How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day
Page: 13

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