How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day
Page: 25

Of course if, instead of attending to an elementary and profoundly important
duty, you prefer to read the paper (which you might just as well read while
waiting for your dinner) I have nothing to say. But attend to it at some time
of the day you must. I now come to the evening hours.



IX

INTEREST IN THE ARTS

Many people pursue a regular and uninterrupted course of idleness in
the evenings because they think that there is no alternative to idleness
but the study of literature; and they do not happen to have a taste for
literature. This is a great mistake.

Of course it is impossible, or at any rate very difficult, properly to study
anything whatever without the aid of printed books. But if you desire to
understand the deeper depths of bridge or of boat-sailing you would not
be deterred by your lack of interest in literature from reading the best
books on bridge or boat-sailing. We must, therefore, distinguish between
literature, and books treating of subjects not literary. I shall come to
literature in due course.

Let me now remark to those who have never read Meredith, and who are
capable of being unmoved by a discussion as to whether Mr. Stephen
Phillips is or is not a true poet, that they are perfectly within their rights.
It is not a crime not to love literature. It is not a sign of imbecility. The
mandarins of literature will order out to instant execution the unfortunate
individual who does not comprehend, say, the influence of Wordsworth on
Tennyson. But that is only their impudence. Where would they be, I wonder,
if requested to explain the influences that went to make Tschaikowsky's
"Pathetic Symphony"?


There are enormous fields of knowledge quite outside literature which
will yield magnificent results to cultivators. For example (since I have
just mentioned the most popular piece of high-class music in England
to-day), I am reminded that the Promenade Concerts begin in August.
You go to them. You smoke your cigar or cigarette (and I regret to say
that you strike your matches during the soft bars of the "Lohengrin"