; all martyrs are happy, because their conduct and their

As for reason (which makes conduct, and is not unconnected with the making of principles), it plays a far

smaller part in our lives than we fancy. We are supposed to be reasonable but we are much more instinctive

than reasonable. And the less we reflect, the less reasonable we shall be. The next time you get cross with the

waiter because your steak is overcooked, ask reason to step into the cabinetroom of your mind, and consult

her. She will probably tell you that the waiter did not cook the steak, and had no control over the cooking of

the steak; and that even if he alone was to blame, you accomplished nothing good by getting cross; you

merely lost your dignity, looked a fool in the eyes of sensible men, and soured the waiter, while producing no

The result of this consultation with reason (for which she makes no charge) will be that when once more your

steak is overcooked you will treat the waiter as a fellowcreature, remain quite calm in a kindly spirit, and

In the formation or modification of principles, and the practice of conduct, much help can be derived from

printed books (issued at sixpence each and upwards). I mentioned in my last chapter Marcus Aurelius and

Epictetus. Certain even more widely known works will occur at once to the memory. I may also mention

Pascal, La Bruyere, and Emerson. For myself, you do not catch me travelling without my Marcus Aurelius.

Yes, books are valuable. But not reading of books will take the place of a daily, candid, honest examination

of what one has recently done, and what one is about to doof a steady looking at one's self in the face

When shall this important business be accomplished? The solitude of the evening journey home appears to

me to be suitable for it. A reflective mood naturally follows the exertion of having earned the day's living. Of

course if, instead of attending to an elementary and profoundly important duty, you prefer to read the paper

(which you might just as well read while waiting for your dinner) I have nothing to say. But attend to it at

Many people pursue a regular and uninterrupted course of idleness in the evenings because they think that

there is no alternative to idleness but the study of literature; and they do not happen to have a taste for

Of course it is impossible, or at any rate very difficult, properly to study anything whatever without the aid of

printed books. But if you desire to understand the deeper depths of bridge or of boatsailing you would not

be deterred by your lack of interest in literature from reading the best books on bridge or boatsailing. We

must, therefore, distinguish between literature, and books treating of subjects not literary. I shall come to

Let me now remark to those who have never read Meredith, and who are capable of being unmoved by a

discussion as to whether Mr. Stephen Phillips is or is not a true poet, that they are perfectly within their

rights. It is not a crime not to love literature. It is not a sign of imbecility. The mandarins of literature will

order out to instant execution the unfortunate individual who does not comprehend, say, the influence of

Wordsworth on Tennyson. But that is only their impudence. Where would they be, I wonder, if requested to

There are enormous fields of knowledge quite outside literature which will yield magnificent results to

cultivators. For example (since I have just mentioned the most popular piece of highclass music in England

today), I am reminded that the Promenade Concerts begin in August. You go to them. You smoke your

cigar or cigarette (and I regret to say that you strike your matches during the soft bars of the "Lohengrin"

overture), and you enjoy the music. But you say you cannot play the piano or the fiddle, or even the banjo;

What does that matter? That you have a genuine taste for music is proved by the fact that, in order to fill his

hall with you and your peers, the conductor is obliged to provide programmes from which bad music is

Now surely your inability to perform "The Maiden's Prayer" on a piano need not prevent you from making

yourself familiar with the construction of the orchestra to which you listen a couple of nights a week during a

couple of months! As things are, you probably think of the orchestra as a heterogeneous mass of instruments

producing a confused agreeable mass of sound. You do not listen for details because you have never trained

If you were asked to name the instruments which play the great theme at the beginning of the C minor

symphony you could not name them for your life's sake. Yet you admire the C minor symphony. It has

thrilled you. It will thrill you again. You have even talked about it, in an expansive mood, to that ladyyou

know whom I mean. And all you can positively state about the C minor symphony is that Beethoven

Now, if you have read, say, Mr. Krehbiel's "How to Listen to Music" (which can be got at any bookseller's

for less than the price of a stall at the Alhambra, and which contains photographs of all the orchestral

instruments and plans of the arrangement of orchestras) you would next go to a promenade concert with an

astonishing intensification of interest in it. Instead of a confused mass, the orchestra would appear to you as

what it isa marvellously balanced organism whose various groups of members each have a different and an

indispensable function. You would spy out the instruments, and listen for their respective sounds. You would

know the gulf that separates a French horn from an English horn, and you would perceive why a player of the

hautboy gets higher wages than a fiddler, though the fiddle is the more difficult instrument. You would *live*

at a promenade concert, whereas previously you had merely existed there in a state of beatific coma, like a

The foundations of a genuine, systematic knowledge of music might be laid. You might specialise your

inquiries either on a particular form of music (such as the symphony), or on the works of a particular

composer. At the end of a year of fortyeight weeks of three brief evenings each, combined with a study of

programmes and attendances at concerts chosen out of your increasing knowledge, you would really know

something about music, even though you were as far off as ever from jangling "The Maiden's Prayer" on the

What applies to music applies to the other arts. I might mention Mr. Clermont Witt's "How to Look at

Pictures," or Mr. Russell Sturgis's "How to Judge Architecture," as beginnings (merely beginnings) of

systematic vitalising knowledge in other arts, the materials for whose study abound in London.

Art is a great thing. But it is not the greatest. The most important of all perceptions is the continual perception

of cause and effectin other words, the perception of the continuous development of the universein still

other words, the perception of the course of evolution. When one has thoroughly got imbued into one's head

the leading truth that nothing happens without a cause, one grows not only largeminded, but largehearted.

It is hard to have one's watch stolen, but one reflects that the thief of the watch became a thief from causes of

heredity and environment which are as interesting as they are scientifically comprehensible; and one buys

another watch, if not with joy, at any rate with a philosophy that makes bitterness impossible. One loses, in

the study of cause and effect, that absurd air which so many people have of being always shocked and pained

by the curiousness of life. Such people live amid human nature as if human nature were a foreign country full

of awful foreign customs. But, having reached maturity, one ought surely to be ashamed of being a stranger

The study of cause and effect, while it lessens the painfulness of life, adds to life's picturesqueness. The man

to whom evolution is but a name looks at the sea as a grandiose, monotonous spectacle, which he can witness

in August for three shillings thirdclass return. The man who is imbued with the idea of development, of

continuous cause and effect, perceives in the sea an element which in the daybeforeyesterday of geology

was vapour, which yesterday was boiling, and which tomorrow will inevitably be ice.

He perceives that a liquid is merely something on its way to be solid, and he is penetrated by a sense of the

tremendous, changeful picturesqueness of life. Nothing will afford a more durable satisfaction than the

Cause and effect are to be found everywhere. Rents went up in Shepherd's Bush. It was painful and shocking

that rents should go up in Shepherd's Bush. But to a certain point we are all scientific students of cause and

effect, and there was not a clerk lunching at a Lyons Restaurant who did not scienti fically put two and two

together and see in the (once) Twopenny Tube the cause of an excessive demand for wigwams in

Shepherd's Bush, and in the excessive demand for wigwams the cause of the increase in the price of

"Simple!" you say, disdainfully. Everythingthe whole complex movement of the universeis as simple as

thatwhen you can sufficiently put two and two together. And, my dear sir, perhaps you happen to be an

estate agent's clerk, and you hate the arts, and you want to foster your immortal soul, and you can't be

The tremendous, changeful picturesqueness of life is marvellously shown in an estate agent's office. What!

There was a block of traffic in Oxford Street; to avoid the block people actually began to travel under the

cellars and drains, and the result was a rise of rents in Shepherd's Bush! And you say that isn't picturesque!

Suppose you were to study, in this spirit, the property question in London for an hour and a half every other

evening. Would it not give zest to your business, and transform your whole life?

You would arrive at more difficult problems. And you would be able to tell us why, as the natural result of

cause and effect, the longest straight street in London is about a yard and a half in length, while the longest

absolutely straight street in Paris extends for miles. I think you will admit that in an estate agent's clerk I have

You are a bank clerk, and you have not read that breathless romance (disguised as a scientific study), Walter

Bagehot's "Lombard Street"? Ah, my dear sir, if you had begun with that, and followed it up for ninety

minutes every other evening, how enthralling your business would be to you, and how much more clearly you

You are "penned in town," but you love excursions to the country and the observation of wild lifecertainly a

heartenlarging diversion. Why don't you walk out of your house door, in your slippers, to the nearest gas

lamp of a night with a butterfly net, and observe the wild life of common and rare moths that is beating about

it, and coordinate the knowledge thus obtained and build a superstructure on it, and at last get to know

The whole field of daily habit and scene is waiting to satisfy that curiosity which means life, and the

I promised to deal with your case, O man who hates art and literature, and I have dealt with it. I now come to

Novels are excluded from "serious reading," so that the man who, bent on selfimprovement, has been

deciding to devote ninety minutes three times a week to a complete study of the works of Charles Dickens

will be well advised to alter his plans. The reason is not that novels are not serious some of the great

literature of the world is in the form of prose fiction the reason is that bad novels ought not to be read, and

that good novels never demand any appreciable mental application on the part of the reader. It is only the bad

parts of Meredith's novels that are difficult. A good novel rushes you forward like a skiff down a stream, and

you arrive at the end, perhaps breathless, but unexhausted. The best novels involve the least strain. Now in

the cultivation of the mind one of the most important factors is precisely the feeling of strain, of difficulty, of

a task which one part of you is anxious to achieve and another part of you is anxious to shirk; and that f

eeling cannot be got in facing a novel. You do not set your teeth in order to read "Anna Karenina." Therefore,

though you should read novels, you should not read them in those ninety minutes.

Imaginative poetry produces a far greater mental strain than novels. It produces probably the severest strain

of any form of literature. It is the highest form of literature. It yields the highest form of pleasure, and teaches

the highest form of wisdom. In a word, there is nothing to compare with it. I say this with sad consciousness

I am persuaded that many excellent persons, if they were confronted with the alternatives of reading

"Paradise Lost" and going round Trafalgar Square at noonday on their knees in sackcloth, would choose the

ordeal of public ridicule. Still, I will never cease advising my friends and enemies to read poetry before

If poetry is what is called "a sealed book" to you, begin by reading Hazlitt's famous essay on the nature of

"poetry in general." It is the best thing of its kind in English, and no one who has read it can possibly be

under the misapprehension that poetry is a mediaeval torture, or a mad elephant, or a gun that will go off by

itself and kill at forty paces. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine the mental state of the man who, after reading

Hazlitt's essay, is not urgently desirous of reading some poetry before his next meal. If the essay so inspires

There is an infinitely finer English novel, written by a woman, than anything by George Eliot or the Brontes,

or even Jane Austen, which perhaps you have not read. Its title is "Aurora Leigh," and its author E.B.

Browning. It happens to be written in verse, and to contain a considerable amount of genuinely fine poetry.

Decide to read that book through, even if you die for it. Forget that it is fine poetry. Read it simply for the

story and the social ideas. And when you have done, ask yourself honestly whether you still dislike poetry. I

have known more than one person to whom "Aurora Leigh" has been the means of proving that in assuming

Of course, if, after Hazlitt, and such an experiment made in the light of Hazlitt, you are finally assured that

there is something in you which is antagonistic to poetry, you must be content with history or philosophy. I

shall regret it, yet not inconsolably. "The Decline and Fall" is not to be named in the same day with "Paradise

Lost," but it is a vastly pretty thing; and Herbert Spencer's "First Principles" simply laughs at the claims of

poetry and refuses to be accepted as aught but the most majestic product of any human mind. I do not suggest

that either of these works is suitable for a tyro in mental strains. But I see no reason why any man of average

intelligence should not, after a year of continuous reading, be fit to assault the supreme masterpieces of

history or philosophy. The great convenience of masterpieces is that they are so astonishingly lucid.

I suggest no particular work as a start. The attempt would be futile in the space of my command. But I have

two general suggestions of a certain importance. The first is to define the direction and scope of your efforts.

Choose a limited period, or a limited subject, or a single author. Say to yourself: "I will know something

about the French Revolution, or the rise of railways, or the works of John Keats." And during a given period,

to be settled beforehand, confine yourself to your choice. There is much pleasure to be derived from being a

The second suggestion is to think as well as to read. I know people who read and read, and for all the good it

does them they might just as well cut breadandbutter. They take to reading as better men take to drink.

They fly through the shires of literature on a motorcar, their sole object being motion. They will tell you

Unless you give at least fortyfive minutes to careful, fatiguing reflection (it is an awful bore at first) upon

what you are reading, your ninety minutes of a night are chiefly wasted. This means that your pace will be

Forget the goal; think only of the surrounding country; and after a period, perhaps when you least expect it,

I cannot terminate these hints, often, I fear, too didactic and abrupt, upon the full use of one's time to the great

end of living (as distinguished from vegetating) without briefly referring to certain dangers which lie in wait

for the sincere aspirant towards life. The first is the terrible danger of becoming that most odious and least

supportable of personsa prig. Now a prig is a pert fellow who gives himself airs of superior wisdom. A

prig is a pompous fool who has gone out for a ceremonial walk, and without knowing it has lost an important

part of his attire, namely, his sense of humour. A prig is a tedious individual who, having made a discovery,

is so impressed by his discovery that he is capable of being gravely displeased because the entire world is not

also impressed by it. Unconsciously to become a prig is an easy and a fatal thing.

Hence, when one sets forth on the enterprise of using all one's time, it is just as well to remember that one's

own time, and not other people's time, is the material with which one has to deal; that the earth rolled on

pretty comfortably before one began to balance a budget of the hours, and that it will continue to roll on

pretty comfortably whether or not one succeeds in one's new role of chancellor of the exchequer of time. It is

as well not to chatter too much about what one is doing, and not to betray a toopained sadness at the

spectacle of a whole world deliberately wasting so many hours out of every day, and therefore never really

living. It will be found, ultimately, that in taking care of one's self one has quite all one can do.

Another danger is the danger of being tied to a programme like a slave to a chariot. One's programme must

not be allowed to run away with one. It must be respected, but it must not be worshipped as a fetish. A

This seems obvious. Yet I know men whose lives are a burden to themselves and a distressing burden to their

relatives and friends simply because they have failed to appreciate the obvious. "Oh, no," I have heard the

martyred wife exclaim, "Arthur always takes the dog out for exercise at eight o'clock and he always begins to

read at a quarter to nine. So it's quite out of the question that we should. . ." etc., etc. And the note of absolute

finality in that plaintive voice reveals the unsuspected and ridiculous tragedy of a career.

On the other hand, a programme is a programme. And unless it is treated with deference it ceases to be

anything but a poor joke. To treat one's programme with exactly the right amount of deference, to live with

not too much and not too little elasticity, is scarcely the simple affair it may appear to the inexperienced.

And still another danger is the danger of developing a policy of rush, of being gradually more and more

obsessed by what one has to do next. In this way one may come to exist as in a prison, and ones life may

cease to be one's own. One may take the dog out for a walk at eight o'clock, and meditate the whole time on

the fact that one must begin to read at a quarter to nine, and that one must not be late.

And the occasional deliberate breaking of one's programme will not help to mend matters. The evil springs

not from persisting without elasticity in what one has attempted, but from originally attempting too much,

from filling one's programme till it runs over. The only cure is to reconstitute the programme, and to attempt

But the appetite for knowledge grows by what it feeds on, and there are men who come to like a constant

breathless hurry of endeavour. Of them it may be said that a constant breathless hurry is better than an eternal

In any case, if the programme exhibits a tendency to be oppressive, and yet one wishes not to modify it, an

excellent palliative is to pass with exaggerated deliberation from one portion of it to another; for example, to

spend five minutes in perfect mental quiescence between chaining up the St. Bernard and opening the book;

in other words, to waste five minutes with the entire consciousness of wasting them.

The last, and chiefest danger which I would indicate, is one to which I have already referredthe risk of a

A failure at the commencement may easily kill outright the newborn impulse towards a complete vitality, and

therefore every precaution should be observed to avoid it. The impulse must not be overtaxed. Let the pace

And, having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in

Finally, in choosing the first occupations of those evening hours, be guided by nothing whatever but your

It is a fine thing to be a walking encyclopaedia of philosophy, but if you happen to have no liking for

philosophy, and to have a like for the natural history of streetcries, much better leave philosophy alone, and