________________________________________________
_ In order to come to grips at once with the question of time-expenditure in
all its actuality, I must choose an individual case for examination. I can
only deal with one case, and that case cannot be the average case, because
there is no such case as the average case, just as there is no such man as the
average man. Every man and every man's case is special.
But if I take the case of a Londoner who works in an office, whose office
hours are from ten to six, and who spends fifty minutes morning and night
in travelling between his house door and his office door, I shall have got as
near to the average as facts permit. There are men who have to work longer
for a living, but there are others who do not have to work so long.
Fortunately the financial side of existence does not interest us here; for our
present purpose the clerk at a pound a week is exactly as well off as the
millionaire in Carlton House-terrace.
Now the great and profound mistake which my typical man makes in regard
to his day is a mistake of general attitude, a mistake which vitiates and
weakens two-thirds of his energies and interests. In the majority of instances
he does not precisely feel a passion for his business; at best he does not dislike
it. He begins his business functions with reluctance, as late as he can, and he
ends them with joy, as early as he can. And his engines while he is engaged
in his business are seldom at their full "h.p." (I know that I shall be accused
by angry readers of traducing the city worker; but I am pretty thoroughly
acquainted with the City, and I stick to what I say.)
Yet in spite of all this he persists in looking upon those hours from ten to
six as "the day," to which the ten hours preceding them and the six hours
following them are nothing but a prologue and epilogue. Such an attitude,
unconscious though it be, of course kills his interest in the odd sixteen
hours, with the result that, even if he does not waste them, he does not
count them; he regards them simply as margin.
This general attitude is utterly illogical and unhealthy, since it formally
gives the central prominence to a patch of time and a bunch of activities
which the man's one idea is to "get through" and have "done with." If a
man makes two-thirds of his existence subservient to one-third, for which
admittedly he has no absolutely feverish zest, how can he hope to live fully
and completely? He cannot.
If my typical man wishes to live fully and completely he must, in his mind,
arrange a day within a day. And this inner day, a Chinese box in a larger
Chinese box, must begin at 6 p.m. and end at 10 a.m. It is a day of sixteen
hours; and during all these sixteen hours he has nothing whatever to do but
cultivate his body and his soul and his fellow men. During those sixteen
hours he is free; he is not a wage-earner; he is not preoccupied with monetary
cares; he is just as good as a man with a private income. This must be his
attitude. And his attitude is all important. His success in life (much more
important than the amount of estate upon what his executors will have to
pay estate duty) depends on it.
What? You say that full energy given to those sixteen hours will lessen the
value of the business eight? Not so. On the contrary, it will assuredly
increase the value of the business eight. One of the chief things which
my typical man has to learn is that the mental faculties are capable of a
continuous hard activity; they do not tire like an arm or a leg. All they
want is change--not rest, except in sleep.
I shall now examine the typical man's current method of employing the
sixteen hours that are entirely his, beginning with his uprising. I will
merely indicate things which he does and which I think he ought not to
do, postponing my suggestions for "planting" the times which I shall
have cleared--as a settler clears spaces in a forest.
In justice to him I must say that he wastes very little time before he
leaves the house in the morning at 9.10. In too many houses he gets
up at nine, breakfasts between 9.7 and 9.9 1/2, and then bolts. But
immediately he bangs the front door his mental faculties, which are
tireless, become idle. He walks to the station in a condition of mental
coma. Arrived there, he usually has to wait for the train. On hundreds
of suburban stations every morning you see men calmly strolling up
and down platforms while railway companies unblushingly rob them
of time, which is more than money. Hundreds of thousands of hours
are thus lost every day simply because my typical man thinks so little
of time that it has never occurred to him to take quite easy precautions
against the risk of its loss.
He has a solid coin of time to spend every day--call it a sovereign. He
must get change for it, and in getting change he is content to lose heavily.
Supposing that in selling him a ticket the company said, "We will change
you a sovereign, but we shall charge you three halfpence for doing so,"
what would my typical man exclaim? Yet that is the equivalent of what
the company does when it robs him of five minutes twice a day.
You say I am dealing with minutiae. I am. And later on I will justify myself.
Now will you kindly buy your paper and step into the train? _
Read next: CHAPTER V - TENNIS AND THE IMMORTAL SOUL, 49
Read previous: CHAPTER III - PRECAUTIONS BEFORE BEGINNING, 35
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