How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day
阿诺德.本涅特 Arnold Bennett
VII CONTROLLING THE MIND
People say: "One can't help one's thoughts." But one can. The controlof the thinking machine is perfectly possible. And since nothing whateverhappens to us outside our own brain; since nothing hurts us or gives uspleasure except within the brain, the supreme importance of being ableto control what goes on in that mysterious brain is patent. This idea isone of the oldest platitudes, but it is a platitude who's profound truth andurgency most people live and die without realising. People complain ofthe lack of power to concentrate, not witting that they may acquire thepower, if they choose.
And without the power to concentrate--that is to say, without the power todictate to the brain its task and to ensure obedience--true life is impossible.Mind control is the first element of a full existence.
Hence, it seems to me, the first business of the day should be to put themind through its paces. You look after your body, inside and out; yourun grave danger in hacking hairs off your skin; you employ a wholearmy of individuals, from the milkman to the pig-killer, to enable youto bribe your stomach into decent behaviour. Why not devote a littleattention to the far more delicate machinery of the mind, especially asyou will require no extraneous aid? It is for this portion of the art andcraft of living that I have reserved the time from the moment of quittingyour door to the moment of arriving at your office.
"What? I am to cultivate my mind in the street, on the platform, in thetrain, and in the crowded street again?" Precisely. Nothing simpler!No tools required! Not even a book. Nevertheless, the affair is not easy.
When you leave your house, concentrate your mind on a subject (nomatter what, to begin with). You will not have gone ten yards beforeyour mind has skipped away under your very eyes and is larking roundthe corner with another subject.
Bring it back by the scruff of the neck. Ere you have reached the stationyou will have brought it back about forty times. Do not despair. Continue.Keep it up. You will succeed. You cannot by any chance fail if youpersevere. It is idle to pretend that your mind is incapable of concentration.Do you not remember that morning when you received a disquieting letterwhich demanded a very carefully-worded answer? How you kept your mindsteadily on the subject of the answer, without a second's intermission, untilyou reached your office; whereupon you instantly sat down and wrote theanswer? That was a case in which *you* were roused by circumstances tosuch a degree of vitality that you were able to dominate your mind like a tyrant.You would have no trifling. You insisted that its work should be done, and itswork was done.
By the regular practice of concentration (as to which there is no secret--save the secret of perseverance) you can tyrannise over your mind (whichis not the highest part of *you*) every hour of the day, and in no matterwhat place. The exercise is a very convenient one. If you got into yourmorning train with a pair of dumb-bells for your muscles or an encyclopaediain ten volumes for your learning, you would probably excite remark. But asyou walk in the street, or sit in the corner of the compartment behind a pipe,or "strap-hang" on the Subterranean, who is to know that you are engaged inthe most important of daily acts? What asinine boor can laugh at you?
I do not care what you concentrate on, so long as you concentrate. It is themere disciplining of the thinking machine that counts. But still, you may aswell kill two birds with one stone, and concentrate on something useful. Isuggest--it is only a suggestion--a little chapter of Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus.
Do not, I beg, shy at their names. For myself, I know nothing more "actual,"more bursting with plain common-sense, applicable to the daily life of plainpersons like you and me (who hate airs, pose, and nonsense) than MarcusAurelius or Epictetus. Read a chapter--and so short they are, the chapters!--in the evening and concentrate on it the next morning. You will see.
Yes, my friend, it is useless for you to try to disguise the fact. I can hearyour brain like a telephone at my ear. You are saying to yourself: "Thisfellow was doing pretty well up to his seventh chapter. He had begun tointerest me faintly. But what he says about thinking in trains, and concen-tration, and so on, is not for me. It may be well enough for some folks,but it isn't in my line."
It is for you, I passionately repeat; it is for you. Indeed, you are the veryman I am aiming at.
Throw away the suggestion, and you throw away the most precioussuggestion that was ever offered to you. It is not my suggestion. It isthe suggestion of the most sensible, practical, hard-headed men whohave walked the earth. I only give it you at second-hand. Try it. Getyour mind in hand. And see how the process cures half the evils of life--especially worry, that miserable, avoidable, shameful disease--worry!