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Page 3
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. 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.
I said the affair was a miracle. Is it not?
You have to live on this twenty-four 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 happiness--the elusive prize
that you are all clutching for, my friends!--depends on that.
Strange that the newspapers, so enterprising and up-to-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 more--or 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 twenty-four 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 twenty-four 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 himself--
which of us has not been saying to himself all his life: "I shall
alter that when I have a little more time"?
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 the minute practical examination of daily time-
expenditure.
II
THE DESIRE TO EXCEED ONE'S PROGRAMME
"But," someone may remark, with the English disregard of everything
except the point, "what is he driving at with his twenty-four hours
a day? I have no difficulty in living on twenty-four 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 twenty-four hours a day, to content one's self with twenty-four
hours a day!"
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