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Human Machine - Arnold Bennett · The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

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  Speaker 1: Chapter one of the Human Machine. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
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  Speaker 1: by Ruth Golding The Human Machine by Arnold Bennett, Chapter one,
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  Speaker 1: Taking oneself for granted, there are men who are capable
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  Speaker 1: of loving a machine more deeply than they can love
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  Speaker 1: a woman. They are among the happiest men on earth.
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  Speaker 1: This is not a sneer meanly shot from cover at women.
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  Speaker 1: It is simply a statement of notorious facts. Men who
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  Speaker 1: worry themselves to distraction over the perfecting of a machine
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  Speaker 1: are indubitably blessed beyond their kind. Most of us have
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  Speaker 1: known such men. Yesterday they were constructing motor cars, but
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  Speaker 1: to day airplane in the air, or at any rate
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  Speaker 1: they ought to be according to the inventors, Watch the inventors.
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  Speaker 1: Inventioners not usually their principal business. They must invent in
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  Speaker 1: their spare time. They must invent before breakfast, Invent in
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  Speaker 1: the strand between lionses and the office. Invent after dinner.
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  Speaker 1: Invent on Sundays, see with what ardor they rush home
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  Speaker 1: of a night. See how these seas a half holiday,
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  Speaker 1: like hungry dogs a bone. They don't want golf bridge, limericks, novels,
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  Speaker 1: illustrated magazines, clubs, whiskey, starting prices, hints about neckties, political meetings, yarns,
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  Speaker 1: comic songs and turic salts, nor the smiles that situate
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  Speaker 1: between a gay corsage and a picture hat. They never
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  Speaker 1: wonder at a loss what they will do next. Their
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  Speaker 1: evenings never drag, are always too short. You may indeed
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  Speaker 1: catch them at twelve o'clock at night on the flat
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  Speaker 1: of their backs, but not in bed, No, in a
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  Speaker 1: shed under a machine, holding a candle whose paths drop
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  Speaker 1: fatness up to the connecting rod that is strained, or
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  Speaker 1: the wheel that is out of center. They are continually interested,
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  Speaker 1: nay enthralled. They have a machine and they are perfecting it.
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  Speaker 1: They get one part right, and then another goes wrong,
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  Speaker 1: and they get that right, and then another goes wrong,
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  Speaker 1: and so on. When they are quite sure they have
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  Speaker 1: reached perfection, fourth issues the machine out of the shed,
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  Speaker 1: and in five minutes is smashed up together with a
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  Speaker 1: limb or so of the inventors, just because they had
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  Speaker 1: been quite sure too soon. Then the whole business starts again,
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  Speaker 1: they do not give up. That particular wreck was, of course,
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  Speaker 1: due to a mere oversight. The whole business starts again,
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  Speaker 1: for they have glimpsed perfection, They have the gleam of
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  Speaker 1: perfection in their souls. Thus their lives run away. They
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  Speaker 1: will never fly, you remarked, cynically, Well if they don't. Besides,
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  Speaker 1: what about right with all your cynicism, have you never
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  Speaker 1: envied them their machine and their passionate interest in it?
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  Speaker 1: You know, perhaps the moment, when brushing in front of
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  Speaker 1: the glass you detected your first gray hair. You stopped brushing,
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  Speaker 1: then you resumed brushing hastily. You pretended not to be shocked,
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  Speaker 1: but you were. Perhaps, you know, a more disturbing moment
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  Speaker 1: than that, the moment when it suddenly occurred to you
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  Speaker 1: that you had arrived as far as you ever will arrive,
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  Speaker 1: and you had realized as much of your early dream
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  Speaker 1: as you ever will realize, And the realization was utterly
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  Speaker 1: unlike the dream. The marriage was excessively prosaic and eternal,
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  Speaker 1: not at all what you expected it to be, and
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  Speaker 1: your illusions were dissipated, And games and hobbies had an
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  Speaker 1: unpleasant core of tedium and futility, and the ideal tobacco
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  Speaker 1: mixture did not exist, and one literary masterpiece resembled another,
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  Speaker 1: and all the days that are to come will more
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  Speaker 1: or less resemble the present day until you die. And
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  Speaker 1: in an illuminating flash you under stood what all those
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  Speaker 1: people were driving at when they wrote such unconscionably long
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  Speaker 1: letters to the telegraph as to life being worth living
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  Speaker 1: or not worth living. And there was naught to be
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  Speaker 1: done but face the grame, monotonous future and pretend to
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  Speaker 1: be cheerful, with the worm of annui gnawing at your heart.
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  Speaker 1: In a word, the moment when it occurred to you
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  Speaker 1: that yours is the common lot in that moment, have
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  Speaker 1: you not wished, do not continually wish for an exhaustless machine,
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  Speaker 1: a machine that you could never get to the end of.
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  Speaker 1: Would you not give your head to be lying on
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  Speaker 1: the flat of your back, peering with a candle, dirty foiled,
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  Speaker 1: catching cold, but absorbed in the pursuit of an object.
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  Speaker 1: Have you not gloomily regretted that you were born without
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  Speaker 1: a macae turn because there is really something about a machine.
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  Speaker 1: It has never struck you that you do possess a machine,
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  Speaker 1: Oh blind, oh dull it has never struck you that
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  Speaker 1: you have at hand a machine wonderful, beyond all mechanisms
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  Speaker 1: in sheds, intricate, delicately adjustable, of astounding and miraculous possibilities,
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  Speaker 1: interminably interesting. That machine is yourself. This fellow is preaching.
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  Speaker 1: I won't have it, you exclaim resentfully, dear sir, I
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  Speaker 1: am not preaching, and even if I were, I think
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  Speaker 1: you would have it. I think I can, anyhow keep
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  Speaker 1: hold of your button for a while, though you pull hard.
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  Speaker 1: I'm not preaching. I am simply bent on calling your
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  Speaker 1: attention to a fact which has perhaps wholly or partially
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  Speaker 1: escaped you, namely, that you are the most fascinating bit
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  Speaker 1: of machinery that ever was. You do yourself less than justice.
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  Speaker 1: It is said that men are only interested in themselves.
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  Speaker 1: The truth is that, as a rule, men are interested
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  Speaker 1: in every mortal thing except themselves. They have a habit
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  Speaker 1: of taking themselves for granted, and that habit is responsible
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  Speaker 1: for nine tenths of the boredom and despair on the
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  Speaker 1: face of the planet. A man will wake up in
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  Speaker 1: the middle of the night, usually owing to some form
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  Speaker 1: of delightful excess, and his brain will be very active, indeed,
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  Speaker 1: for a space ere he can go to sleep again.
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  Speaker 1: In that candid hour, after the exaltation of the evening
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  Speaker 1: and before the hope of the dawn, he will see
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  Speaker 1: everything in its true colors, except himself. There is nothing
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  Speaker 1: like a sleepless couch for a clear vision of one's environment.
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  Speaker 1: He will see all his wife's faults and the hopelessness
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  Speaker 1: of trying to cure them. He will momentarily see, though
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  Speaker 1: with less sharpness of outline, his own faults. He will
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  Speaker 1: probably decide that the anxieties of children aren't the way
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  Speaker 1: the joys connected with children. He will admit all the
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  Speaker 1: shortcomings of existence, will face them like a man, grimly,
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  Speaker 1: sourly in a sturdy despair. He will mutter, of course
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  Speaker 1: I'm angry. Who wouldn't be. Of course I'm disappointed. Did
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  Speaker 1: I expect this twenty years ago? Yes, we ought to
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  Speaker 1: save more, but we don't. So there you are. I'm
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  Speaker 1: bound to worry. I know I should be better, sure
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  Speaker 1: if I didn't smoke so much. I know there's absolutely
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  Speaker 1: no sense at all in taking liqures absurd to be
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  Speaker 1: ruffled with her when she's in one of her moods.
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  Speaker 1: I don't have enough exercise, can't be regular somehow not
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  Speaker 1: the slightest use hoping that things will be different, because
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  Speaker 1: I know they won't. Queer world never really what you
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  Speaker 1: may call happy in her now if things were different,
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  Speaker 1: he loses consciousness, observe he has taken himself for granted,
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  Speaker 1: just glancing at his faults and looking away again. It
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  Speaker 1: is his environment that has occupied his attention, and his
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  Speaker 1: environment things that he would wish to have different. Did
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  Speaker 1: he not know, out of the fullness of experience that
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  Speaker 1: it is futile to desire such a change. What he
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  Speaker 1: wants is a pipe that won't put itself into his mouth,
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  Speaker 1: a glass that won't leap of its own accord to
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  Speaker 1: his lips, money that won't slip untouched out of his pocket,
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  Speaker 1: Legs that, without asking will carry him certain miles every
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  Speaker 1: day in the open air, Habits that practice themselves, a
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  Speaker 1: wife that will expand and contract according to his humors,
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  Speaker 1: like a Vernica bookcase, always complete but never finished. Wise man,
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  Speaker 1: he perceives at once that he can't have these things,
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  Speaker 1: and so he resigns himself to the universe and settles
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  Speaker 1: down to a permanent, restrained discontent. No one shall say
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  Speaker 1: he is unreasonable. You see, he has given no attention
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  Speaker 1: to the machine. Let us not call it a flying machine,
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  Speaker 1: let us call it simply an automobile. There it is
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  Speaker 1: on the road, jolting, screeching, rattling, perfuming, And there he
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  Speaker 1: is saying this road ought to be as smooth as velvet.
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  Speaker 1: That hill in front is ridiculous, and the descent on
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  Speaker 1: the other side positively dangerous. And it's all turns. I
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  Speaker 1: can't see a hundred yards in front. He has a
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  Speaker 1: wild idea of trying to force the county council to
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  Speaker 1: sand paper the road, or of employing the new Territorial
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  Speaker 1: Army to remove the hill, but he dismisses that idea.
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  Speaker 1: He is so reasonable he accepts all. He sits clothed
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  Speaker 1: in reasonableness on the machine and accepts all ass you exclaim.
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  Speaker 1: Why doesn't he get down and inflate that tire? For
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  Speaker 1: one thing? Anyone can see the sparking apparatus is wrong,
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  Speaker 1: and it's perfectly certain the gearbox wants oil. Why doesn't he?
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  Speaker 1: I will tell you why he doesn't, just because he
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  Speaker 1: isn't aware that he is on a machine at all.
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  Speaker 1: He has never examined what he is on, and at
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  Speaker 1: the back of his consciousness is a dim idea that
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  Speaker 1: he is perched on a piece of solid, immutable rock
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  Speaker 1: that runs on casters end of chapter one, Chapter two
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  Speaker 1: of The Human Machine by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox recording
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  Speaker 1: is in the public domain. Chapter two Amateurs in the
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  Speaker 1: Art of Living. Considering that we have to spend the
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  Speaker 1: whole of our lives in this human machine, considering that
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  Speaker 1: it is our sole means of contact and compromise with
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  Speaker 1: the rest of the world, we really do devote to
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  Speaker 1: it very little attention. When I say we, I mean
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  Speaker 1: our inmost spirits, the instinctive part, the mystery within that exists.
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  Speaker 1: And when I say the human machine, I mean the
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  Speaker 1: brain and the body, and chiefly the brain. The expression
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  Speaker 1: of the soul by means of the brain and body
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  Speaker 1: is what we call the art of living. We certainly
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  Speaker 1: do not learn this art at school to any appreciable extent.
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  Speaker 1: At school, we are taught that it is necessary to
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  Speaker 1: fling our arms and legs to and fro for so
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  Speaker 1: many hours per diem. We are also shown practically that
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  Speaker 1: our brains are capable of performing certain useful tricks, and
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  Speaker 1: that if we do not compel our brains to perform
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  Speaker 1: those tricks, we shall suffer. Thus, one day we run
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  Speaker 1: home and proclaim to our delighted parents that eleven twelves
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  Speaker 1: are one hundred and thirty two a feat of the brain.
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  Speaker 1: So it goes on until our parents begin to look
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  Speaker 1: up to us because we can chatter of coast signs
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  Speaker 1: or sketch The foreign policy of Louis the fourteenth good,
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  Speaker 1: but not a word about the principles of the art
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  Speaker 1: of living. Yet only a few detached rules from our parents,
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  Speaker 1: to be blindly followed when particular crises supervene. And indeed,
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  Speaker 1: it would be absurd to talk to a schoolboy about
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  Speaker 1: the expression of his soul. He would probably mutter a monosyllable,
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  Speaker 1: which is not mice. Of course, school is merely a
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  Speaker 1: preparation for living, unless one goes to a university, in
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  Speaker 1: which case it is of preparation for university. One is
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  Speaker 1: supposed to turn one's attention to living when these preliminaries
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  Speaker 1: are over, say at the age of about twenty, assuredly
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  Speaker 1: one lives. Then There is, however, nothing new in that,
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  Speaker 1: for one has been living all the time in a
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  Speaker 1: fashion all the time one has been using the machine
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  Speaker 1: without understanding it. But does one school and college being
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  Speaker 1: over enter upon a study of the machine not a bit.
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  Speaker 1: The question then becomes not how to live, but how
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  Speaker 1: to obtain and retain a position in which one will
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  Speaker 1: be able to live. How to get minute portions of
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  Speaker 1: dead animals and plants which one can swallow in order
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  Speaker 1: not to die of hunger. How to acquire and constantly
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  Speaker 1: renew a stock of other portions of dead animals and
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  Speaker 1: plants in which one can envelop oneself in order not
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  Speaker 1: to die of cold. How to procure the exclusive right
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  Speaker 1: of entry into certain huts where one may sleep and
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  Speaker 1: eat without being rained upon by the clouds of heaven,
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  Speaker 1: and so forth. And when one has realized this ambition,
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  Speaker 1: there comes the desire to be able to double the operation,
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  Speaker 1: and do it not for one's self alone, but for
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  Speaker 1: oneself and another marriage. But no scientific sustained attention is
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  Speaker 1: yet given to the real business of living, of smooth
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  Speaker 1: intercourse of self expression, of conscious adaptation to environment. In
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  Speaker 1: brief to the study of the machine. At thirty, the
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  Speaker 1: chances are that a man will understand better the draft
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  Speaker 1: of a chimney than his own respiratory apparatus to name
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  Speaker 1: one of the simple obvious things. And as for understanding
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  Speaker 1: the working of his own brain, what an idea as
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  Speaker 1: for the skill to avoid the waste of power involved
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  Speaker 1: by friction in the business of living? Do we give
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  Speaker 1: an hour to it? In a month? Do we ever
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  Speaker 1: at all examine it? Save in an amateurish and clumsy fashion.
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  Speaker 1: A young lady produces a watercolor drawing. Very nice, we say,
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  Speaker 1: and add to ourselves, for an amateur. But our living
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  Speaker 1: is more amateurish than that young lady's drawing, though surely
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  Speaker 1: we ought every one of us to be professionals at living.
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  Speaker 1: When we have been engaged in the preliminaries to living
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  Speaker 1: for about fifty five years, we begin to think about
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  Speaker 1: slacking off. Up till this period, our reason for not
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  Speaker 1: having scientifically studied the art of living, the perfecting and
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  Speaker 1: use of the finer parts of the machine, is not
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  Speaker 1: that we have lacked leisure. Most of us have enormous
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  Speaker 1: heaps of leisure, but that we have simply been too
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  Speaker 1: absorbed in the preliminaries, have in fact treated the preliminaries
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  Speaker 1: to the business as the business itself. Then, at fifty five,
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  Speaker 1: if we ought at last to begin to live our
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  Speaker 1: lives with professional skill. As a professional painter paints pictures. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: but we can't. It is too late. Then neither painters,
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  Speaker 1: nor acrobats, nor any professionals can be formed at the
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  Speaker 1: age of fifty five. Thus we finish our lives amateurishly
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  Speaker 1: as we have begun them. And when the machine creaks
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  Speaker 1: and sets our teeth on edge, or refuses to obey
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  Speaker 1: the steering wheel and deposits us in the ditch, we say,
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  Speaker 1: can't be helped or doesn't matter. It will all be
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  Speaker 1: the same a hundred years. Hence, or I must make
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  Speaker 1: the best of things. And we try to believe that
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  Speaker 1: in accepting the status quo, we have justified the status quo.
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  Speaker 1: And all the time we feel our insincerity. You exclaim
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  Speaker 1: that I exaggerate. I do to force into prominence and
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  Speaker 1: aspect of affairs usually overlooked, it is absolutely necessary to exaggerate.
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  Speaker 1: Poetic license is one name for this kind of exaggeration.
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  Speaker 1: But I exaggerate very little, indeed much less than perhaps
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  Speaker 1: you think. I know that you are going to point
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  Speaker 1: out to me that vast numbers of people regularly spend
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  Speaker 1: a considerable portion of their leisure in striving after self improvement, granted,
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  Speaker 1: and I am glad of it. But I should be
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  Speaker 1: gladder if their strivings bore more closely upon the daily
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  Speaker 1: business of living, of self expression, without friction and without
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  Speaker 1: futile desires. See this man who regularly studies every evening
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  Speaker 1: of his life. He has genuinely understood the nature of poetry,
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  Speaker 1: and his taste is admirable. He recites verse with truth feeling,
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  Speaker 1: and may be said to be highly cultivated. Poetry is
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  Speaker 1: a continual source of pleasure to him. True, But why
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  Speaker 1: is he always complaining about not receiving his deserts in
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  Speaker 1: the office. Why is he worried about finance? Why does
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  Speaker 1: he so often sulk with his wife? Why does he
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  Speaker 1: persist in eating more than his digestion will tolerate. It
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  Speaker 1: was not written in the book of Fate that he
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  Speaker 1: should complain and worry and sulk and suffer. And if
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  Speaker 1: he was a professional at living, he would not do
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  Speaker 1: these things. There is no reason why he should do them,
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  Speaker 1: except the reason that he has never learnt his business,
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  Speaker 1: never studied the human machine as a whole, never really
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  Speaker 1: thought rationally about living. Supposing you encountered an automobilist who
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  Speaker 1: was swerving and grinding all over the road, and you
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  Speaker 1: stopped to ask what was the matter, and he replied,
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  Speaker 1: never mind, what's the matter? Just look at my lovelier
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  Speaker 1: settylene lamps, how they shine, and how I have polished them.
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  Speaker 1: You would not regard him as a Clifford RP or
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  Speaker 1: even as an entirely sane man. So with our student
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  Speaker 1: of poetry, it is indubitable that a large amount of
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  Speaker 1: what is known as self improvement is simply self indulgence,
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  Speaker 1: a form of pleasure which only incidentally improves a particular
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  Speaker 1: part of the machine, and even that to the neglect
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  Speaker 1: of far more important parts. My aim is to direct
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  Speaker 1: a man's attention to himself as a whole, considered as
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  Speaker 1: a machine, complex and capable of quite extraordinary efficiency, for
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  Speaker 1: traveling through this world smoothly in any desired manner, with
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  Speaker 1: satisfaction not only to himself, but to the people he
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  Speaker 1: meets en route, and the people who are overtaking him
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  Speaker 1: and whom he is overtaking. My aim is to show
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  Speaker 1: that only an inappreciable fraction of our ordered and sustained
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  Speaker 1: efforts is given to the business of actual living, as
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  Speaker 1: distinguished from the Preliminaries to living end of chapter two,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Chapter three of The Human Machine by Arnold Bennett. This
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording is in the public domain, Chapter three, The
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: Brain as a gentleman at large. It is not as
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  Speaker 1: if in this business of daily living we were seriously
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  Speaker 1: hampered by ignorance, either as to the results which we
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  Speaker 1: ought to obtain, or as to the general means which
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  Speaker 1: we must implay in order to obtain them. With all
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  Speaker 1: our absorption in the mere preliminaries to living, and all
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  Speaker 1: our carelessness about living itself, we arrive pretty soon at
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  Speaker 1: a fairly accurate notion of what satisfactory living is, and
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  Speaker 1: we perceive with some clearness the methods necessary to success.
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  Speaker 1: I have pictured the man who wakes up in the
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  Speaker 1: middle of the night and sees the horrid semi fiasco
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  Speaker 1: of his life. But let me picture the man who
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  Speaker 1: wakes up, refreshed early on a fine summer morning and
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  Speaker 1: looks into his mind with the eyes of hope and experience,
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  Speaker 1: not experience and despair. That man will pass a delightful
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  Speaker 1: half hour in thinking upon the scheme of the universe
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  Speaker 1: as it affects himself. He is quite clear that contentment
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  Speaker 1: depends on his own acts, and that no power can
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  Speaker 1: prevent him from performing those acts. He plans everything out,
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  Speaker 1: and before he gets up he knows precisely what he
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  Speaker 1: must and will do in certain foreseen crises and junctures.
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  Speaker 1: He sincerely desires to live efficiently. Who would wish to
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  Speaker 1: make a daily mess of existence? And he knows the
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  Speaker 1: way to realize the desire. And yet mark me that
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  Speaker 1: man will not have been an hour on his feet
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  Speaker 1: on this difficult earth before the machine has unmistakably gone wrong,
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  Speaker 1: the machine which was designed to do this work of living,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: which is capable of doing it thoroughly well, but which
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: has not been put into order. What is the use
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: of consulting the map of life and tracing the itinerary,
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: and getting the machine out of the shed and making
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: a start if half the nuts are loose, or the
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: steering pillar is twisted, or there is no petrol in
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: the tank. Having asked this question, I will drop the
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: mechanical vehicular comparison, which is too rough and crude for
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: the delicacy of the subject. Where has the human machine
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: gone wrong? It has gone wrong in the brain. What
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: is he wrong in the head? Most assuredly, most strictly,
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: he knows none better that when his wife employs a
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: particular tone containing ten grains of asperity, and he replies
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: in a particular tone containing eleven grains, the consequences will
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: be explosive. He knows, on the other hand, that if
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: he replies in a tone containing only one little drop
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: of honey, the consequences may not be unworthy of two
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: reasonable beings. He knows this his brain is fully instructed,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: and lo his brain while arguing that women are really
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: too absurd if that was the point, is sending down
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: orders to the muscles of the throat and mouth which
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: result in at least eleven grains of asperity, and conjugal
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: relations are endangered for the day. He didn't want to
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: do it. His desire was not to do it. He
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: despises himself for doing it, but his brain was not
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: in working order. His brain ran away, raised on its
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: own account against reason, against desire, against mourning resolves, and
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: there he is. That is just one example of the
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: simplest and slightest examples can be multiplied. The man may
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: be a young man whose immediate future depends on his
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: passing and examination, an examination which he is capable of
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: passing on his head, which nothing can prevent him from passing.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: If only his brain will not be so absurd as
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: to give orders to his legs to walk out of
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: the house towards the tennis court, instead of sending them
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: upstairs to the study. If only, having once safely lodged
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: him in the study, his brain will devote itself to
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: the pages of books, instead of dwelling on the image
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: of a nice girl not at all like other girls.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: Or the man may be an old man who will
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: live in perfect comfort, if only his brain will not
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: interminably run round and round in a circle of grievances, apprehensions,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: and fears, which no amount of contemplation can destroy or
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: even ameliorate. The brain, the brain that is the seat
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: of trouble. Well, you say, of course it is. We
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: all know that we don't act as if we did anyway,
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: give us more brains. Lord Ejaculated a great writer personally,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: I think he would have been wiser if he had
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: asked first the power to keep in order such brains
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: as we have. We indubitably possess quite enough brains, quite
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: as much as we can handle. The supreme muddlers of
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: living are often people of quite remarkable intellectual faculty, with
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: a quite remarkable gift of being wise for others. The
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: pity is that our brains have a way of wandering,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: as it is politely called brain wandering, is indeed now
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: recognized as a specific disease. I wonder what you, o,
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: business man with an office in Ludgate Circus, would say
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: to your office boy, whom you had dispatched on an
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: urgent message to Westminster, and whom you found larking around
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Euston's station when you rushed to catch your week end train. Please, sir,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: I started to go to Westminster, but there's something funny
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: in my limbs that makes me go up all manner
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: of streets. I can't help it, sir, can't you? You
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: would say, well, you had to go and be somebody
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: else's office boy. Your brain is something worse than that
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: office boy, something more insidiously potent for evil. I conceive
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: the brain of the average, well intentioned manners, possessing the
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: tricks and manners of one of those gentlemen at large, who,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: having nothing very urgent to do, stroll along and offer
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: their services gratis to some shorthanded work of philanthropy. They
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: will commonly demoralize and disorganize the business conduct of an
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: affair in about a fortnight. They come when they like,
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: they go when they like. Sometimes they are exceedingly industrious
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: and obedient, But then there is an even chance that
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: they will surek and follow their own sweet will. And
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: they mustn't be spoken to or pulled up, for have
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: they not kindly volunteered? And are they not giving their
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: days for naught? These persons are the bane of the
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: enterprises in which they condescend to meddle. Now there is
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: a vast deal too much of the gentleman at large
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: about one's brain. One's brain has no right whatever to
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: behave as a gentleman at large, but it in fact does.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: It forgets, it flatly ignores orders. At the critical moment,
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: when pressure is highest, it simply lights a cigarette and
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: goes out for a walk. And we meekly sit down
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: under this behavior. I didn't feel like stewing, says the
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: young man, who, against his wish, will fail in his examination.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: The words were out of my mouth before I knew it,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: says the husband whose wife is a woman. I couldn't
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: get any inspiration to day, says the artist. I can't
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: resist stilton, says the fellow who is dying of greed.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: One can't help one's thoughts, says the old warrior. And
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: this last really voices the secret excuse of all five.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: And you all say to me, my brain is myself.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: How can I alter myself? I was born like that.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: In the first place, you were not born like that.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: You have lapsed to that. And in the second place,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: your brain is not yourself. It is only a part
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: of yourself, and not the highest seat of authority. Do
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: you love your mother, wife, or children with your brain?
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: Do you desire with your brain? Do you, in a word,
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: ultimately and essentially live with your brain? No? Your brain
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: is an instrument. The proof that it is an instrument
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: in the fact that, when extreme necessity urges, you can
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: command your brain to do certain things, and it does them.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: The first of the two great principles which underlie the
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: efficiency of the human machine is this. The brain is
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: a servant exterior to the central force of the ego.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: If it is out of control, the reason is not
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: that it is uncontrollable, but merely that its discipline has
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: been neglected. The brain can be trained as the hand
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: and eye can be trained. It can be made as
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: obedient as a sporting dog, and by similar methods. In
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: the meantime, the indispensable preparation for brain discipline is to
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: form the habit of regarding one's brain as an instrument
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: exterior to one's self, like a tongue or a foot
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: of Chapter three, chapter four of The Human Machine by
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox recording it is in the public domain.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Chapter four The first practical step. The brain is a
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: highly quaint organism. Let me say at once lest I
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: should be cannonaded by physiologists, psychologists, or metaphysicians that by
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: the brain, I mean the faculty which reasons and which
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: gives orders to the muscles. I mean exactly what the
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: plain man means by the brain. The brain is the
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: diplomatist which arranges relations between our instinctive self and the universe.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: And it fulfills its mission when it provides for the
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: maximum of freedom to the instincts with the minimum of friction.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: It argues hues with the instincts, It takes them on
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: one side, and points out the unwisdom of certain performances.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: It catches them by the coat tails when they are
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: about to make fools of themselves. Don't drink all that
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: ic champagne at a draft, it says to one instinct,
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: we may die of it. Don't catch that rude fellow
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: one in the eye, it says to another instinct, he
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: is more powerful than us. It is, in fact a
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: majestic spectacle of common sense, and yet it has the
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: most extraordinary lapses. It is just like that man we
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: all know him and consult him, who is a continual
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: fount of excellent, sagacious advice on everything, but who somehow
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: cannot bring his sagacity to bear on his own personal career.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: In the matter of its own special activities, the brain
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: is usually undisciplined and unreliable. We never know what it
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: will do next. We give it some work to do. Say,
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: as we are walking along the street to the office,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: perhaps it has to devise some scheme for making one
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty pounds suffice for two hundred pounds, Or
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: perhaps it has to plan out the heads of a
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: very important letter. We meet a pretty woman, and a
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: way that undisciplined, sagacious brain runs after her, dropping the
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: scheme or the draft letter and amusing itself with aspirations
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: or regrets for half an hour, an hour, sometimes a day,
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: the serious part of our instinctive self feebly remonstrates, but
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: without effect. Or it may be that we have suffered
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: a great disappointment which is definite and hopeless. Will the brain,
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: like a sensible creature, leave that disappointment alone, and, instead
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: of living in the past, live in the present or
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: the future. Not it, though it knows perfectly well that
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: it is wasting its time and casting a very painful
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: and utterly unnecessary gloom over itself and us. It can
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: so little control its unhealthy, morbid appetite that no expostulations
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: will induce it to behave rationally. Or perhaps after a
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: confabulation with the soul, it has been decided that when
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: next a certain harmful instinct comes into play, the brain
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: shall firmly interfere. Yes, says the brain, I really well
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: watch that. But when the moment arrives, is the brain
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: on the spot. The brain has probably forgotten the affair entirely,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: or remembered it too late, or size as the victorious instinct.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: Not it on the head, Well next time. All this
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: and much more that every reader can supply from his
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: own exciting souvenirs is absurd and ridiculous on the part
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: of the brain. It is a conclusive proof that the
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: brain is out of condition, idle as a nigger, capricious
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: as an actor manager, and eaten to the core with
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: loose habits. Therefore, the brain must be put into training.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: It is the most important part of the human machine
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: by which the soul expresses and develops itself, and it
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: must learn good habits, and primarily it must be taught obedience.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: Obedience can only be taught by imposing one's will, by
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: the sheer force of volition, and the brain must be
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: mastered by willpower. The beginning of wise living lies in
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: the control of the brain by the will, so that
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: the brain may act according to the precepts which the
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: brain itself gives. With an obedient, disciplined brain, a man
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: may live always right up to the standard of his
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: best moments. To teach a child obedience, you tell it
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: to do something, and you see that that something is done.
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: The same with the brain. Here is the foundation of
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: an efficient life and the antidote for the tendency to
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: make a fool of one's self. It is marvelously simple.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: Say to your brain, from nine o'clock to nine thirty
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: this morning, you must dwell without ceasing on a particular topic,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: which I will give you now. It doesn't matter what
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: this topic is. The point is to control and invigorate
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: the brain by exercise, but you may just as well
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: give it a useful time topic to think over. As
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: a futile one, you might give it this. My brain
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: is my servant. I am not the placing of my brain.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: Let it concentrate on these statements for thirty minutes. What
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: you cry, is this the way to an efficient life?
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: Why there's nothing in it? Simple as it may appear,
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: this is the way, and it is the only way.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: As for there being nothing in it, try it. I
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: guarantee that you will fail to keep your brain concentrated
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: on the given idea for thirty seconds, let alone thirty minutes,
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: You will find your brain conducting itself in a manner
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: which would be comic were it not tragic. Your first
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: experiments will result in disheartening failure. For to exact from
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: the brain at will and by will, concentration on a
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: given idea for even so short a period as half
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: an hour is an exceedingly difficult feat and a fatiguing
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: It needs perseverance, It needs a terrible obstinacy on the
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: part of the will. That brain of yours will be
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: hopping about all over the place, and every time it hops,
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: you must bring it back by force to its original position.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: You must absolutely compel it to ignore every idea except
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: the one which you have selected for its attention. You
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: cannot hope to triumph all at once, but you can
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: hope to triumph. There is no royal road to the
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: control of the brain. There is no patent dodge about it,
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: and no complicated function which a plain person may not comprehend.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: It is simply a question of I will, I will,
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: and I will. Italics here are indispensable. Let me resume
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: if efficient living, living up to one's best standard, getting
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: the last ounce of power out of the machine with
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: the minimum of friction. These things depend on the disciplined
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: and vigorous condition of the brain. The brain can be
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: disciplined by learning the habit of obedience, and it can
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: learn the habit of obedience by the practice of concentration.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: Disciplinary concentration, though nothing could have the air of being simpler,
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: is the basis of the whole structure. This fact must
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: be grasped imaginatively. It must be seen and felt. The
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: more regularly concentration is practiced, the more firmly will the
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: imagination grasp the effects of it, both direct and indirect.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: After but a few days of honest trying in the
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: exercise which I have indicated, you will perceive its influence.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: Will grow accustomed to the idea, at first strange in
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: its novelty, of the brain being external to the supreme force,
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: which is you, and in subjection to that force. You will,
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: as a not very distant possibility, see yourself in possession
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: of the power to switch your brain on and off
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: in a particular subject, as you switch electricity on and
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: off in a particular room. The brain will get used
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: to the straight paths of obedience, and a remarkable phenomenon.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: It will, by the mere practice of obedience, become less
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: forgetful and more effective. It will not so frequently give
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: way to an instinct that takes it by surprise. In
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: a word, it will have received a general tonic. With
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: a brain that is improving every day, you can set
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: about the perfecting of the machine in a scientific manner.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: End of chapter four Chapter five of The Human Machine
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: Chapter five habit forming by concentration. As soon as the
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: will has got the upper hand of the brain, as
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: soon as it can say to the brain with a
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: fair certainty of being obeyed, do this, think along these lines,
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: and continue to do so without wandering until I give
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: you leave to stop. Then is the time arrived when
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: the perfecting of the human machine may be undertaken in
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: a large and comprehensive spirit, as a city council undertakes
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: the purification and reconstruction of a city. The tremendous possibilities
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: of an obedient brain will be perceived immediately we begin
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: to reflect upon on what we mean by our character. Now,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: a person's character is and can be, nothing else but
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: the total result of his habits of thought. A person
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: is benevolent because he habitually thinks benevolently. A person is
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: idle because his thoughts dwell habitually on the instant pleasures
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: of idleness. It is true that everybody is born with
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: certain predispositions, and that these predispositions influence very strongly the
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: early formation of habits of thought. But the fact remains
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: that the character is built by long, continued habits of thought.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: If the mature edifice of character usually shows in an
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: exaggerated form the peculiarities of the original predisposition, this merely
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: indicates a probability that the slow erection of the edifice
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: has proceeded at haphazard and that reason has not presided over.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: A child may be born with a tendency to bent
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: shoulders if nothing is done. If, on the contrary, he
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: becomes a clerk and abhors gymnastics, his shoulders will develop
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: an excessive roundness entirely through habit. Whereas if his will,
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: guided by his reason, had compelled the formation of a
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: corrective physical habit, his shoulders might have been, if not
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: quite straight, nearly so. Thus a physical habit the same
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: with a mental habit. The more closely we examine the
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: development of original predispositions, the more clearly we shall see
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: that this development is not inevitable, is not a process
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: which works itself out independently according to mysterious, ruthless laws
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: which we cannot understand. For instance, the effect of an
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: original predisposition may be destroyed by an accidental shock. A
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: young man with an inherited tendency to alcohol may develop
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: into a stern teetotaler through the shock caused by seeing
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: his drunken father strike his mother, Whereas if his father
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: had chanced to be affectionate in drink, the sun might
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: have ended in the gutter. No ruthless law here. It
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: is notorious also that natures are sometimes completely changed in
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: their development by chance momentary contact with natures stronger than themselves.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: From that day, I resolved, et cetera. You know the phrase.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: Often the resolve is not kept, but often it is kept.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: A spark has inflamed the will, The burning will has
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: tyrannized over the brain. New habits have been formed, and
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: the result looks just like a miracle. Now, if these
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: great transformations can be brought about by accident, cannot similar
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: transformations be brought about by a reasonable design at any rate.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: If one starts to bring them about, one starts with
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: the assurance that transformations are not impossible, since they have occurred.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: One starts also in the full knowledge of the influence
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: of habit on life. Take any one of your own habits,
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: mental or physical. You will be able to recall the
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: time when that habit did not exist, or if it
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: did exist, it was scarcely perceptible. And you will discover
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: that nearly all your habits have been formed unconsciously by
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: daily repetitions which bore no relation to a general plan,
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: and which you practiced not noticing. You will be compelled
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: to admit that your character, as it is today is
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: a structure that has been built almost without the aid
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: of an architect higgeldy piggledy anyhow, But occasionally the architect
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: did step in and design something here and there. Among
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: your habits you will find one that you consciously and
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: of deliberate purpose, initiated and persevered with, doubtless owing to
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: some happy influence. What is the difference between that conscious
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: habit and the unconscious habits? None whatever. As regards its
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: effect on the sum of your character, it may be
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: the strongest of all your habits. The only quality that
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: differentiates it from the others is that it has a
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: definite object, most likely a good object, and that it
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: wholly or partially fulfills that object. There is not a
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: man who reads these lines but has, in this detail
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: or that proved in himself that the will. Forcing the
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: brain to repeat the same action again and again can
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: modify the shape of his character, as a sculptor modifies
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: the shape of death, amp Clay. But if a grown
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: man's character is developing from day to day, as it is,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: if nine tenths of the development is due to unconscious
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: action and one tenth to conscious action, and if the
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: one tenth conscious is the most satisfactory part of the
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: total result, why in the name of common sense, henceforward,
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: should not nine tenths instead of one tenth be due
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: to conscious action. What is there to prevent this agreeable consummation?
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: There is nothing whatever to prevent it except in subordination
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: on the part of the brain. And insubordination of the
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: brain can be cured, as I have previously shown, when
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: I see men unhappy and inefficient in the craft of
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: living from sheer crass in attention to their own development,
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: When I see misshapen men building up business and empires
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: and never stopping to build up themselves, When I see
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: dreary men expending precisely the same energy on teaching a
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: dog to walk on its hind legs as would brighten
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: the whole color of their own lives, I feel as
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: if I wanted to give up the ghost, so ridiculous,
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: so fatuous, do the spectacle scene. But of course I
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: do not give up the ghost. The paroxysm passes only
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: I really must cry out. Can't you see what you're missing?
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: Can't you see that you're missing the most interesting thing
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: on earth, far more interesting than businesses, empires and dogs.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: Doesn't it strike you how clumsy and short sighted you are,
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: working always with an inferior machine when you might have
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: a smooth, gliding perfection. Doesn't it strike you how badly
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: you are treating yourself? Listen, you confirm and grumbler, you
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: who make the evening meal hideous with complaints against destiny.
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: For it is you I will single out. Are you
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: aware what people are saying about you behind your back?
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: They are saying that you render yourself and your family
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: miserable by the habit which has grown on you of
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: always grumbling. Surely it isn't as bad as that, you protest. Yes,
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: it is just as bad as that you say. The
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: fact is, I know it's absurd to grumble, but I'm
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: like that. I've tried to stop it, and I can't.
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: How have you tried to stop it. Well, I've made
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: up my mind several times to fight against it, but
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: I never succeed. This is strictly between ourselves. I don't
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: usually admit that I'm a grumbler, considering that you grumble
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: for about an hour and a half every day of
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: your life. It was sanguine, my dear sir, to expect
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: to cure such a habit by means of a solitary
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: intention formed at intervals in the brain and then forgotten. No,
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: you must do more than that. If you will daily
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: fix your brain firmly for half an hour on the
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: truth you know it to be a truth, that grumbling
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: is absurd and futile, your brain will henceforward begin to
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: form a habit in that direction. It will begin to
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: be molded to the idea that grumbling is absurd and futile.
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: In odd moments, when it isn't thinking of anything in particular,
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: it will suddenly remember that grumbling is absurd and futile.
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: When you sit down to the meal and open your
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: mouth to say I can't think what my ass of
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: a partner means by it will remember that grumbling is
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: absurd and futile, and will alter the arrangement of your throat, teeth,
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: and tongue, so that you will say, what fine weather
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: we're having. In brief, it will remember involuntarily by a
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: new habit. All who look into their experience will admit
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: that the failure to replace old habits by new ones
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: is due to the fact that at the critical moment,
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: the brain does not remember. It simply forgets. The practice
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: of concentration will cure that all depends on regular concentration.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: This grumbling is an instance, though chosen not quite at
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: hazard end of chapter five, Chapter six of The Human
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: Machine by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox recording is in the
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: public domain Chapter six law over the Nodle. Having proved
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: by personal experiment the truth of the first of the
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: two great principles which concern the human machine, namely that
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: the brain is a servant, not a master, and can
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: be controlled, we may now come to the second. The
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: second is more fundamental than the first, but it can
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: be of no use until the first is understood and
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: put into practice. The human machine is an apparatus of
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: brain and muscle for enabling the ego to develop freely
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: in the universe by which it is surrounded without friction.
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: Its function is to convert the facts of the universe
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: to the best advantage of the ego. The facts of
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: the universe are the material with which it is its
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: business to deal, not the facts of an ideal universe,
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: but the fact of this universe. Hence, when friction occurs,
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: when the fact acts of the universe cease to be
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: of advantage to the ego, the fault is in the machine.
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: It is not the solar system that has gone wrong,
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: but the human machine. Second great principle. Therefore, in case
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: of friction, the machine is always at fault. You can
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: control nothing but your own mind. Even your two year
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: old babe may defy you by the instinctive force of
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: its personality. But your own mind you can control. Your
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: can enter except by your permission. Your own mind has
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: the power to transmute every external phenomenon to its own purposes.
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: If happiness arises from cheerfulness, kindliness, and rectitude, and who
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: will deny it? What possible combination of circumstances is going
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: to make you unhappy so long as the machine remains
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: in order. If self development consists in the utilization of
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: one's environment, not utilization of somebody else's environment. How can
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: your environment prevent you from developing? You would look rather
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: foolish without it anyway. In that nodle of yours is
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: everything necessary for development, for the maintaining of dignity, for
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: the achieving of happiness, And you are absolute lord over
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: the nodle. Will you but exercise the powers of lordship?
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: Why worry about the contents of somebody else's nodle, in
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: which you can be nothing but an intruder, when you
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: may arrive at a better result with absolute certainty, by
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: confining your activities to your own. Look within the kingdom
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: of heaven is within you. Oh yes, you protest all
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: that's old. Epictetus said that, Marcus Aurelius said that Christ
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: said that they did. I admit it readily. But if
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: you were ruffled this morning because your motor omnibus broke
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: down and you had to take a cab, then, so
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: far as you are concerned, these great teachers lived in vain. You,
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: calling yourself a reasonable man, are going about dependent for
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: your happiness, dignity, and growth upon a thousand things over
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: which you have no control, And the most exquisitely organized
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: machine for insuring happiness, dignity, and growth is rusting away
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: inside you and all because you have a sort of
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: notion that a saying said two thousand years ago cannot
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: be practical. You remarked sagely to your child. No, my child,
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: you cannot have that moon, and you will accomplish nothing
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: by crying for it. Now Here is this beautiful box
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: of bricks, by means of which you may amuse yourself
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: while learning many wonderful matters and improving your mind. You
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: must try to be content with what you have and
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: to make the best of it. If you had the moon,
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: you wouldn't be any happier. Then you lie awake half
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: the night repining because the last post has brought a
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: letter to the effect that the board cannot entertain your
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: application for et cetera. You say the two cases are
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: not alike. They are not. Your child has never heard
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: of Epictetus. On the other hand, justice is the moon
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: at your age, you surely know that. But the directors
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: ought to have granted my application, You insist, exactly. I agree,
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: But we are not in a universe of aughts. You
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: have a special apparatus within you for dealing with a
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: universe where aughts are flagrantly disregarded, and you are not
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: you using it. You are lying awake, keeping your wife awake,
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: injuring your health, injuring hers, losing your dignity and your cheerfulness.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: Why because you think that these antiqs and performances will
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: influence the board, Because you think that they will put
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: you into a better condition for dealing with your environment tomorrow,
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: not a bit simply because the machine is at fault.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: In certain cases we do make use of our machines
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: as well as their sad condition of neglect will allow.
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: But in other cases we behave in an extraordinarily irrational manner. Thus,
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: if we sally out and get caught in a heavy shower,
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: we do not, unless very far gone in foolishness, sit
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: down and curse the weather. We put up our umbrella
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: if we have one, and if not, we hurry home.
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: We may grumble, but it is not serious grumbling. We
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: accept the shower as a fact of the universe and
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: control ourselves. Thus, Also, if by a sudden catastrophe we
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: lose somebody who is important to us, we grieve, but
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: we control ourselves recognizing one of those hazards of destiny,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: from which not even millionaires are exempt, and the result
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: on our ego is usually to improve it in essential respects.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: But there are other strokes of destiny, other facts of
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: the universe, against which we protest as a child protests
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: when deprived of the moon. Take the case of an
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: individual with an imperfect idea of honesty. Now that individual
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: is the consequence of his father and mother, and his environment,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: and his father and mother of theirs, and so backwards
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: to the single celled protoplasm. That individual is a result
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: of the cosmic or order, the inevitable product of cause
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: and effect. We know that we must admit that he
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: is just as much a fact of the universe as
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: a shower of rain or a storm at sea that
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: swallows a ship. We freely grant in the abstract that
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: there must be, at the present stage of evolution a
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: certain number of persons with unfair minds. We are quite
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: ready to contemplate such an individual with philosophy, until it
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: happens that, in the course of the progress of the
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: solar system, he runs up against ourselves. Then listen to
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: the outcry. Listen to the continual explosions of a righteous
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: man aggrieved. The individual may be our clerk, cashier, son, father, brother, partner, wife, employer.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: We are ill used, we are being treated unfairly. We kick,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: we scream, We nourish the inward sense of grievance that
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: eats the core out of content. We sit down in
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: the rain. We decline to think of umbrellas or to
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: run to shelter. We cannot that that individual is a
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: fact which the universe has been slowly manufacturing for millions
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: of years. Our attitude implies that we want eternity to
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: roll back and begin again in such wise that we,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: at any rate shall not be disturbed. Though we have
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: a machine for the transmutation of facts into food for
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: our growth, we do not dream of using it. But
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: we say he is doing us harm, where in our
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: minds he has robbed us of our peace, our comfort,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: our happiness, our good temper. Even if he has, we
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: might just as well inveigh against a shower. But has
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: he What was our brain doing while this naughty person
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: stepped in and robbed us of the only possessions worth having. No, No,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: it is not that he has done us harm. The
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: one cheerful item in a universe of stony facts is
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: that no one can harm anybody except himself. It is
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: merely that we have been silly, precisely as silly as
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: if we had taken a seat in the rain with
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: a folded umbrella by our side. The machine is at fault.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: I fancy we are now obtaining glimpses of what that
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: phrase really means. End of Chapter six, Chapter seven of
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: The Human Machine by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox recording is
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: in the public domain. Chapter seven. What living chiefly is?
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: It is in intercourse, social, sentimental, or business with one's fellows,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: that the qualities and the condition of the human machine
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: are put to the test and strained. That part of
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: my life, which I conduct by myself without reference, or
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: at any rate without direct reference to others, I can
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: usually manage in such a way that the gods do
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: not positively weep at the spectacle thereof. My environment is simpler,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: less puzzling. When I am alone, my calm and my
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: self control, less liable to violent fluctuations, impossible to be
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: disturbed by a chair, Impossible that a chair should get
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: on one's nerves, Impossible to blame a chair for not
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: being as reasonable as archangelic as I am myself. But
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: when it comes to people, well, that is living. Then
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: the art of life, the art of extracting all its
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: power from the human machine, does not lie chiefly in
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: processes of bookish culture, nor in contemplations of the beauty
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: and majesty of existence. It lies chiefly in keeping the peace,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: the whole piece, and nothing but the peace with those
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: with whom one is thrown. Is it in sitting ecstatic
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: over Shakespeare or Herbert Spencer, solitary in my room of
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: a night, that I am improving myself and learning to live?
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: Or is it in watching over all my daily human contacts.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: Do not seek to escape the comparison by insinuating that
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: I despise study, or by pointing out that the eternal
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: verities are beyond dailiness. Nothing of the kind. I am
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: so silly about books that merely to possess them gives
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: me pleasure. And if the verities are good for eternity,
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: they ought to be good for a day if I
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: cannot exchange them for daily coin, if I can't buy
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: happiness for a single day, because I've nothing less than
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: an eternal verity about me, and nobody has sufficient change.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: Then my eternal verity is not an eternal verity. It
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: is merely an unnegotiable bit of glass called a diamond,
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: or even a note on the bank of engraving. I
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: can say to myself when I rise in the morning,
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: I am master of my brain. No one can get
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: in there and rage about like a bull in a
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: china shop. If my companions on the planet's crust choose
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: to rage about, they cannot affect me. I will not
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: let them. I have power to maintain my own calm,
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: and I will No earthly being can force me to
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: be false to my principles, or to be blind to
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: the beauty of the universe, or to be gloomy, or
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: to be irritable, or to complain against my lot. For
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: these things depend on the brain. Cheerfulness, kindliness, and honest
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: thinking are all within the department of the brain. The
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: disciplined brain can accomplish them. And my brain is disciplined,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: and I will discipline it more and more as the
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: days pass. I am therefore independent of hazard, and I
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: will back myself to conduct all intercourse as becomes a
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: rational creature. I can say this, I can ram this
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: argument by force of will into my brain, and by
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: dint of repeating it often enough, I shall assuredly arrive
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: at supreme virtues of reason. I should assuredly conquer the brain,
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: being such a machine of habit, even if I did
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: not take the trouble to consider in the slightest degree
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: what manner of things my fellow men are by acting
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: merely in my own interests. But the way of perfection
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: I speak relatively will be immensely shortened and smoothed if
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: I do consider dispassionately the case of the other human machines.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: Thus the truth is that my attitude towards my fellows
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: is fundamentally and totally wrong, and that it entails on
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: my thinking machine, a strain which is quite unnecessary, though
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: I may have arranged the machine so as to withstand
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: the strain successfully. The secret of smooth living is a
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: calm cheerfulness, which will leave me always in full possession
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: of my reasoning faculty, in order that I may live
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: by reason instead of by instinct and momentary passion. The
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: secret of calm cheerfulness is kindliness. No person can be
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: consistently cheerful and calm who does not consistently think kind thoughts.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: But how can I be kindly when I pass the
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: major portion of my time in blaming the people who
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: surround me, who are part of my environment. If I
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: blaming achieve some approach to kindliness, it is only by
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: a great and exhausting effort of self mastery. The inmost
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: secret then lies in not blaming, in not judging and
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: emitting verdicts. Oh, I do not blame by word of mouth.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: I am far too advanced for such a purility. I
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: keep the blame in my own way, rest where it festers.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: I am always privately forgiving, which is bad for me,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: because you know there is nothing to forgive. I do
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: not have to forgive bad weather. Nor if I found
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: myself in an earthquake, should I have to forgive the earthquake.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: All blame, uttered or unexpressed, is wrong. I do not
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: blame myself. I can explain myself to myself. I can
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: invariably explain myself. If I forged a friend's name on
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: a check, I should explain the affair quite satisfactorily to myself.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: And instead of blaming myself, I should sympathize with myself
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: for having been driven into such an excessively awkward corner.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: Let me examine honestly my mental processes, and I must
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: admit that my attitude towards others is entirely different from
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: my attitude towards myself. I must admit that, in the
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: seclusion of my mind, though I say not a word,
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: I am constantly blaming others because I am not happy.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: Whenever I bump up against an opposing personality and my
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: smooth progress is impeded, I secretly blame the opposer. I
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: act as though I had shouted to the world, clear
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: out of the way, everyone, for I am coming. Everyone
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: does not clear out of the way. I did not
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: really expect everyone to clear out of the way, but
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: I act within as though I had so expected. I
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: blame Hence kindliness, hence cheerfulness, is rendered vastly more difficult
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: for me. What I ought to do is this. I
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: ought to reflect again and again and yet again, that
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: the beings among whom I have to steer, the living
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: environment out of which I have to manufacture my happiness,
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: are just as inevitable in the scheme of evolution as
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: I am myself, have just as much right to be
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: themselves as I have to be myself. Are precisely. My
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: equals in the face of nature, are capable of being
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: explained as I am capable of being explained, are entitled
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: to the same latitude as I am entitled to, and
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: are no more responsible for their composition and their environment
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: than I for mine. I ought to reflect again and
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: again and yet again, that they all deserve from me
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: as much sympathy as I give to myself. Why not,
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: Having thus reflected in a general manner, I ought to
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: take one by one the individuals with whom I am
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: brought into frequent contact, and seek, by a deliberate effort
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: of the imagination and the reason, to understand them, to
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: understand why they act thus, and thus what their difficulties are,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: what their explanation is, and how friction can be avoided.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: So I ought to reflect morning after morning, until my
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: brain is saturated with the cases of these individuals. Here
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: is a course of discipline. If I follow it, I
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: shall gradually lose the preposterous habit of blaming, and I
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: shall have laid the foundations of that quiet, unshakable self possession,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: which is the indispensable preliminary of conduct. According to reason
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: of thorough efficiency in the machine of happiness. But something
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: in me, something distinctly base, says, yes, they're put yourself
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: in his place? Business over it again? That do unto?
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: Are those business over again? Just so? Something in me
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: is ashamed of being moral. You all know the feeling. Well,
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: morals are nought. But another name for reasonable conduct a
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: higher and more practical form of egotism, an egotism which,
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: while freeing others, frees myself. I have tried the lower
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: form of egotism, and it has failed. If I am
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: afraid of being moral, if I prefer to cut off
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: my nose to spite my face, well I must accept
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: the consequences. But truth will prevail. End of chapter seven,
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: Chapter eight of The Human Machine, Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. Chapter eight, The Daily Friction.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: It is with common daily affairs that I am now dealing,
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: not with heroic enterprises, ambitions, martyrdoms. Take the day, the
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: ordinary day in the ordinary house or office. Though it
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: comes seven times a week and is the most banal
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: thing imaginable, it is quite worth attention. How does the
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: machine get through it? Ah? The best that can be
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: said of the machine is that it does get through it. Somehow.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: The friction, though seldom such as to bring matters to
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: a standstill, is frequent, the sort of friction that, when
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: it occurs in a bicycle, is just sufficient to annoy
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: the rider, but not sufficient to make him get off
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: the machine and examine the bearings. Occasionally the friction is
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: very loud, indeed disturbing, and at rarer intervals it shrieks
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: like an omnibus break out of order. You know those
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: days when you have the sensation that life is not
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: large enough to contain the household or the office staff,
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: when the business of intercourse may be compared to the
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: maneuvers of two people who, having awakened with a bad headache,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: are obliged to dress simultaneously in a very small bedroom.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: After you with that towel, in accents of bitter, grinding politeness,
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: if you could kindly move your things off this chair
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: in a voice that would blow brains out if it
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: were a bullet, I venture to say that you know
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: those days, but you reply such days a few usually well. Usually,
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: the friction, though less intense, is still proceeding. We grow
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: accustomed to it. We scarcely notice it as a person
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: in a stuffy chamber will scarcely notice the stuffiness, But
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: the deteriorating influence due to friction goes on even if unperceived,
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: and one morning we perceive its ravages and write a
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: letter to the telegraph to inquire whether life is worth living,
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: or whether marriage is a failure, or whether men are
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: more polite than women. The proof that friction, in various
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: and varying degrees is practically conscious in most households lies
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: in the fact that when we chance on a household
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: where there is no friction, we are startled. We can't
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: recover from the phenomenon. And in describing this household to
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: our friends, we say they get on so well together,
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: as if we were saying they have wings and can fly.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: Just one, did you ever hear of such a thing?
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: Ninety percent of all daily friction is caused by tone,
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: mere tone of voice. Try this experiment. Say, oh, you
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: little darling, you sweet pet, you entirely charming creature to
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: a baby or a dog. But raw these delightful epithets
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: in the tone of saying, you infernal little nuisance. If
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: I hear another sound, I'll break every bone in your body.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: The baby will infallibly whimper, and the dog will infallibly
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: mooch off. True, a dog is not a human being,
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: neither is a baby. They cannot understand. It is precisely
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: because they cannot understand and articulate words, that the experiment
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: is valuable for it separates the effect of the tone
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: from the effect of the words. He who speaks speaks twice.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: His words convey his thought, and his tone conveys his
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: mental attitude towards the person spoken to, And certainly the attitude,
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: so far as friction goes, is more important than the thought.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: Your wife may say to you, I shall buy that
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: hat I spoke to you about, and you may reply
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: quite sincerely as you please, But it will depend on
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: your tone. Whether you convey as you please. I am
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: sympathetically anxious that your innocent caprices should be indulged, or
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: whether you convey as you please. Only don't bother me
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: with hats. I am above hats A great deal. Too
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: much money is spent in his house on hats, however,
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: I'm helpless, or whether you convey as you please, heart
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: of my heart. But if you would like to be
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: a nice girl, K gently, we're rather tight. I need
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: not elaborate, I am sure of being comprehended. As tone
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: is the expression of attitude, it is of course caused
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: by attitude. The frictional tone is chiefly due to that
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: general attitude of blame, which I have already condemned as
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: being absurd and unjustifiable. As by constant, watchful discipline we
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: gradually lose this silly attitude of blame, so the tone
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: will of itself gradually change. But the two ameliorations can
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: proceed together. And it is a curious thing that an
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: agreeable tone, artificially and deliberately adopted, will influence the mental
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: attitude almost as much as the mental attitude will influence
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: the tone. If you honestly feel resentful against someone, but,
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: having understood the foolishness of fury, intentionally mask your fury
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: under a persuasive tone, your fury will at once begin
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: to abate. You will be led into a rational train
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: of thought. You will see that, after all, the object
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: of your resentment has a right to exist, and that
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: he is neither a doormat nor a scoundrel, And that anyhow,
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: nothing is to be gained and much is to be
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: lost by fury. You will see that fury is unworthy
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: of you. Do you remember the gentleness of the tone
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: which you employed after the healing of your first quarrel
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: with a beloved companion? Do you remember the persuasive tone
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: which you used when you wanted to obtain something from
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: a difficult person on whom your happiness depended. Why should
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: not your tone always combine thee qualities? Why should you
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: not carefully school your tone? Is it beneath you to
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: ensure the largest possible amount of your own way by
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: the simplest means, Or is there at the back of
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: your mind that peculiarly English and German idea that politeness,
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: sympathy and respect for another immortal soul would imply deplorable
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: weakness on your part. You say that your happiness does
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: not depend on every person whom you happen to speak to. Yes,
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: it does. Your happiness is always dependent on just that person.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: Produce friction, and you suffer idle to argue that the
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: person has no business to be upset by your tone.
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: You have caused avoidable friction simply because your machine for
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: dealing with your environment was sufferfering from pride, ignorance, or thoughtlessness.
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: You say, I am making a mountain out of a
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: mole hill. No, I am making a mountain out of
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: ten million mole hills. And that is what life does.
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: It is the little but continuous causes that have great effects.
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: I repeat, why not deliberately adopt a gentle, persuasive tone
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: just to see what the results are. Surely you are
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: not ashamed to be wise. You may smile superiorly as
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: you read this. Yet you know very well that more
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: than once you have resolved to use a gentle and
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: persuasive tone on all occasions, and that the sole reason
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: why you had that fearful shindy yesterday with your cousin's
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: sister in law was that you had long since failed
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: to keep your resolve. But you were of my mind once,
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: and more than once. What you have to do is
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: to teach the new habit to your brain by daily
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: concentration on it, by forcing your brain to think of
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: nothing else for half an hour of a morning. After
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: a time, the brain will begin to remember automatically. For,
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: of course, the explanation of your previous failures is that
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: your brain, undisciplined, merely forgot at the critical moment the
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: tone was out of your mouth. Before your brain had
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: waked up. It is necessary to watch as though you
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: were a sentinel, not only against the wrong tone, but
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: against the other symptoms of the attitude of blame, such
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: as the frown. It is necessary to regard yourself constantly
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: and in minute detail. You lie in bed for half
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: an hour and enthusiastically concentrate on this beautiful new scheme
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: of the right tone. You rise, and because you don't
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: achieve a proper elegance of necktie, at the first knotting,
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: you frown and swear and clench your teeth. There is
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: a symptom of the wrong attitude towards your environment. You
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: are awake, but your brain isn't. It is in such
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: a symptom that you may judge yourself, and not a
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: trifling symptom either. If you will frown at a necktie,
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: if you will use language to a necktie, which no
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: gentleman should use to a necktie, what will you be
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: capable of to a responsible being? Yes, it is very difficult,
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: but it can be done. End of chapter eight, Chapter
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: nine of The Human Machine by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: recording it in the public domain. Chapter nine Fire in
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: this Business of daily living of ordinary usage of the machine.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: In hourly intercourse, there occurs sometimes a phenomenon which is
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: the cause of a great deal of trouble and the
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: result of a very ill tended machine. It is a
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: phenomenon impossible to ignore, and yet so shameful is it,
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: so degrading, so shocking, so miserable, that I hesitate to
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: mention it. For one class of reader is certain to
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: ridicule me loftily saying one rarely doesn't expect to find
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: this sort of thing in print nowadays, And another class
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: of reader is certain to get angry. Nevertheless, as one
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: of my main objects in the present book is to
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: discuss matters which people don't talk about, I shall discuss
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: this matter. But my diffidence in doing so is such
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: that I must approach it deviously, describing it first by
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: means of a figure. Imagine that looking at a man's house,
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: you suddenly perceive it to be on fire. The flame
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: is scarcely perceptible. You could put it out if you
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: had a free hand, but you have not got a
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: free hand. It is his house, not yours. He may
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: or may not know that his house is burning. You
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: are aware by experience however, that if you directed his
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: attention to the flame, the effect of your warning would
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: be exceedingly singular, almost incredible, for the effect would be
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: that he would instantly begin to strike matches, pour on petroleum,
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: and fan the flame, violently resenting interference. Therefore, you can
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: only stand and watch, hoping that he will notice the
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: flames before they are beyond control and extinguish them. The
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: probability is, however, that he will notice the flames too
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: late and powerless to avert disaster. You are condemned, therefore,
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: to watch the damage of valuable property. The flames leap
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: higher and higher, and they do not die down till
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: they have burned themselves out. You avert your gaze from
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: the spectacle, and until you are gone, the owner of
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: the house pretends that nothing has occurred, when alone, he
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: curses himself for his carelessness. The foregoing is meant to
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: be a description of what happens when a man passes
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: through the incendiary experience known as losing his temper. There
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: the cat of my chapter is out of the bag.
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: A man who has lost his temper is simply being
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: burnt out. His constitutes one of the most curious and
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: for everybody humiliating spectacles that life offers. It is an insurrection,
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: a boiling over a sweeping storm. Dignity, common sense, justice
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: are shriveled up and destroyed. Anarchy reigns. The devil has
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: broken his chain. Instinct is stamping on the face of reason,
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: and in that man, civilization has temporarily receded millions of years.
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: Of course, the thing amounts to a nervous disease, and
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: I think it is almost universal. You at once protest
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: that you never lose your temper. Haven't lost your temper
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: for ages? But do you not mean that you have
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: not smashed furniture for ages? These fires are of varying intensities.
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: Some of them burn very dully, yet they burn. One
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: man loses his temper, another merely ruffled. But the event
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: is the same in kind. When you are ruffled, when
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: you are conscious of a resentful vibration that surprises all
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: your being, when your voice changes, when you notice a
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: change in the demeanor of your companion, who sees that
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: he has touched a tender point. You may not go
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: to the length of smashing furniture, but you have had
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: a fire, and your dignity is damaged. You admit it
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: to yourself afterwards. I am sure you know what I mean,
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: and I am nearly sure that you, with your courageous candor,
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: will admit that from time to time you suffer from
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: these mysterious fires. Temper, one of the plagues of human society,
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: is generally held to be incurable save by the vague
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: process of exercising self control, a process which who seldom
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: has any beneficial results. It is regarded now as smallpox
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: used to be regarded as a visitation of providence which
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: must be borne. But I do not hold it to
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: being curable. I am convinced that it is permanently curable,
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: and its eminent importance as a nuisance to mankind at
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: large deserves I think that it should receive particular attention. Anyhow,
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: I am strongly against the visitation of providence theory as
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: being unscientific, primitive, and conducive to unashamed leise alais. A
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: man can be master in his own house. If he
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: cannot be master by simple force of will, he can
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: be master by ruse and wile I would employ cleverness
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: to maintain the throne of reason when it is likely
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: to be upset in the mind by one of these
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: devastating and disgraceful insurrections of brute instinct. It is useless
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: for a man in the habit of losing or mislaying
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: his temper to argue with himself that such a proceeding
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: is folly, that it serves no end and does nothing
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: but harm. It is useless for him to argue that
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: in allowing his temper to stray, he is probably guilty
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: of cruelty, and certainly guilty of injustice to those persons
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: who are forced to witness the lass. It is useless
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: for him to argue that a man of uncertain temper
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: in a house is like a man who goes about
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: a house with a loaded revolver sticking from his pocket,
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: and that all considerations of fairness and reason have to
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: be subordinated in that house to the fear of the revolver,
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: and that such peace as is maintained in that house
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: is often a shameful and an unjust piece. These arguments
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: will not be strong enough to prevail against one of
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: the most powerful and capricious of all habits. This habit
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: be met and conquered, and it can be by an
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: even more powerful quality in the human mind, I mean
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: the universal human horror of looking ridiculous. The man who
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: loses his temper often thinks he is doing something rather
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: fine and majestic. On the contrary, so far is this
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: from being the fact he is merely making an ass
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: of himself. He is merely parading himself as an undignified fool,
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: as that supremely contemptible figure, a grown up baby. He
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: may intimidate a feeble companion by his raging, or by
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: the dark sullenness of a more subdued flame, But in
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: the heart of even the weakest companion is a bedrock
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: feeling of contempt for him. The way in which a
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: man of uncertain temper is treated by his friends proves
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: that they despise him, for they do not treat him
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: as a reasonable being. How should they treat him as
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: a reasonable being when the tenure of his reason is
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: so insecure? And if only he could hear what is
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: said of him behind his back? The invalid can cure
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: himself by teaching his brain the habit of dwelling upon
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: his extreme fatuity. Let him concentrate regularly, with intense vexation,
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: upon the ideas. When I lose my temper when I
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: get ruffled, when that mysterious vibration runs through me, I
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: am making a donkey of myself, A donkey and a donkey,
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: you understand, A preposterous donkey. I'm behaving like a great baby.
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: I look a fool. I am a spectacle, bereft of dignity.
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: Everybody despises me, smiles at me in secret disdain, the
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: idiotic ass with whom it is impossible to reason. Ordinarily,
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: the invalid disguises from himself this aspect of his disease,
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: and his brain will instinctively avoid it as much as
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: it can. But in hours of calm, he can slowly
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: and regularly force his brain, by the practice of concentration,
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: to familiarize itself with just this aspect, so that in time,
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: its instinct will be to think first and not last,
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: of just this aspect. When he has arrived at that point,
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: he is saved. No man who, at the very inception
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: of the fire is visited with a clear vision of
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: himself as an arrant ass and pitiable object of contempt
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: will lack the volition to put the fire out. But
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: be it noted, he will not succeed until he can
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: do it at once. A fire is a fire, and
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: the engines must gallop by themselves out of the station instantly.
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: This means the acquirement of a mental habit. During the
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: preliminary stages of the cure, he should, of course avoid
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: inflammable situations. This is a perfectly simple thing to do
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: if the brain has been disciplined out of its natural forgetfulness.
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: End of chapter nine, Chapter ten of The Human Machine
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: Chapter ten, mischievously overworking it. I have dealt with the
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: two general major causes of friction in the daily use
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: of the machine. I will now deal with a minor cause,
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: and make an end of mere dailiness. This minor cause,
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: and after all, I do not know that its results
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: are so trifling as to justify the epithet minor, is
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: the straining of the machine by forcing it to do
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: work which it was never intended to do. Although we
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: are incapable of persuading our machines to do effectively that
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: which they are bound to do, somehow we continually overburdened
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: them with entirely unnecessary and inect tasks We cannot It
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: would seem let things alone. For example, in the ordinary household,
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: the amount of machine horsepower expended in fighting for the
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: truth is really quite absurd. This pure zeal for the
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: establishment and general admission of the truth is usually termed contradictoriness,
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: But of course it is not that. It is something higher.
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: My wife states that the Joneses have gone into a
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: new flat, of which the rent is one hundred and
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: sixty five pounds a year. Now Jones has told me
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: personally that the rent of his new flat is one
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty six pounds a year. I correct my wife,
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: knowing that she is in the right. She corrects me.
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: She cannot bear that a falsehood should prevail. It is
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: not a question of nine pounds. It is a question
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: of truth. Her enthusiasm for truth excites my enthusiasm for truth.
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: Five minutes ago, I didn't care tuppence whether the rent
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: of the Joneses new flat was one hundred and sixty
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: five or one hundred and fifty six or one thousand
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: and fifty six pounds a year. But now I care
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: intensely that it is one hundred and fifty six pounds.
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: I have formed myself into a select society for the
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: propagating of the truth about the rent of the Jonesy's
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: New flat. And my wife has done the same in eloquence,
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: in argumentative skill. In the strict supervision of our tempers,
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: we each of us squander enormous quantities of that h
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: P which is so precious to us, and the net
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: effect is naught. Now if one of us two had
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: understood the elementary principles of human engineering, that one would
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: have said privately. Truth is indestructible, Truth will out. Truth
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: is never in a hurry. If it doesn't come out
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: to day, it will come out to morrow or next year.
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: It can take care of itself. Ultimately, my wife or
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: my husband will learn the essential cosmic truth about the
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: rent of the Joneses New Flat. I already know it,
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: and the moment when she or he knows it also
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: will be the moment of my triumph. She or he
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: will not celebrate my triumph openly, but it will be
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: none the less real, and my reputation for accuracy and
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: calm restraint will be consolidated. If by a rare mischance
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: I am in error, it will be vastly better for
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: me in the day of my undoing that I have
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: not been too positive now. Besides, nobody has appointed me
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: sole custodian of the great truth. Concerning the rent of
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: the Joneses New Flat. I was not brought into the
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: world to be a safe deposit, and more urgent matters
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: summon me to effort. If one of us had meditated
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: thus much, needless friction would have been avoided and powers saved.
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: Our more proper would not have been exposed to risks,
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: the sacred cause of truth would not in the least
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: have suffered, and the rent of the Joneses New Flat
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: would anyhow have remained exactly what it is. In addition
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: to straining the machine by our excessive anxiety for the
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: spread of truth, we give a very great deal too
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: much at tenant to the state of other people's machines.
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: I cannot too strongly, too sarcastically deprecate this astonishing habit.
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: It will be found to be rife in nearly every
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: household and in nearly every office. We are, most of
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: us endeavoring to rearrange the mechanism in other heads than
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: our own. This is always dangerous and generally futile. Considering
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: the difficulty we have in our own brains, where our
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: efforts are sure of being accepted as well meant, and
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: where we have at any rate a rough notion of
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: the machine's construction. Our intrepidity in adventuring among the delicate
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: adjustments of other brains is remarkable. We are cursed by
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: too much of the missionary spirit. We must needs voyage
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: into the china of our brother's brain and explain there
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: that things are seriously wrong in that heathen land, and
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: make ourselves unpleas in the hope of getting them put right.
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: We have all our own brain and body on which
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: to wreak our personality, but this is not enough. We
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: must extend our personality further, just as though we were
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: a colonizing world power intoxicated by the idea of the
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: white man's burden. One of the central secrets of efficient
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: daily living is to leave our daily companions alone a
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: great deal more than we do, and attend to ourselves.
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: If a daily companion is conducting his life upon principles
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: which you know to be false and with results which
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: you feel to be unpleasant, the safe rule is to
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: keep your mouth shut, or if out of your singular conceit,
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: you are compelled to open it, Open it with all precautions,
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: and with the formal politeness you would use to a stranger.
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: Intimacy is there's no excuse for rough manners, though the
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: majority of us seem to think it is. You are
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: not in charge of the universe. You are in charge
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: of yourself. You cannot hope to manage the universe in
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: your spare time, and if you try, you will probably
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: make a mess of such part of the universe as
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: you touch, while gravely neglecting yourself. In every family, there
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: is generally someone whose meddlesome interest in other machines leads
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: to serious friction in his own. Criticize less, even in
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: the secrecy of your chamber, and do not blame at all.
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: Accept your environment and adapt yourself to it in silence,
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: instead of noisily attempting to adapt your environment to yourself.
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: Here is true wisdom. You have no business trespassing beyond
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: the confines of your own individuality. In so trespassing, you
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: are guilty of impertinence. This is obvious, and yet one
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: of the chief activities of home life consists in prancing
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: about at random on other people's private lawns. What I
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: say applies even to the relation between parents and children.
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: And though my precept is exaggerated, it is purposely exaggerated
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: in order effectively to balance the exaggeration in the opposite direction.
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: All individualities other than one's own are part of one's environment.
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: The evolutionary process is going on all right, and they
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: are a portion of it. Treat them as inevitable. To
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: assert that they are inevitable is not to assert that
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: they are unalterable. Only the alteration of them is not
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: primarily your affair. It is theirs. Your affair is to
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: use them as they are, without self righteousness, blame, or complaint,
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: for the smooth furtherance of your own ends. There is
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: no intention here to rob them of responsibility by depriving
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: them of free will, while saddling you with responsibility as
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: a free agent. As your environment. They must be accepted
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: as inevitable because they are inevitable, But as centers themselves,
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: they have their own responsibility, which is not yours. The
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: historic question have we free will? Or are we the
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: puppets of determinism? Enters now as a question. It is
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: fascinating and futile. It has never been and it never
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: will be settled. The theory of determinism cannot be demolished
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: by argument, but in his heart, every man, including the
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: most obstinate supporter of the theory, demolishes it every hour
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: of every day. On the other hand, the theory of
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: free will can be demolished by raciocination. So much the
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: worse for raciocination. If we regard ourselves as free agents
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: and the personalities surrounding us as the puppets of determinism,
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: we shall have arrived at the working compromise from which
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: the finest results of living can be obtained. The philosophic
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: experience of centuries, if it has proved anything, has proved this,
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: and the man who acts upon it in the common
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: banal contracts and collisions of the difficult experiment which we
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: call daily life, will speedily become convinced of its practical worth.
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: End of chapter ten, Chapter eleven of the Human Machine
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox recording is in the public
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: domain Chapter eleven, an interlude for ten chapters. You have
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: stood it, but not without protest. I know the feeling
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: which is in your minds, and which has manifested itself
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: in numerous criticisms of my ideas. That feeling may be
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: briefly translated. Perhaps thus this is all very well, but
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: it isn't true, not a bit. It's only a fairy
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: tale that you have been telling us. Miracles don't happen,
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: et cetera. I, on my part, have a feeling that
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: unless I take your feeling in hand at once and
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: firmly deal with it, I had better put my shutters up,
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: for you will have got into the way of regarding
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: me simply as a source of idle amusement. Already I
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: can perceive from the expressions of some critics that, so
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: far as they are concerned, I might just as well
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: not have written a word. Therefore, at this point I
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: pause in order to insist once more upon what I
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: began by saying, the burden of your criticism is human
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: nature is always the same. I know my faults, but
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: it is useless to tell me about them. I can't
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: alter them. I was born like that. The fatal weakness
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: of this argument is first that it is based on
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: a complete falsity, and second that it puts you in
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: an untenable position. Human nature does change. Nothing can be
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: more unscientific, more hopelessly medieval than to imagine that it
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: does not. It changes like everything else. You can't see
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: it change, true, But then you can't see the grass growing,
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: not unless you arise very early. Is human nature the
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: same now as in the days of Babylonian civilization when
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: the social machine was oiled by drenchings of blood? Is
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: it the same now as in the days of Greek
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: civilization when there was no such things romantic love between
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: the sexes? Is it the same now as it was
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: during the centuries when constant friction had to provide its
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: own cure in the shape of constant war. Is it
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: the same now as it was on the second of
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: March eighteen nineteen when the British government officially opposed a
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: motion to consider the severity of the criminal laws which
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: included capital punishment for cutting down a tree and other
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: sensible dodges against friction, and were defeated by a majority
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: of only nineteen votes. Is it the same now as
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: in the year eighteen eighty three when the first SPCC
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: was formed in England? If you consider that human nature
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: is still the same, you should instantly go out and
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: make a bonfire of the works of Spencer, Darwin and Wallace,
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: and then return to enjoy the purely jocular side of
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: the present volume. If you admit that it has changed,
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: let me ask you how it has changed unless by
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 1: the continual, infinitesimal efforts upon themselves of individual men like
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: you and me. Did you suppose it was changed by magic,
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: or by acts of parliament, or by the action of
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: groups on persons, and not of persons on groups. Let
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: me tell you that human nature has changed since yesterday.
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: Let me tell you that today reason has a more
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: powerful voice in the directing of instinct than it had yesterday.
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: Let me tell you that today the friction of the
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: machines is less screechy and grinding than it was yesterday.
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: You were born like that, and you can't alter yourself,
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: and so it's no use talking. If you really believe this,
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: why make any effort at all? Why not let the
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: whole business beautifully slam and yield to your instincts. What
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: object can there be in trying to control yourself in
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: any manner whatever. If you are unalterable, assert yourself to
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: be unalterable, and you assert yourself a fatalist. Assert yourself
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: a fatalist, and you free yourself from all moral responsibility,
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 1: and other people too well. Then act up to your convictions,
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: if convictions they are. If you can't alter yourself, I
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: can't alter myself. And supposing that I come along and
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 1: bash you on the head and steal your purse, you
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: can't blame me. You can only on recovering consciousness affectionately
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 1: grasp my hand and murmur, don't apologize, my dear fellow.
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: We can't alter ourselves. This, you say, is absurd. It
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 1: is that is one of my innumerable points. The truth is,
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: you do not really believe that you cannot alter yourself.
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: What is the matter with you is just what is
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: the matter with me? Sheer idleness. You hate getting up
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: in the morning, And to excuse your inexcusable indolence, you
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: talk big about fate. Just as patriotism is the last
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: refuge of a scoundrel, so fatalism is the last refuge
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: of a shirker. But you deceive no one, least of
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: all yourself. You have not rationally a leg to stand
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: on at this juncture. Because I have made you laugh,
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: you consent to say, I do try all I can,
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: but I can only alter myself for very little. By constitution,
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: I am mentally idle. I can't help that, can I well,
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: So long as you are not the only absolutely unchangeable
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: thing in a universe of change, I don't mind. It
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: is something for you to admit that you can alter
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: yourself even a very little. The difference between our philosophies
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: is now only a question of degree. In the application
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: of any system of perfecting the machine, no two persons
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: will succeed equally. From the disappointed tone of some of
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: your criticisms, it might be fancied that I had advertised
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: a system for making archangels out of tailor's dummies. Such
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: was not my hope. I have no belief in miracles,
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: but I know that when a thing is thoroughly well done,
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 1: it often has the air of being a miracle. My
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: sole aim is to insist that every man shall perfect
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: his machine to the best of his powers, not to
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: the best of somebody else's powers. I do not indulge
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: in any hope that a man can be better than
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: his best self. I am, however, convinced that every man
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: fails to be his best self a great deal oftener
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: than he need fail, for the reason that his will power,
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 1: be it great or small, is not directed according to
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: the principles of common sense. Common sense will surely lead
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: a man to ask the question, why did my actions
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 1: yesterday contradict my reason? The reply to this question will
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: nearly always be because at the critical moment I forgot.
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 1: The supreme explanation of the abortive results of so many
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: efforts at self alteration, The supreme explanation of our frequent,
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: miserable scurrying into a doctrine of fatalism is simple forgetfulness.
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 1: It is not force that we lack, but the skill
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 1: to remember exactly what our reason would have us do
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: or think at the moment itself. How is this skill
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: to be acquired. It can only be acquired, as skillet games,
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: is acquired by practice, by the training of the organ
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 1: involved to such a point that the organ acts rightly
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 1: by instinct instead of wrongly by instinct. There are degrees
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 1: of success in this procedure, but there is no such
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: phenomenon as complete failure. Habits which increase friction can be
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: replaced by habits which lessen friction. Habits which arrest development
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: can be replaced by habits which encourage development. And as
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: a habit is formed naturally, so it can be formed
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 1: artificially by imitation of the unconscious process, by accustoming the
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 1: brain to the new idea. Let me as an example,
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: refer again to the minor subject of daily friction, and
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: within that subject, to the influence of tone. A man
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: employs a fictional tone through habit. The frictional tone is
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: an instinct with him. But if he had a quarter
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: of an hour to reflect before speaking, and if during
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: that quarter of an hour he could always listen to
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: arguments against the frictional tone, his use of the frictional
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: tone would rapidly diminish. His reason would conquer his instinct.
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: As things are, his instinct conquers his reason by a
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 1: surprise attack by taking it unawares. Regular daily concentration of
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 1: the brain for a certain period upon the non frictional
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: tone and the immense advantages of its use, will gradually
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 1: set up in the brain a new habit of thinking
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: about the non frictional tone, until at length the brain, disciplined,
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: turns to the correct act before the old silly instinct
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: can capture it, and ultimately a new segar Gaetia's instinct
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: will supplant the old one. This is the rationale it
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: applies to all habits. Any person can test its efficiency
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: in any habit. I care not whether he be of
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: strong or weak will, he can test it. He will
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: soon see the tremendous difference between merely making a good resolution.
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 1: He has been doing that all his life, without any
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: very brilliant consequences, and concentrating the brain for a given
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: time exclusively upon a good resolution. Concentration, the efficient mastery
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: of the brain. All is there. End of chapter eleven,
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: Chapter twelve of The Human Machine by Arnold Bennett. This
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter twelve An
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: interest in life Life. After a certain period of mental discipline,
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 1: of deliberate habit forming and habit breaking, such as I
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 1: have been indicating, a man will begin to acquire at
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: any rate a superficial knowledge, a nodding acquaintance with that
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: wonderful and mysterious affair his brain. And he will also
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: begin to perceive how important a factor in daily life
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: is the control of his brain. He will assuredly be
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 1: surprised at the miracles which lie between his collar and
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 1: his hat, in that queer box that he calls his head.
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 1: For the effects that can be accomplished by mere steady,
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: persistent thinking must appear to be miracles to apprentices in
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: the practice of thought. When once a man, having passed
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 1: an unhappy day because his clumsy, negligent brain forgot to
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 1: control his instincts at a critical moment, has said to
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 1: his brain, I will force you, by concentrating you on
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 1: that particular point, to act efficiently the next time similar
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 1: circumstances arise. And when he has carried out his intention,
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 1: and when the awkward circumstances have recurred, and his brain, disciplined,
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 1: has done its work and so prevented unhappiness, then that
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 1: man will regard his brain with a new eye. By jove,
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 1: he will say, I have stopped one source of unhappiness. Anyway,
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 1: there was a time when I should have made a
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: fool of myself in a little domestic crisis such as
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: to day's, But I have gone safely through it. I
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 1: am all right, She is all right. The atmosphere is
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: not dangerous with undischarged electricity, and all because my brain,
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 1: being in proper condition, watched firmly over my instincts. I
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: must keep this up. He will peer into that brain
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 1: more and more, he will see more and more of
• 1:59:59
  Speaker 1: its possibility, he will have a new and a supreme
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 1: interest in life. A garden is a fairly interesting thing,
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 1: but the cultivation of a garden is as dull as
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 1: cold mutton compared to the cultivation of a brain. And
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 1: wet weather won't interfere with digging, planting, and pruning in
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 1: the box. In due season, the man whose hobby is
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: his brain will gradually settle down into a daily routine,
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: with which routine he will start today. The idea at
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 1: the back of the mind of the ordinary man. By
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 1: the ordinary man, I mean the man whose brain is
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: not his hobby, is almost always this. There are several
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: things at present hanging over me, worries, unfulfilled, ambitions, unrealized
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: as ours. As soon as these things are definitely settled,
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 1: then I shall begin to live and enjoy myself. That
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 1: is the ordinary man's usual ideas. From his youth to
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: his old age. He is invariably waiting for something to
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 1: happen before he really begins to live. I am sure
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: that if you are an ordinary man, of course you aren't.
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: I know you will admit that this is true of you.
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: You exist in the hope that one day things will
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 1: be sufficiently smoothed out for you to begin to live.
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 1: That is just where you differ from the man whose
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: brain is his hobby. His daily routine consists in a
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 1: meditation in the following vein this day is before me.
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: The circumstances of this day are my environment. They are
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 1: the material out of which, by means of my brain
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 1: I have to live and be happy, and to refrain
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 1: from causing unhappiness in other people. It is the business
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 1: of my brain to make use of this material. My
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 1: brain is in its box for that sole purpose. Not
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: to morrow, not next year, not when I have made
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 1: my fortune, not when my sick child is out of danger,
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 1: not when my wife has returned to her senses, not
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 1: when my salary is raised, not when I have passed
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 1: that examination, not when my indigestion is better. But now
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 1: to day, exactly as to day, is the facts of
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: to day, which in my unregeneracy I regarded primarily as anxieties, nuisances, impediments,
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 1: I now regard as so much raw material from which
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 1: my brain has to weave a tissue of life that
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 1: is comely. And then he foresees the day as well
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: as he can. His experiences teach him where he will
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 1: have difficulty, and he administers to his brain the lessons
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 1: of which it will have most need. He carefully looks
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 1: the machine over and arranges it, specially for the sort
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 1: of road which he knows that it will have to traverse.
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 1: And especially he readjusts his point of view, for his
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: point of view is continually getting wrong. He is continually
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 1: seeing worries where he ought to see material. He may notice,
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: for instance, a patch on the back of his head,
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: and he wonders whether it is the result of age
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: or of disease, or whether it has always been there.
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 1: And his wife tells him he must call at the
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: chemists and satisfy himself at once frightful nuisance age the
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: endless trouble of a capillary complaint calling at the chemists,
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 1: or make him late at the office, et cetera, et cetera.
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 1: But then he is skilled, efficient brain intervenes what peculiarly
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 1: interesting material this mean and petty circumstance yields for the
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 1: practice of philosophy and right living. And again, is this
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 1: a rough one, you, oh my soul? Will it serve
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 1: any end whatever? That I should buzz nervously round this
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 1: circumstance instead of attending to my usual business. I give
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: this as an example of the necessity of adjusting the
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 1: point of view, and of the manner in which a
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 1: brain habituated by suitable concentration to correct thinking, will come
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 1: to the rescue in unexpected contingencies. Naturally, it will work
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 1: with greater certainty in the manipulation of difficulties that are
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: expected that can be seen coming, And preparation for the
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 1: expected is fortunately preparation for the unexpected. The man who
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 1: commences his day by a steady contemplation of the dangers
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 1: which the next sixteen hours are likely to furnish, and
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 1: by arming himself specially against those dangers, has thereby armed himself,
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 1: though to a less extent, against dangers which he did
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 1: not dream of. But the route yeteen must be fairly elastic.
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 1: It may be necessary to commence several days in succession,
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 1: for a week or for months, even with disciplining the
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 1: brain in one particular detail, to the temporary neglect of
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: other matters. It is astonishing how you can weed every
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 1: inch of a garden path and keep it in the
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 1: most meticulous order, and then one morning find in the
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 1: very middle of it a lusty, full grown plant whose
• 2:05:28
  Speaker 1: roots are positively mortist in granite. All gardeners are familiar
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 1: with such discoveries. But a similar discovery, though it entails
• 2:05:39
  Speaker 1: hard labor on him, will not discuss the man whose
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 1: hobby is his brain, for the discovery in itself is
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 1: part of the material out of which he has to live.
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 1: If a man is to turn everything, whatsoever into his
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: own calm, dignity, and happiness, he must make this use,
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 1: even of his own failure. He must look at them
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 1: as phenomena of the brain in that box, and cheerfully
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 1: set about taking measures to prevent their repetition. All that
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 1: happens to him success or check will but serve to
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 1: increase his interest in the contents of that box. I
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 1: seem to hear you saying, a fine egotist. He'll be well,
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 1: he'll be the right sort of egotist. The average man
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 1: is not half enough of an egotist. If egotism means
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 1: a terrific interest in oneself, egotism is absolutely essential to
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 1: efficient living, there is no getting away from that. But
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 1: if egotism means selfishness, the serious student of the craft
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 1: of daily living will not be an egotist for more
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 1: than about a year. In a year, he will have
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 1: proved the ineptitude of egotism. End of chapter twelve, Chapter
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 1: thirteen of The Human Machine by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. Chapter thirteen, Success and Failure.
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 1: I am sadly aware that these brief chapters will be
• 2:07:24
  Speaker 1: apt to convey, especially to the trustful and enthusiastic reader,
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 1: a false impression, the impression of simplicity, and that when
• 2:07:34
  Speaker 1: experience has roughly corrected this impression, the said reader, unless
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 1: he is most solemnly warned, may abandon the entire enterprise
• 2:07:43
  Speaker 1: in a fit of disgust, and forever afterwards maintain a
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 1: cynical and impolite attitude towards all theories of controlling the
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 1: human machine. Now, the enterprise is not a simple one.
• 2:07:56
  Speaker 1: It is based on one simple principle, the conscious discip
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 1: of the brain by selected habits of thought. But it
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 1: is just about as complicated as anything well could be advanced.
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 1: Golf is child's play compared to it. The man who
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 1: briefly says to himself, I will get up at eight
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 1: and from eight thirty to nine I will examine and
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 1: control my brain, and so my life will at once
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 1: be instantly improved. Out of recognition that man is destined
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 1: to unpleasant surprises. Progress will be slow. Progress may appear
• 2:08:30
  Speaker 1: to be quite rapid at first, and then a period
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 1: of futility may set in, and there would be vanquisher
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 1: of his brain may suffer a series of the most
• 2:08:40
  Speaker 1: deadly defeats, and in his pessimism, he may imagine that
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 1: all his pains have gone for nothing, and that the
• 2:08:47
  Speaker 1: un serious loungers in exhibition gardens and readers of novels
• 2:08:51
  Speaker 1: in parlors are in the right of it. After all,
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 1: he may even feel rather ashamed of himself for having been,
• 2:08:58
  Speaker 1: as he thinks, taken in by specious promises, like the
• 2:09:02
  Speaker 1: purchaser of a quack medicine. The conviction that great effort
• 2:09:08
  Speaker 1: has been made and no progress achieved is the chief
• 2:09:11
  Speaker 1: of the dangers that affront the beginner in machine tending.
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 1: It is, I will assert, positively in every case, a
• 2:09:19
  Speaker 1: conviction unjustified by the facts, and usually it is the
• 2:09:23
  Speaker 1: mere result of reaction after fatigue, encouraged by the instinct
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 1: for laziness. I do not think it will survive an
• 2:09:31
  Speaker 1: impartial examination but I know that a man, in order
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 1: to find an excuse for abandoning further effort, is capable
• 2:09:39
  Speaker 1: of convincing himself that past effort has yielded no fruit
• 2:09:43
  Speaker 1: at all. So curious is the human machine. I beg
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 1: every student of himself to consider this remark with all
• 2:09:52
  Speaker 1: the intellectual honesty at his disposal. It is a grave
• 2:09:56
  Speaker 1: warning when the machine ten observes that he is frequently
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 1: changing his point of view, when he notices that what
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 1: he regarded as the kernel of the difficulty yesterday has
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 1: sunk to a triviality today, being replaced by a fresh phenomenon.
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 1: When he arises one morning and by means of a
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 1: new unexpected glimpse into the recesses of the machine, perceives
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 1: that hitherto he has been quite wrong and must begin again.
• 2:10:25
  Speaker 1: When he wonders how on earth he could have been
• 2:10:27
  Speaker 1: so blind and so stupid as not to see what
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 1: now he sees, when the new vision is veiled by
• 2:10:33
  Speaker 1: new disappointments and narrowed by continual reservations, when he is
• 2:10:39
  Speaker 1: overwhelmed by the complexity of his undertaking, then let him
• 2:10:44
  Speaker 1: enhearten himself, for he is succeeding the history of success
• 2:10:50
  Speaker 1: in any art, and machine tending is an art is
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 1: a history of recommencements of the dispersal and reforming doubts
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 1: of an ever increasing conception of the extent of the
• 2:11:04
  Speaker 1: territory unconquered, and an ever decreasing conception of the extent
• 2:11:10
  Speaker 1: of the territory conquered. It is remarkable that, though no
• 2:11:15
  Speaker 1: enterprise could possibly present more diverse and changeful excitement than
• 2:11:20
  Speaker 1: the mastering of the brain, the second great danger which
• 2:11:24
  Speaker 1: threatens its ultimate success is nothing but a mere drying
• 2:11:29
  Speaker 1: up of enthusiasm for it. One would have thought that
• 2:11:33
  Speaker 1: in an affair which concerned him so nearly, in an
• 2:11:36
  Speaker 1: affair whose results might be, in a very strict sense
• 2:11:40
  Speaker 1: vital to him, in an affair upon which his happiness
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 1: and misery might certainly turn, a man would not weary
• 2:11:48
  Speaker 1: from sheer tedium. Nevertheless, it is so again and again.
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 1: I have noticed the abandonment, temporary or permanent, of this
• 2:11:59
  Speaker 1: mighty and thriat billing enterprise from simple lack of interest.
• 2:12:04
  Speaker 1: And I imagine that in practically all cases, save those
• 2:12:08
  Speaker 1: in which an exceptional original force of will renders the
• 2:12:12
  Speaker 1: enterprise scarcely necessary, the interest in it will languish unless
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 1: it is regularly nourished from without. Now, the interest in
• 2:12:22
  Speaker 1: it cannot be nourished from without by means of conversation
• 2:12:26
  Speaker 1: with other brain tamers. There are certain things which may
• 2:12:31
  Speaker 1: not be discussed by sanely organized people, and this is one.
• 2:12:36
  Speaker 1: The affair is too intimate, and it is also too moral.
• 2:12:42
  Speaker 1: Even after only a few minutes vocalization on this subject,
• 2:12:46
  Speaker 1: a deadly infection seems to creep into the air, the
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 1: infection of priggishness. Or am I mistaken? And do I
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 1: fancy this horror? No? I cannot believe that I am mistake.
• 2:13:01
  Speaker 1: Hence the nourishment must be obtained by reading, a little
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 1: reading every day. I suppose there are some thousands of
• 2:13:10
  Speaker 1: authors who have written with more or less sincerity on
• 2:13:12
  Speaker 1: the management of the human machine. But the two which
• 2:13:16
  Speaker 1: for me stand out easily above all the rest are
• 2:13:19
  Speaker 1: Marcus Aurelius, Antoninus and Epictetus. Not much has been discovered
• 2:13:25
  Speaker 1: since their time. The perfecting of life is a power
• 2:13:30
  Speaker 1: residing in the soul, wrote Marcus Aurelius in the Ninth
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 1: Book to Himself over seventeen hundred years ago. Marcus Aurelius
• 2:13:40
  Speaker 1: is assuredly regarded as the greatest of writers in the
• 2:13:43
  Speaker 1: human machine school, and not to read him daily is
• 2:13:47
  Speaker 1: considered by many to be a bad habit. As a confession,
• 2:13:51
  Speaker 1: his work stands alone, But as a practical Bradshaw of existence,
• 2:13:58
  Speaker 1: I would put the discord of Epictetus before Marcus Aurelius.
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 1: Epictetus is grosser. He will call you a blockhead as
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 1: soon as look at you. He is witty, he is
• 2:14:10
  Speaker 1: even humorous, and he never wanders far away from the
• 2:14:14
  Speaker 1: incidents of daily life. He is brimming over with actuality.
• 2:14:19
  Speaker 1: For readers of the year nineteen o eight, he was
• 2:14:22
  Speaker 1: a freed slave. Marcus Aurelius was an emperor, and he
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 1: had the morbidity from which all emperors must suffer. A
• 2:14:30
  Speaker 1: finer soul than Epictetus. He is not, in my view,
• 2:14:34
  Speaker 1: so useful a companion. Not all of us can breathe
• 2:14:38
  Speaker 1: freely in his atmosphere. Nevertheless, he is of course to
• 2:14:42
  Speaker 1: be read and re read continually. When you have gone
• 2:14:46
  Speaker 1: through Epictetus, a single page or paragraph per day, well
• 2:14:51
  Speaker 1: masticated and digested suffices, you can go through Marcus Aurelius,
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 1: and then you can return to Epictetus, and on morning
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 1: by morning or night by night till your life's end,
• 2:15:04
  Speaker 1: and they will conserve your interest in yourself in the
• 2:15:10
  Speaker 1: matter of concentration. I hesitate to recommend Missus Annie Besant's
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 1: thought power, and yet I should be possibly unjust if
• 2:15:18
  Speaker 1: I did not recommend it, having regard to its immense
• 2:15:22
  Speaker 1: influence on myself. It is not one of the best
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 1: books of this astounding woman. It is addressed to theosophists,
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 1: and can only be completely understood in the light of
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 1: theosophistic doctrines. To grasp it all, I found myself obliged
• 2:15:39
  Speaker 1: to study a much larger work dealing with theosophy as
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 1: a whole. It contains an appreciable quantity of what strikes
• 2:15:47
  Speaker 1: me as feeble sentimentalism, and also a lot of sheer dogma.
• 2:15:52
  Speaker 1: But it is the least unsatisfactory manual of the brain
• 2:15:56
  Speaker 1: that I have met with. And if the profane reader
• 2:16:00
  Speaker 1: ignores all that is either Greek or twaddle to him,
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 1: there will yet remain for his advantage a vast amount
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 1: of very sound information and advice. All these three books
• 2:16:10
  Speaker 1: are cheap. End of chapter thirteen Chapter fourteen of The
• 2:16:22
  Speaker 1: Human Machine by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox recording is in
• 2:16:26
  Speaker 1: the public domain. Chapter fourteen. A Man and his Environment.
• 2:16:33
  Speaker 1: I now come to an entirely different aspect of the
• 2:16:36
  Speaker 1: whole subject. Hitherto I have dealt with the human machine
• 2:16:40
  Speaker 1: as a contrivance for adapting the man to his environment.
• 2:16:45
  Speaker 1: My aim has been to show how much depends on
• 2:16:48
  Speaker 1: the machine and how little depends on the environment, and
• 2:16:52
  Speaker 1: that the essential business of the machine is to utilize
• 2:16:55
  Speaker 1: for making the stuff of life the particular environment in
• 2:16:59
  Speaker 1: which it has happens to find itself, and no other.
• 2:17:03
  Speaker 1: All this, however, does not imply that one must accept
• 2:17:07
  Speaker 1: fatalistically and permanently and passively any preposterous environment into which
• 2:17:12
  Speaker 1: destiny has chanced to throw us. If we carry far
• 2:17:16
  Speaker 1: enough the discipline of our brains, we can no doubt
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 1: arrive at surprisingly good results in no matter what environment.
• 2:17:25
  Speaker 1: But it would not be right reason to expend an
• 2:17:28
  Speaker 1: excessive amount of willpower on brain discipline, when a slighter
• 2:17:32
  Speaker 1: effort in a different direction would produce consequences more felicitous.
• 2:17:38
  Speaker 1: A man whom fate had pitched into a canal might
• 2:17:41
  Speaker 1: accomplish miracles in the way of rendering himself amphibian. He
• 2:17:45
  Speaker 1: might stagger the world by the spectacle of his philosophy
• 2:17:49
  Speaker 1: under amazing difficulties. People might pay sixpence a head to
• 2:17:53
  Speaker 1: come and see him, but he would be less of
• 2:17:55
  Speaker 1: an incompoop if he climbed out and arranged to live
• 2:17:58
  Speaker 1: definitely on the bank. The advantage of an adequate study
• 2:18:04
  Speaker 1: of the control of the machine, such as I have outlined,
• 2:18:07
  Speaker 1: is that it enables the student to judge with some
• 2:18:11
  Speaker 1: certainty whether the unsatisfactoriness of his life is caused by
• 2:18:16
  Speaker 1: a disordered machine or by an environment for which the
• 2:18:20
  Speaker 1: machine is, in its fundamental construction unsuitable. It does help
• 2:18:26
  Speaker 1: him to decide justly whether, in the case of a
• 2:18:29
  Speaker 1: grave difference between them, he or the rest of the
• 2:18:33
  Speaker 1: universe is in the wrong. And also, if he decides
• 2:18:38
  Speaker 1: that he is not in the wrong, it helps him
• 2:18:40
  Speaker 1: to choose a new environment or to modify the old
• 2:18:44
  Speaker 1: upon some scientific principle. The vast majority of people never
• 2:18:50
  Speaker 1: know with any precision why they are dissatisfied with their
• 2:18:54
  Speaker 1: sojourn on this planet. They make long and fatiguing excursions
• 2:18:59
  Speaker 1: in sir such of precious materials, which all the while
• 2:19:03
  Speaker 1: are concealed in their own breasts. They don't know what
• 2:19:07
  Speaker 1: they want. They only know that they want something, or
• 2:19:12
  Speaker 1: if they contrive to settle in their own minds what
• 2:19:14
  Speaker 1: they do want one hundred to one, the obtaining of
• 2:19:17
  Speaker 1: it will leave them just as far off contentment as
• 2:19:20
  Speaker 1: they were at the beginning. This is a matter of
• 2:19:24
  Speaker 1: daily observation that people are frantically engaged in attempting to
• 2:19:28
  Speaker 1: get hold of things which, by universal experience, are hideously
• 2:19:33
  Speaker 1: disappointing to those who have obtained possession of them. And
• 2:19:37
  Speaker 1: still the struggle goes on, and probably will go on.
• 2:19:41
  Speaker 1: Or because brains are lying idle, it is no trifle
• 2:19:46
  Speaker 1: that is at stake, said Epictetus. As to the question
• 2:19:50
  Speaker 1: of control of instinct by reason, it means are you
• 2:19:55
  Speaker 1: in your senses? Or are you not? In this significance, Indubitably,
• 2:20:02
  Speaker 1: the vast majority of people are not in their senses,
• 2:20:05
  Speaker 1: otherwise they would not behave as they do so vaguely,
• 2:20:09
  Speaker 1: so happy, go luckily, so blindly. But the man whose
• 2:20:14
  Speaker 1: brain is in working order emphatically is in his senses.
• 2:20:19
  Speaker 1: And when a man, by means of the efficiency of
• 2:20:22
  Speaker 1: his brain, has put his reason in definite command over
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 1: his instincts, he at once sees things in a truer
• 2:20:30
  Speaker 1: perspective than was before possible, and therefore he is able
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 1: to set a just value upon the various parts which
• 2:20:38
  Speaker 1: go to make up his environment. If, for instance, he
• 2:20:42
  Speaker 1: lives in London and is aware of constant friction, he
• 2:20:46
  Speaker 1: will be led to examine the claims of London as
• 2:20:49
  Speaker 1: a mecha for intelligent persons. He may say to himself,
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 1: there is something wrong, and the seat of trouble is
• 2:20:57
  Speaker 1: not in the machine. London compels me to tolerate dirt, darkness, ugliness, strain,
• 2:21:06
  Speaker 1: tedious daily journeyings, and general expensiveness. What does London give
• 2:21:11
  Speaker 1: me an exchange? And he may decide that, as London
• 2:21:15
  Speaker 1: offers him nothing special in exchange except the glamour of
• 2:21:19
  Speaker 1: London and an occasional seat at a good concert or
• 2:21:22
  Speaker 1: a bad play, he may get a better return for
• 2:21:25
  Speaker 1: his expenditure of brains, nerves and money in the provinces.
• 2:21:30
  Speaker 1: He may perceive, with a certain French novelist, that most
• 2:21:34
  Speaker 1: people of truly distinguished mind prefer the provinces, and he may, then, actually,
• 2:21:40
  Speaker 1: in obedience to reason, quit the deceptions of London with
• 2:21:44
  Speaker 1: a tranquil heart, sure of his diagnosis. Whereas a man
• 2:21:48
  Speaker 1: who had not devoted much time to the care of
• 2:21:51
  Speaker 1: his mental machinery, could not screw himself up to the step,
• 2:21:55
  Speaker 1: partly from lack of resolution and partly because he had
• 2:21:59
  Speaker 1: never examined the sources of his unhappiness. A man who,
• 2:22:04
  Speaker 1: not having full control of his machine, is consistently dissatisfied
• 2:22:09
  Speaker 1: with his existence is like a man who is being
• 2:22:12
  Speaker 1: secretly poisoned and cannot decide with what or by whom,
• 2:22:17
  Speaker 1: And so he has no middle course between absolute starvation
• 2:22:20
  Speaker 1: and a continuance of poisoning. As with the environment of place,
• 2:22:27
  Speaker 1: so with the environment of individuals. Most friction between individuals
• 2:22:32
  Speaker 1: is avoidable friction. Sometimes, however, friction springs from such deep
• 2:22:39
  Speaker 1: causes that no skill in the machine can do away
• 2:22:42
  Speaker 1: with it. But how is the man whose brain is
• 2:22:45
  Speaker 1: not in command of his existence to judge whether the
• 2:22:48
  Speaker 1: unpleasantness can be cured or not, whether it arises in
• 2:22:53
  Speaker 1: himself or in the other He simply cannot judge. Whereas
• 2:22:58
  Speaker 1: a man who keeps his brain brain for use and
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 1: not for idle amusement, will, when he sees that friction
• 2:23:05
  Speaker 1: persists in spite of his brain, be so clearly impressed
• 2:23:09
  Speaker 1: by the advisability of separation as the sole cure that
• 2:23:13
  Speaker 1: he will steel himself to the effort necessary for a separation.
• 2:23:18
  Speaker 1: One of the chief advantages of an efficient brain is
• 2:23:21
  Speaker 1: that an efficient brain is capable of acting with firmness
• 2:23:24
  Speaker 1: and resolution, partly, of course, because it has been toned up,
• 2:23:28
  Speaker 1: but more because its operations are not confused by the
• 2:23:32
  Speaker 1: interference of mere instincts. Thirdly, there is the environment of
• 2:23:38
  Speaker 1: one's general purpose in life, which is, I feel convinced
• 2:23:43
  Speaker 1: far more often hopelessly wrong and futile than either the
• 2:23:47
  Speaker 1: environment of situation or the environment of individuals. I will
• 2:23:53
  Speaker 1: be bold enough to say that quite seventy percent of
• 2:23:56
  Speaker 1: ambition is never realized at all, and that ninety nine
• 2:24:00
  Speaker 1: percent of all realized ambition is fruitless. In other words,
• 2:24:05
  Speaker 1: that a gigantic sacrifice of the present to the future
• 2:24:10
  Speaker 1: is always going on. And here again the utility of
• 2:24:14
  Speaker 1: brain discipline is most strikingly shown. A man whose first
• 2:24:18
  Speaker 1: business it is every day to concentrate his mind on
• 2:24:22
  Speaker 1: the proper performance of that particular day, must necessarily conserve
• 2:24:26
  Speaker 1: his interest in the present. It is impossible that his
• 2:24:31
  Speaker 1: perspective should become so warped that he will devote, say
• 2:24:35
  Speaker 1: fifty five years of his career to problematical preparations for
• 2:24:40
  Speaker 1: his comfort and his glory during the final ten years.
• 2:24:44
  Speaker 1: A man whose brain is his servant and not his
• 2:24:47
  Speaker 1: lady help or his pet dog will be in receipt
• 2:24:50
  Speaker 1: of such daily content and satisfaction that he will early
• 2:24:55
  Speaker 1: ask himself the question, as for this ambition that is
• 2:24:58
  Speaker 1: eating away my eye? What will it give me that
• 2:25:02
  Speaker 1: I have not already got? Further, The steady development of
• 2:25:07
  Speaker 1: interest in the hobby, call it of common sense. Daily living,
• 2:25:12
  Speaker 1: will act as an automatic test of any ambition. If
• 2:25:15
  Speaker 1: an ambition survives and flourishes on the top of that
• 2:25:19
  Speaker 1: daily cultivation of the machine, then the owner of the
• 2:25:22
  Speaker 1: ambition may be sure that it is a genuine and
• 2:25:25
  Speaker 1: an invincible ambition, and he may pursue it in full faith.
• 2:25:30
  Speaker 1: His developed care for the present will prevent him from
• 2:25:33
  Speaker 1: making his ambition an altar on which the whole of
• 2:25:37
  Speaker 1: the present is to be offered up. I shall be
• 2:25:41
  Speaker 1: told that I want to do away with ambition, and
• 2:25:44
  Speaker 1: that ambition is the great motive power of existence, and
• 2:25:48
  Speaker 1: that therefore I am an enemy of society, and the
• 2:25:51
  Speaker 1: truth is not in me. But I do not want
• 2:25:54
  Speaker 1: to do away with ambition. What I say is that
• 2:25:58
  Speaker 1: current ambition usually result in disappointment, that they usually mean
• 2:26:04
  Speaker 1: the complete distortion of a life. This is an incontestable fact,
• 2:26:11
  Speaker 1: and the reason of it is that ambitions are chosen
• 2:26:13
  Speaker 1: either without knowledge of their real value or without knowledge
• 2:26:17
  Speaker 1: of what they will cost. A disciplined brain will at
• 2:26:21
  Speaker 1: once show the unnecessariness of most ambitions, and will ensure
• 2:26:26
  Speaker 1: that the remainder shall be conducted with reason. It will
• 2:26:31
  Speaker 1: also convince its possessor that the ambition to live strictly
• 2:26:35
  Speaker 1: according to the highest common sense during the next twenty
• 2:26:39
  Speaker 1: four hours is an ambition that needs a lot of beating.
• 2:26:46
  Speaker 1: End of chapter fourteen, Chapter fifteen of The Human Machine
• 2:26:56
  Speaker 1: by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox recording in the public domain.
• 2:27:02
  Speaker 1: Chapter fifteen LSD. Anybody who really wishes to talk simple
• 2:27:09
  Speaker 1: truth about money at the present time is confronted by
• 2:27:12
  Speaker 1: a very serious practical difficulty. He must put himself in
• 2:27:16
  Speaker 1: opposition to the overwhelming body of public opinion and resign
• 2:27:20
  Speaker 1: himself to being regarded either as a poseur, a crank,
• 2:27:24
  Speaker 1: or a fool. The public is in search of happiness
• 2:27:28
  Speaker 1: now as it was a million years ago. Money is
• 2:27:32
  Speaker 1: not the principal factor in happiness. It may be argued
• 2:27:37
  Speaker 1: whether as a factor in happiness money is of twentieth
• 2:27:41
  Speaker 1: rate importance or fiftieth rate importance, But it cannot be
• 2:27:45
  Speaker 1: argued whether money, in point of fact does or does
• 2:27:49
  Speaker 1: not of itself bring happiness. There can be no doubt
• 2:27:53
  Speaker 1: whatever that money does not bring happiness. Yet in face
• 2:27:58
  Speaker 1: of this incontrovertial and universal truth, the whole public behaves
• 2:28:04
  Speaker 1: exactly as if money were the soul or the principle
• 2:28:08
  Speaker 1: preliminary to happiness. The public does not reason, and it
• 2:28:13
  Speaker 1: will not listen to reason. Its blood is up in
• 2:28:17
  Speaker 1: the money hunt. And the philosopher might as well expostulate
• 2:28:20
  Speaker 1: with an earthquake as try to take that public by
• 2:28:24
  Speaker 1: the buttonhole and explain if a man sacrifices his interest
• 2:28:29
  Speaker 1: under the will of some dead social tyrant in order
• 2:28:32
  Speaker 1: to marry whom he wishes, if an English minister of
• 2:28:36
  Speaker 1: religion declines twenty five thousand dollars a year to go
• 2:28:40
  Speaker 1: into exile and preach to New York millionaires, the phenomenon
• 2:28:44
  Speaker 1: is genuinely held to be so astounding that it at
• 2:28:47
  Speaker 1: once flies right round the world in the form of
• 2:28:50
  Speaker 1: exclamatory newspaper articles. In an age when such an attitude
• 2:28:56
  Speaker 1: towards money is sincere, it is positively dangerous. I doubt
• 2:29:00
  Speaker 1: if it may not be harmful to persist with loud
• 2:29:03
  Speaker 1: obstinacy that money, instead of being the greatest, is the
• 2:29:07
  Speaker 1: least thing in the world. In times of high military excitement,
• 2:29:14
  Speaker 1: a man may be ostracized, if not lynched, for uttering
• 2:29:17
  Speaker 1: opinions which everybody will accept as truisms a couple of
• 2:29:21
  Speaker 1: years later. And thus the wise philosopher holds his tongue
• 2:29:26
  Speaker 1: lest it should be cut out. So the zenith of
• 2:29:30
  Speaker 1: a period when the possession of money in absurd masses
• 2:29:33
  Speaker 1: is an infallible means to the general respect, I have
• 2:29:37
  Speaker 1: no intention either of preaching or of practicing quite all
• 2:29:42
  Speaker 1: that I privately believe in the matter of riches. It
• 2:29:46
  Speaker 1: was not always thus. Though there have been previous ages
• 2:29:50
  Speaker 1: as lustful for wealth and ostentation as our own, there
• 2:29:54
  Speaker 1: have also been ages when money getting and millionaire envying
• 2:29:58
  Speaker 1: were not the sole prioction upatients of the average man,
• 2:30:02
  Speaker 1: And such an age will undoubtedly succeed to ours. Few
• 2:30:06
  Speaker 1: things would surprise me less in social life than the
• 2:30:09
  Speaker 1: upspringing of some anti luxury movement, the formation of some
• 2:30:15
  Speaker 1: league or guild among the middling classes, where alone intellect
• 2:30:19
  Speaker 1: is to be found in quantity, the members of which
• 2:30:22
  Speaker 1: would bind themselves to stand aloof from all the great, silly, banal,
• 2:30:28
  Speaker 1: ugly and tedious lux activities of the time, and not
• 2:30:32
  Speaker 1: to spend more than a certain sum per annum on eating, drinking,
• 2:30:36
  Speaker 1: covering their bodies, and being moved about like parcels from
• 2:30:40
  Speaker 1: one spot of the Earth's surface to another. Such a
• 2:30:44
  Speaker 1: movement would and will help towards the formation of an
• 2:30:48
  Speaker 1: opinion which would condemn lavish expenditure on personal satisfactions as
• 2:30:54
  Speaker 1: bad form. However, the shareholders of grand hotels, restaurants, and
• 2:31:00
  Speaker 1: race courses of all sorts, together with popular singers and
• 2:31:04
  Speaker 1: barrass et cetera, need feel no immediate alarm. The movement
• 2:31:09
  Speaker 1: is not yet as touching the effect of money on
• 2:31:14
  Speaker 1: the efficient ordering of the human machine. There is happily
• 2:31:17
  Speaker 1: no necessity to inform those who have begun to interest
• 2:31:21
  Speaker 1: themselves in the conduct of their own brains that money
• 2:31:24
  Speaker 1: counts for very little in that paramount affair. Nothing that
• 2:31:28
  Speaker 1: really helps towards perfection costs more than is within the
• 2:31:32
  Speaker 1: means of every person who reads these pages. The expenses
• 2:31:37
  Speaker 1: connected with daily meditation, with the building up of mental habits,
• 2:31:41
  Speaker 1: with the practice of self control and of cheerfulness, with
• 2:31:45
  Speaker 1: the enthronement of reason over the rabble of primeval instincts.
• 2:31:50
  Speaker 1: These expenses are really, you know, trifling. And whether you
• 2:31:55
  Speaker 1: get that well deserved rise of a pound a week
• 2:31:58
  Speaker 1: or whether you don't, you may anyhow go ahead with
• 2:32:01
  Speaker 1: the machine. It isn't a motor car, though I started
• 2:32:05
  Speaker 1: by comparing it to one, and even when having to
• 2:32:09
  Speaker 1: a certain extent mastered through sensible management of the machine
• 2:32:13
  Speaker 1: the art of achieving a daily content and dignity, you
• 2:32:17
  Speaker 1: come to the embroidery of life. Even the best embroidery
• 2:32:21
  Speaker 1: of life is not absolutely ruinous. Meat may go up
• 2:32:25
  Speaker 1: in price, it has done, but books won't. Admission to
• 2:32:29
  Speaker 1: picture galleries and concerts and so forth will remain quite low.
• 2:32:34
  Speaker 1: The views from Richmond Hill or Hindhead, or a long
• 2:32:38
  Speaker 1: pal mall at sunset, the smell of the earth, the
• 2:32:42
  Speaker 1: taste of fruit and of kisses. These things are unaffected
• 2:32:47
  Speaker 1: by the machinations of trusts and the hysteria of stock exchanges, travel,
• 2:32:54
  Speaker 1: which after books is the finest of all embroideries, and
• 2:32:57
  Speaker 1: which is not to be valued by the mile, but
• 2:32:59
  Speaker 1: by the course quality is decidedly cheaper than ever it was.
• 2:33:04
  Speaker 1: All that is required is ingenuity in one's expenditure, and
• 2:33:09
  Speaker 1: much ingenuity with a little money is vastly more profitable
• 2:33:14
  Speaker 1: and amusing than much money without ingenuity. And all the while,
• 2:33:20
  Speaker 1: as you read this, you are saying, with your impatient sneer,
• 2:33:25
  Speaker 1: it's all very well, it's all very fine talking. But
• 2:33:31
  Speaker 1: in brief you are not convinced. You cannot deracinate that
• 2:33:37
  Speaker 1: wide rooted dogma within your soul that more money means
• 2:33:41
  Speaker 1: more joy. I regret it. But let me put one question,
• 2:33:48
  Speaker 1: and let me ask you to answer it. Honestly, your
• 2:33:52
  Speaker 1: financial means are greater enough than they used to be.
• 2:33:56
  Speaker 1: Are you happier or less discontented than you used to be?
• 2:34:01
  Speaker 1: Taking your existence day by day, hour by hour, judging
• 2:34:05
  Speaker 1: it by the mysterious feel in the chest of responsibilities, worries,
• 2:34:12
  Speaker 1: positive joys, and satisfactions, are you genuinely happier than you
• 2:34:17
  Speaker 1: used to be? I do not wish to be misunderstood.
• 2:34:21
  Speaker 1: The financial question cannot be ignored if it is true
• 2:34:26
  Speaker 1: that money does not bring happiness. It is no less
• 2:34:28
  Speaker 1: true that the lack of money induces a state of
• 2:34:31
  Speaker 1: affairs in which efficient living becomes doubly difficult. These two propositions, superficially,
• 2:34:38
  Speaker 1: perhaps self contradictory, are not really so. A modest income
• 2:34:43
  Speaker 1: suffices for the fullest realization of the ego in terms
• 2:34:47
  Speaker 1: of content and dignity, but you must live within it.
• 2:34:52
  Speaker 1: You cannot righteously ignore money. A man, for instance, who
• 2:34:56
  Speaker 1: cultivates himself and instructs a family of daughters in everything
• 2:35:00
  Speaker 1: except the ability to earn their own livelihood, and then
• 2:35:03
  Speaker 1: has the impudence to die suddenly without leaving a penny,
• 2:35:07
  Speaker 1: that man is a scoundrel. Ninety or should I say
• 2:35:12
  Speaker 1: ninety nine percent of all those anxieties which render proper
• 2:35:16
  Speaker 1: living almost impossible are caused by the habit of walking
• 2:35:21
  Speaker 1: on the edge of one's income, as one might walk
• 2:35:24
  Speaker 1: on the edge of a precipice. The majority of Englishmen
• 2:35:28
  Speaker 1: have some financial worry or other continually, everlastingly at the
• 2:35:33
  Speaker 1: back of their minds. The sacrifice necessary to abolish this
• 2:35:39
  Speaker 1: condition of things is more apparent than real. All spending
• 2:35:44
  Speaker 1: is a matter of habit. Speaking generally, a man can
• 2:35:49
  Speaker 1: contrive out of an extremely modest income to have all
• 2:35:53
  Speaker 1: that he needs, unless he needs the esteem of snobs.
• 2:35:58
  Speaker 1: Habit may, and habit usually does, make it just as
• 2:36:02
  Speaker 1: difficult to keep a family on two thousand a year
• 2:36:05
  Speaker 1: as on two hundred. I suppose that for the majority
• 2:36:10
  Speaker 1: of men, the suspension of income for a single month
• 2:36:13
  Speaker 1: would mean either bankruptcy the usurer, or acute inconvenience. Impossible
• 2:36:20
  Speaker 1: under such circumstances to be in full and independent possession
• 2:36:23
  Speaker 1: of one's immortal soul. Hence, I should be inclined to
• 2:36:28
  Speaker 1: say that the first preliminary to a proper control of
• 2:36:31
  Speaker 1: the machine is the habit of spending decidedly less than
• 2:36:35
  Speaker 1: one earns or receives. The veriest automaton of a clerk
• 2:36:39
  Speaker 1: ought to have the wherewithal of a whole year as
• 2:36:42
  Speaker 1: a shield against the caprices of his employer. It would
• 2:36:47
  Speaker 1: be as reasonable to expect the inhabitants of an unfortified
• 2:36:50
  Speaker 1: city in the midst of a plane occupied by a
• 2:36:53
  Speaker 1: hostile army to apply themselves successfully to the study of
• 2:36:57
  Speaker 1: logarithms or metaphysics, as to expect a man without a
• 2:37:01
  Speaker 1: year's income in his safe to apply himself successfully to
• 2:37:06
  Speaker 1: the true art of living, and the whole secret of
• 2:37:11
  Speaker 1: relative freedom from financial anxiety lies not in income but
• 2:37:16
  Speaker 1: in expenditure. I am ashamed to utter this antique platitude,
• 2:37:23
  Speaker 1: but like most aphorisms of unassailable wisdom, it is completely ignored.
• 2:37:29
  Speaker 1: You say, of course, that it is not easy to
• 2:37:32
  Speaker 1: leave a margin between your expenditure and your present income.
• 2:37:36
  Speaker 1: I know it, I fraternally shake your hand. Still, it
• 2:37:41
  Speaker 1: is in most cases far easier to lessen one's expenditure
• 2:37:45
  Speaker 1: than to increase one's income without increasing one's expenditure. The
• 2:37:51
  Speaker 1: alternative is before you. However you decide, be assured that
• 2:37:56
  Speaker 1: the foundation of philosophy is a margin, that the margin
• 2:38:01
  Speaker 1: can always be had. End of Chapter fifteen, Chapter sixteen
• 2:38:14
  Speaker 1: of The Human Machine by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox recording
• 2:38:18
  Speaker 1: is in the public domain. Chapter sixteen Reason Reason. In conclusion,
• 2:38:27
  Speaker 1: I must insist upon several results of what I may
• 2:38:30
  Speaker 1: call the intensive culture of the reason. The brain will
• 2:38:34
  Speaker 1: not only grow more effectively powerful in the departments of
• 2:38:38
  Speaker 1: life where the brain is supposed specially to work, but
• 2:38:41
  Speaker 1: it will also enlarge the circle of its activities. It
• 2:38:45
  Speaker 1: will assuredly interfere in everything the student of himself must
• 2:38:51
  Speaker 1: necessarily conduct his existence more and more according to the
• 2:38:55
  Speaker 1: views of his brain. This will be most salutary and
• 2:38:59
  Speaker 1: agreeable himself and for the rest of the world. You object,
• 2:39:04
  Speaker 1: You say it will be a pity when mankind refers
• 2:39:07
  Speaker 1: everything to reason. You talk about the heart, you envisage
• 2:39:12
  Speaker 1: an entirely reasonable existence as a harsh and callous existence.
• 2:39:17
  Speaker 1: Not so. When the reason and the heart come into conflict,
• 2:39:22
  Speaker 1: the heart is invariably wrong. I do not say that
• 2:39:27
  Speaker 1: the reason is always entirely right, but I do say
• 2:39:31
  Speaker 1: that it is always less wrong than the heart. The
• 2:39:35
  Speaker 1: empire of the reason is not universal, but within its empire,
• 2:39:39
  Speaker 1: reason is supreme, and if other forces challenge it on
• 2:39:44
  Speaker 1: its own soil, they must take the consequences. Nearly always,
• 2:39:49
  Speaker 1: when the heart opposes the brain, the heart is merely
• 2:39:53
  Speaker 1: a pretty name which we give to our idleness and
• 2:39:57
  Speaker 1: our egotism. We pass along the strand and see a
• 2:40:02
  Speaker 1: respectable young widow standing in the gutter with a baby
• 2:40:05
  Speaker 1: in her arms and a couple of boxes of matches
• 2:40:08
  Speaker 1: in one hand. We know she is a widow because
• 2:40:11
  Speaker 1: of her weeds, and we know she is respectable by
• 2:40:15
  Speaker 1: her clothes. We know she is not begging, because she
• 2:40:18
  Speaker 1: is selling matches. The sight of her in the gutter
• 2:40:22
  Speaker 1: pains our heart. Our heart weeps and gives the woman
• 2:40:26
  Speaker 1: a penny in exchange for a haphany box of matches,
• 2:40:30
  Speaker 1: and the pain of our heart is thereby assuaged. Our
• 2:40:34
  Speaker 1: heart has performed a good action. But later on our reason,
• 2:40:40
  Speaker 1: unfortunately asleep at the moment, wakes up and says that
• 2:40:44
  Speaker 1: baby was hired. The weeds and matches merely a dodge.
• 2:40:49
  Speaker 1: The whole affair was a spectacle got up to extract
• 2:40:53
  Speaker 1: money from a fool like you. It is as mechanical
• 2:40:57
  Speaker 1: as a penny in the slot. Instead of relieving distress,
• 2:41:01
  Speaker 1: you have simply helped to perpetuate an infamous system. You
• 2:41:06
  Speaker 1: ought to know that you can't do good in that
• 2:41:09
  Speaker 1: offhand way. The heart gives pennies in the street, the
• 2:41:14
  Speaker 1: brain runs the charity organization society. Of course, to give
• 2:41:20
  Speaker 1: pennies in the street is much less trouble than to
• 2:41:22
  Speaker 1: run the COS. As a method of producing a quick, inexpensive,
• 2:41:27
  Speaker 1: and pleasing effect on one's egotism. The COS is simply
• 2:41:31
  Speaker 1: not in it with this dodge of giving pennies at
• 2:41:34
  Speaker 1: random without inquiry only which of the two devices ought
• 2:41:39
  Speaker 1: to be accused of harshness and callousness? Which of them
• 2:41:43
  Speaker 1: is truly kind? I bring forward the respectable Young Widow
• 2:41:48
  Speaker 1: as a sample case of the heart v. Brain conflict.
• 2:41:52
  Speaker 1: All other cases are the same. The brain is always
• 2:41:57
  Speaker 1: more kind than the heart. The brain is always more
• 2:42:01
  Speaker 1: willing than the heart to put itself to a great
• 2:42:03
  Speaker 1: deal of trouble for a very little reward. The brain
• 2:42:08
  Speaker 1: always does the difficult, unselfish thing, and the heart always
• 2:42:13
  Speaker 1: does the facile, showy thing. Naturally, the result of the
• 2:42:18
  Speaker 1: brain's activity on society is always more advantageous than the
• 2:42:23
  Speaker 1: result of the heart's activity. Another point, I have tried
• 2:42:29
  Speaker 1: to show that if the reason is put in command
• 2:42:31
  Speaker 1: of the feelings, it is impossible to assume an attitude
• 2:42:35
  Speaker 1: of blame towards any person whatsoever, for any act whatsoever.
• 2:42:41
  Speaker 1: The habit of blaming must depart absolutely. It is no
• 2:42:46
  Speaker 1: argument against this statement that it involves anarchy in the
• 2:42:50
  Speaker 1: demolition of society. Even if it did, which emphatically it
• 2:42:56
  Speaker 1: does not, that would not affect its truth. All great
• 2:43:00
  Speaker 1: truths have been assailed on the ground to accept them
• 2:43:04
  Speaker 1: meant the end of everything, As if that mattered. As
• 2:43:09
  Speaker 1: I make no claim to be the discoverer of this truth,
• 2:43:12
  Speaker 1: I have no hesitation in announcing it to be one
• 2:43:15
  Speaker 1: of the most important truths that the world has yet
• 2:43:18
  Speaker 1: to learn. However, the real reason why many people object
• 2:43:23
  Speaker 1: to this truth is not because they think it involves
• 2:43:26
  Speaker 1: the utter demolition of society. Fear of the utter demolition
• 2:43:30
  Speaker 1: of society never stopped anyone from doing or believing anything,
• 2:43:34
  Speaker 1: and never will. But because they say to themselves that
• 2:43:37
  Speaker 1: if they can't blame, they can't praise, and they do
• 2:43:41
  Speaker 1: so like praising. If they are so desperately fond of praising,
• 2:43:47
  Speaker 1: it is a pity that they don't praise a little more.
• 2:43:50
  Speaker 1: There can be no doubt that the average man blames
• 2:43:53
  Speaker 1: much more than he praises. His instinct is to blame.
• 2:43:58
  Speaker 1: If he is satisfied, says nothing. If he is not,
• 2:44:02
  Speaker 1: he most illogically kicks up a row. So that even
• 2:44:06
  Speaker 1: if the suppression of blame involved the suppression of praise,
• 2:44:10
  Speaker 1: the change would certainly be a change for the better.
• 2:44:13
  Speaker 1: But I can perceive no reason why the suppression of
• 2:44:17
  Speaker 1: blame should involve the suppression of praise. On the contrary,
• 2:44:21
  Speaker 1: I think that the habit of praising should be fostered.
• 2:44:25
  Speaker 1: I do not suggest the occasional use of trowels, but
• 2:44:28
  Speaker 1: the regular use of saltspoons. Anyhow, the triumph of the
• 2:44:33
  Speaker 1: brain over the natural instincts In an ideally organized man,
• 2:44:38
  Speaker 1: the brain and the natural instincts will never have even
• 2:44:41
  Speaker 1: a tief always means the ultimate triumph of kindness, and further,
• 2:44:48
  Speaker 1: the culture of the brain. The constant disciplinary exercise of
• 2:44:53
  Speaker 1: the reasoning faculty means the diminution of misdeeds. Do not
• 2:44:58
  Speaker 1: imagine I am hinting that U you were on the
• 2:45:00
  Speaker 1: verge of murdering your wife or breaking into your neighbour's house.
• 2:45:04
  Speaker 1: Although you personally are guiltless, there is a good deal
• 2:45:08
  Speaker 1: of sin still committed in your immediate vicinity, said Balzac
• 2:45:13
  Speaker 1: in La Cousine bett. A crime is, in the first instance,
• 2:45:18
  Speaker 1: a defect of reasoning powers. In the appreciation of this truth,
• 2:45:24
  Speaker 1: Marcus Aurelius was, as usual a bit beforehand with Balzac.
• 2:45:29
  Speaker 1: Marcus Aurelius said, no soul wilfully misses truth, and Epictetus
• 2:45:35
  Speaker 1: had come to the same conclusion before Marcus Aurelius and Plato.
• 2:45:40
  Speaker 1: Before Epictetus, all wrongdoing is done in the sincere belief
• 2:45:46
  Speaker 1: that it is the best thing to do. Whatever sin
• 2:45:49
  Speaker 1: a man does, he does either for his own benefit
• 2:45:53
  Speaker 1: or for the benefit of society. At the moment of
• 2:45:57
  Speaker 1: doing it, he is convinced that it is the only
• 2:45:59
  Speaker 1: thing to do. He is mistaken, and he is mistaken
• 2:46:04
  Speaker 1: because his brain has been unequal to the task of
• 2:46:08
  Speaker 1: reasoning the matter out passion. The heart is responsible for
• 2:46:14
  Speaker 1: all crimes. Indeed, crime is simply a convenient monosyllable, which
• 2:46:20
  Speaker 1: we apply to what happens when the brain and the
• 2:46:23
  Speaker 1: heart come into conflict, and the brain is defeated that
• 2:46:27
  Speaker 1: transaction of the matches was a crime, you know. Lastly,
• 2:46:34
  Speaker 1: the culture of the brain must result in the habit
• 2:46:37
  Speaker 1: of originally examining all the phenomena of life and conduct
• 2:46:41
  Speaker 1: to see what they really are and to what they lead.
• 2:46:46
  Speaker 1: The heart hates progress, because the dear old thing always
• 2:46:50
  Speaker 1: wants to do as has always been done. The heart
• 2:46:54
  Speaker 1: is convinced that custom is a virtue. The heart of
• 2:46:58
  Speaker 1: the dirty working man rebels when the state insists that
• 2:47:02
  Speaker 1: he shall be clean, for no other reason than that
• 2:47:06
  Speaker 1: it is his custom to be dirty. Useless to tell
• 2:47:10
  Speaker 1: his heart that clean he will live longer he has
• 2:47:14
  Speaker 1: been dirty, and he will be. The brain alone is
• 2:47:18
  Speaker 1: the enemy of prejudice and precedent, which alone are the
• 2:47:22
  Speaker 1: enemies of progress. And this habit of originally examining phenomena
• 2:47:29
  Speaker 1: is perhaps the greatest factor that goes to the making
• 2:47:33
  Speaker 1: of personal dignity, for it fosters reliance on oneself and
• 2:47:39
  Speaker 1: courage to accept the consequences of the act of reasoning.
• 2:47:43
  Speaker 1: Reason is the basis of personal dignity. I finish, I
• 2:47:50
  Speaker 1: have said nothing of the modifications which the constant use
• 2:47:54
  Speaker 1: of the brain will bring about in the general value
• 2:47:57
  Speaker 1: of existence, modifications slow and subtle, but tremendous. The persevering
• 2:48:05
  Speaker 1: will discover them. It will happen to the persevering that
• 2:48:10
  Speaker 1: their whole lives are changed texture and color. Too, nought
• 2:48:17
  Speaker 1: will happen to those who do not persevere. End of
• 2:48:22
  Speaker 1: the Human Machine by Arnold Bennett, recording by Ruth Golding
• 2:48:28
  Speaker 1: Golding dot WordPress dot com, August two thousand and twelve.