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Page 6
A failure or so, in itself, would not matter, if it did not incur a
loss of self-esteem and of self-confidence. 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 twenty-four 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 livelihood--how 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 of the moment for
the other eight hours.
IV
THE CAUSE OF THE TROUBLES
In order to come to grips at once with the question of time-
expenditure 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 and every man's case is special.
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 others who do not have to work so long.
Fortunately the financial side of existence does not interest us
here; for our present purpose the clerk at a pound a week is exactly
as well off as the millionaire in Carlton House-terrace.
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 two-thirds 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 what I say.)
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 attitude, unconscious though it be, of course
kills his interest in the odd sixteen hours, with the result that,
even if he does not waste them, he does not count them; he regards
them simply as margin.
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 two-thirds of his existence subservient
to one-third, for which admittedly he has no absolutely feverish
zest, how can he hope to live fully and completely? He cannot.
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
wage-earner; 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 executors will
have to pay estate duty) depends on it.
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