How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day
阿诺德.本涅特 Arnold Bennett
X NOTHING IN LIFE IS HUMDRUM
Art is a great thing. But it is not the greatest. The most important of allperceptions is the continual perception of cause and effect-in other words,the perception of the continuous development of the universe-in still otherwords, the perception of the course of evolution. When one has thoroughlygot imbued into one's head the leading truth that nothing happens without acause, one grows not only large-minded, but large-hearted.
It is hard to have one's watch stolen, but one reflects that the thief of thewatch became a thief from causes of heredity and environment which areas interesting as they are scientifically comprehensible; and one buysanother watch, if not with joy, at any rate with a philosophy that makesbitterness impossible. One loses, in the study of cause and effect, thatabsurd air which so many people have of being always shocked and painedby the curiousness of life. Such people live amid human nature as if humannature were a foreign country full of awful foreign customs. But, havingreached maturity, one ought surely to be ashamed of being a stranger in astrange land!
The study of cause and effect, while it lessens the painfulness of life, addsto life's picturesqueness. The man to whom evolution is but a name looksat the sea as a grandiose, monotonous spectacle, which he can witness inAugust for three shillings third-class return. The man who is imbued withthe idea of development, of continuous cause and effect, perceives in thesea an element which in the day-before-yesterday of geology was vapour,which yesterday was boiling, and which to-morrow will inevitably be ice.
He perceives that a liquid is merely something on its way to be solid, andhe is penetrated by a sense of the tremendous, changeful picturesqueness oflife. Nothing will afford a more durable satisfaction than the constantlycultivated appreciation of this. It is the end of all science.
Cause and effect are to be found everywhere. Rents went up in Shepherd'sBush. It was painful and shocking that rents should go up in Shepherd'sBush. But to a certain point we are all scientific students of cause and effect,and there was not a clerk lunching at a Lyons Restaurant who did not scienti-fically put two and two together and see in the (once) Two-penny Tube thecause of an excessive demand for wigwams in Shepherd's Bush, and in theexcessive demand for wigwams the cause of the increase in the price ofwigwams.
"Simple!" you say, disdainfully. Everything-the whole complex movementof the universe-is as simple as that-when you can sufficiently put two andtwo together. And, my dear sir, perhaps you happen to be an estate agent'sclerk, and you hate the arts, and you want to foster your immortal soul, andyou can't be interested in your business because it's so humdrum.
Nothing is humdrum.
The tremendous, changeful picturesqueness of life is marvellously shownin an estate agent's office. What! There was a block of traffic in OxfordStreet; to avoid the block people actually began to travel under the cellarsand drains, and the result was a rise of rents in Shepherd's Bush! And yousay that isn't picturesque! Suppose you were to study, in this spirit, theproperty question in London for an hour and a half every other evening.Would it not give zest to your business, and transform your whole life?
You would arrive at more difficult problems. And you would be able totell us why, as the natural result of cause and effect, the longest straightstreet in London is about a yard and a half in length, while the longestabsolutely straight street in Paris extends for miles. I think you willadmit that in an estate agent's clerk I have not chosen an example thatspecially favours my theories.
followed it up for ninetyminutes every other evening, how enthralling.
You are a bank clerk, and you have not read that breathless romance(disguised as a scientific study), Walter Bagehot's "Lombard Street"?Ah, my dear sir, if you had begun with that, and followed it up for ninetyminutes every other evening, how enthralling your business would be toyou, and how much more clearly you would understand human nature.
You are "penned in town," but you love excursions to the country andthe observation of wild life-certainly a heart-enlarging diversion. Whydon't you walk out of your house door, in your slippers, to the nearestgas lamp of a night with a butterfly net, and observe the wild life ofcommon and rare moths that is beating about it, and co-ordinate theknowledge thus obtained and build a superstructure on it, and at lastget to know something about something?
You need not be devoted to the arts, not to literature, in order to live fully.
The whole field of daily habit and scene is waiting to satisfy that curiositywhich means life, and the satisfaction of which means an understanding heart.
I promised to deal with your case, O man who hates art and literature, andI have dealt with it. I now come to the case of the person, happily verycommon, who does "like reading."