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Page 8
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 three-quarters 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
energy--the 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 forty-five 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 immortal soul.
VI
REMEMBER HUMAN NATURE
I have incidentally mentioned the vast expanse of forty-four 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
years--in fact, until I was approaching forty--my own week consisted
of seven days. I was constantly being informed by older and wiser
people that more work, more genuine living, could be got out of six
days than out of seven.
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
(super-programme, 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 six-day programme without the sensation
of being poorer, of being a backslider.
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 a week.
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