And the whole secret of relative freedom from financial anxiety lies not
in income, but in expenditure. I am ashamed to utter this antique
platitude. But, like most aphorisms of unassailable wisdom, it is
completely ignored. You say, of course, that it is not easy to leave a
margin between your expenditure and your present income. I know it. I
fraternally shake your hand. Still it is, in most cases, far easier to
lessen one's expenditure than to increase one's income without
increasing one's expenditure. The alternative is before you. However you
decide, be assured that the foundation of philosophy is a margin, and
that the margin can always be had.
XVI
REASON, REASON!
In conclusion, I must insist upon several results of what I may call the
'intensive culture' of the reason. The brain will not only grow more
effectively powerful in the departments of life where the brain is
supposed specially to work, but it will also enlarge the circle of its
activities. It will assuredly interfere in everything. The student of
himself must necessarily conduct his existence more and more according
to the views of his brain. This will be most salutary and agreeable both
for himself and for the rest of the world. You object. You say it will
be a pity when mankind refers everything to reason. You talk about the
heart. You envisage an entirely reasonable existence as a harsh and
callous existence. Not so. When the reason and the heart come into
conflict the heart is invariably wrong. I do not say that the reason is
always entirely right, but I do say that it is always less wrong than
the heart. The empire of the reason is not universal, but within its
empire reason is supreme, and if other forces challenge it on its own
soil they must take the consequences. Nearly always, when the heart
opposes the brain, the heart is merely a pretty name which we give to
our idleness and our egotism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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