How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day
Page: 22

Aurelius or Epictetus. Read a chapter--and so short they are, the chapters!
--in the evening and concentrate on it the next morning. You will see.

Yes, my friend, it is useless for you to try to disguise the fact. I can hear
your brain like a telephone at my ear. You are saying to yourself: "This
fellow was doing pretty well up to his seventh chapter. He had begun to
interest me faintly. But what he says about thinking in trains, and concen-
tration, and so on, is not for me. It may be well enough for some folks,
but it isn't in my line."

It is for you, I passionately repeat; it is for you. Indeed, you are the very
man I am aiming at.

Throw away the suggestion, and you throw away the most precious
suggestion that was ever offered to you. It is not my suggestion. It is
the suggestion of the most sensible, practical, hard-headed men who
have walked the earth. I only give it you at second-hand. Try it. Get
your mind in hand. And see how the process cures half the evils of life
--especially worry, that miserable, avoidable, shameful disease--worry!



VIII

THE REFLECTIVE MOOD


The exercise of concentrating the mind (to which at least half an hour a
day should be given) is a mere preliminary, like scales on the piano.
Having acquired power over that most unruly member of one's complex
organism, one has naturally to put it to the yoke. Useless to possess an
obedient mind unless one profits to the furthest possible degree by its
obedience. A prolonged primary course of study is indicated.

Now as to what this course of study should be there cannot be any question;
there never has been any question. All the sensible people of all ages are
agreed upon it. And it is not literature, nor is it any other art, nor is it
history, nor is it any science. It is the study of one's self. Man, know
thyself. These words are so hackneyed that verily I blush to write them.
Yet they must be written, for they need to be written. (I take back my
blush, being ashamed of it.) Man, know thyself. I say it out loud. The