Unless you give at least forty-five minutes to careful, fatiguing reflection (it is an awful bore at first) upon what you are reading, your ninety minutes of a night are chiefly wasted.  This means that your pace will be slow.

Never mind.

Forget the goal; think only of the surrounding country; and after a period, perhaps when you least expect it, you will suddenly find yourself in a lovely town on a hill.

XII

DANGERS TO AVOID

I cannot terminate these hints, often, I fear, too didactic and abrupt, upon the full use of one’s time to the great end of living (as distinguished from vegetating) without briefly referring to certain dangers which lie in wait for the sincere aspirant towards life.  The first is the terrible danger of becoming that most odious and least supportable of persons—­a prig.  Now a prig is a pert fellow who gives himself airs of superior wisdom.  A prig is a pompous fool who has gone out for a ceremonial walk, and without knowing it has lost an important part of his attire, namely, his sense of humour.  A prig is a tedious individual who, having made a discovery, is so impressed by his discovery that he is capable of being gravely displeased because the entire world is not also impressed by it.  Unconsciously to become a prig is an easy and a fatal thing.

Hence, when one sets forth on the enterprise of using all one’s time, it is just as well to remember that one’s own time, and not other people’s time, is the material with which one has to deal; that the earth rolled on pretty comfortably before one began to balance a budget of the hours, and that it will continue to roll on pretty comfortably whether or not one succeeds in one’s new role of chancellor of the exchequer of time.  It is as well not to chatter too much about what one is doing, and not to betray a too-pained sadness at the spectacle of a whole world deliberately wasting so many hours out of every day, and therefore never really living.  It will be found, ultimately, that in taking care of one’s self one has quite all one can do.

Another danger is the danger of being tied to a programme like a slave to a chariot.  One’s programme must not be allowed to run away with one.  It must be respected, but it must not be worshipped as a fetish.  A programme of daily employ is not a religion.

This seems obvious.  Yet I know men whose lives are a burden to themselves and a distressing burden to their relatives and friends simply because they have failed to appreciate the obvious.  “Oh, no,” I have heard the martyred wife exclaim, “Arthur always takes the dog out for exercise at eight o’clock and he always begins to read at a quarter to nine.  So it’s quite out of the question that we should. . .” etc., etc.  And the note of absolute finality in that plaintive voice reveals the unsuspected and ridiculous tragedy of a career.