"That," he goes on, "is the way to develop enough physical overplus so
that you will be enabled to overcome your present sad addiction to
mob-intoxication. And, provided your mind is not in as bad condition
as your body, this physical overplus will transmute some of itself
into mental exuberance. This will enable you to have more fun with
your mind than an enthusiastic kitten has with its tail. It will
enable you to look before and after, and purr over what is, as well as
to discern, with pleasurable longing, what is not, and set forth
confidently to capture it."
But if, by any chance, you have allowed your mind to get into the sort
of condition which the old-fashioned German scholar used to allow his
body to get into, it develops that the Auto-Comrade hates a flabby
brain almost as much as he hates a flabby body. He soon makes it clear
that he will not have much to do with any one who has not yet mastered
the vigorous and highly complex art of not worrying. Also, he demands
of his companion the knack of calm, consecutive thought. This is one
reason why so many more Auto-Comrades are to be found in
crow's-nests, gypsy-vans, and shirt-waist factories than on upper
Fifth Avenue. For, watching the stars and the sea from a swaying
masthead, taking light-heartedly to the open road, or even operating a
rather unwholesome sewing-machine all day in silence, is better for
consecutiveness of mind than a never-ending round of offices, clubs,
committees, servants, dinners, teas, and receptions, to each of which
one is a little late.
In diffusing knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, this knack of
concentration, Arnold Bennett's little books on mental efficiency have
done wonders for the art of auto-comradeship. Their popular
persuasiveness has coaxed thousands on thousands of us to go in for a
few minutes' worth of mental calisthenics every day. They have
actually cajoled us into the painful feat of glancing over a page of a
book and then putting it down and trying to retrace the argument in
memory. Or they have coaxed us to fix on some subject--any
subject--for reflection, and then scourge our straying minds back to
it at every few steps of the walk to the morning train. And we have
found that the mental muscles have responded at once to this
treatment. They have hardened under the exercise until being left
alone has begun to change from confinement in the same cell with that
worst of enemies who has the right to forge one's own name--into a
joyful pleasure jaunt with a totally different person who, if not
one's best friend, is at least to be counted on as a trusty,
entertaining, resourceful, unselfish associate--at times, perhaps, a
little exacting--yet certainly a far more brilliant and generally
satisfactory person than his companion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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