What you have to do is to teach the new habit to your brain by daily
concentration on it; by forcing your brain to think of nothing else for
half an hour of a morning. After a time the brain will begin to remember
automatically. For, of course, the explanation of your previous
failures is that your brain, undisciplined, merely forgot at the
critical moment. The tone was out of your mouth before your brain had
waked up. It is necessary to watch, as though you were a sentinel, not
only against the wrong tone, but against the other symptoms of the
attitude of blame. Such as the frown. It is necessary to regard yourself
constantly, and in minute detail. You lie in bed for half an hour and
enthusiastically concentrate on this beautiful new scheme of the right
tone. You rise, and because you don't achieve a proper elegance of
necktie at the first knotting, you frown and swear and clench your
teeth! There is a symptom of the wrong attitude towards your
environment. You are awake, but your brain isn't. It is in such a
symptom that you may judge yourself. And not a trifling symptom either!
If you will frown at a necktie, if you will use language to a necktie
which no gentleman should use to a necktie, what will you be capable of
to a responsible being?... Yes, it is very difficult. But it can be
done.
IX
'FIRE!'
In this business of daily living, of ordinary usage of the machine in
hourly intercourse, there occurs sometimes a phenomenon which is the
cause of a great deal of trouble, and the result of a very ill-tended
machine. It is a phenomenon impossible to ignore, and yet, so shameful
is it, so degrading, so shocking, so miserable, that I hesitate to
mention it. For one class of reader is certain to ridicule me, loftily
saying: 'One really doesn't expect to find this sort of thing in print
nowadays!' And another class of reader is certain to get angry.
Nevertheless, as one of my main objects in the present book is to
discuss matters which 'people don't talk about,' I shall discuss this
matter. But my diffidence in doing so is such that I must approach it
deviously, describing it first by means of a figure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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