Self and Self-Management

I

I WILL take the extreme case of the social butterfly, because it has the great advantage of simplicity. This favourite variety of the lepidopteral insects is always spoken of as female. But as the variety persists from generation to generation obviously it cannot be of one sex only. And, as a fact, there are indubitably male social butterflies, though the differences between the male and the female may be slight. I shall, however, confine myself to the case of the female social butterfly—again for the sake of simplicity.

This beautiful creature combines the habits of the butterfly with the habits of the moth. For whereas the moth flies only by night and the butterfly flies only by day, the social butterfly flies both by day and by night. She is universally despised and condemned, and almost universally envied: one of the strangest among the many strange facts of natural history. She lives with a single purpose—to be for ever in the movement—not any particular movement, but the movement, which is a grand combined tendency comprising all lesser tendencies. For the social butterfly the constituents of the movement are chiefly men, theatres, restaurants, dances, noise, and hurry. The minor constituents may and do frequently change, but the major constituents have not changed for a considerable number of years. The minor constituents of the movement are usually ‘serious,’ and hence in a minor way the social butterfly is serious. If books happen to be of the movement, she will learn the names of books and authors, and in urgent crises will even read.

IV

To take refuge from life is to refuse it. Life generally offers due scope for the leading instinct in a man or a woman; and sometimes it offers the scope at a very low price, at no price at all.

For example, a young man may have a very marked instinct for engineering, and his father may be a celebrated and wealthy engineer who is only too anxious that the son should follow the same profession. Life has offered the scope and charged nothing for it.

But, on the other hand, a man may have a very marked instinct for authorship, and his father may be a celebrated and wealthy engineer who, being convinced that literature is an absurd and despicable profession, has determined that his son shall not be an author but an engineer. ‘Become an engineer,’ says the father, ‘and I will give you unique help, and you are a made man. Become an author, and you get nothing whatever from me except opposition.’

Life, however, which has provided the instinct for literature, has also provided the scope for its fulfilment. The scope for young authors is vaster to-day on two continents than ever it was. But the price which in this case life quotes is very high. The young man hesitates. The price quoted includes comfort, parental approval, domestic peace, money, luxury, and perhaps also a comfortable and not unsatisfactory marriage. It includes practically all the ingredients of the mixture commonly known as happiness. Of course, by following literature the young man may recover all and more than all the price paid. But also he may not. The chances are about a hundred to one that he will not.

I

LET us consider, first, a strange quality of the written word.

The spoken word is bad enough. Such things as misfortunes, blunders, sins, and apprehensions become more serious when they have been described even in conversation. A woman who secretly fears cancer will fear it much more once she has mentioned her fear to another person. The spoken word has somehow given reality to her fear. But the written word is far more formidable than the spoken word. It is said that the ignorant and the uncultured have a superstitious dread of writing. The dread is not superstitious; it is based on a mysterious and intimidating phenomenon which nearly anybody can test for himself. The fact is that almost all people are afraid of writing—I mean true, honest writing. Vast numbers of people hate and loathe it, as though it were a high explosive that might suddenly go off and blow them to pieces. (That is one reason why realistic novels never have a very large sale.) But the difference between one man’s dread of writing and another man’s dread of writing is merely a difference of degree, not of kind. And if any among you asserts that he has no fear of the written word, merely because it is written, let him try the following experiment.

Take—O exceptional individual!—take some concealed and blameworthy action or series of thoughts of your own. I do not mean necessarily murder or embezzlement; not everybody has committed murder or embezzlement, or even desires to do so; I mean some

I

IT was at a war-charity sale, in a hot, crowded public room of a fashionable hotel, amid the humorous bellowings of an amateur auctioneer and the guffaws of amused bidders, that this thing happened to me. A young woman was passing, and, as she passed, she looked and stopped, and abruptly charged me with being myself. I admitted the undeniable.

‘I hope you’ll excuse me,’ she said. ‘I’ve read all your books.’

‘The usual amiable chatter,’ I thought, and made aloud my usual, stilted, self-conscious reply to such a conversational opening:

‘You must have worked very hard.’

She frowned—just a little frown in the middle of her forehead. She was very well-dressed (which is not a fault), and she had a pleasant, sympathetic, serious face. She said:

‘I’ve often wanted to tell you; in fact, I thought I ought to tell you about all those little books of yours about life and improving oneself, and being efficient and not wasting time, and so on, and so on. They’re very nice to read, but they’ve never done me any good—practically.’ She smiled.

(No; it was not to be the usual amiable chatter!)

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘But, of course, books don’t act by themselves. You can’t expect them to be of much practical good until you begin to put them into practice.’

‘But that’s just the point,’ she answered. ‘I can’t begin to put them into practice. I can’t resolve, and I can’t concentrate, and I can’t clench my teeth and make up my mind.

I

FREQUENTERS of lunatic asylums are familiar with the person who, being convinced that he is a poached egg, continually demands to be put on hot toast, and is continually unhappy because nobody will put him on hot toast. This man is quite harmless; he is merely a bore by reason of a ridiculous delusion about the fulfilment of his true destiny being bound up with hot toast; in character he is one of the most amiable individuals that ever lived, amiable even to the point of offering himself for consumption to those of his fellow-patients who are hungry, and who happen to fancy a poached egg with their tea. Nevertheless, on the score of his undeniable delusion he is segregated from ordinary society, and indeed imprisoned for life. Such may be the consequence of a delusion.

But not all deluded people are treated alike. A lady went for the week-end to stay in a country cottage. Now, this lady was accustomed to smoke a cigarette in her bath of a morning.

Let there be no mistake. She was a perfectly respectable lady. In former days respectable ladies neither smoked cigarettes nor took baths. The one habit was nearly as disreputable as the other. In the present epoch they do both with impunity, and though possibly a section of the public may consider that while for a woman to smoke a cigarette is quite nice, and for a woman to have a bath is quite nice, to smoke a cigarette in a bath is not quite nice for a woman, that section of the public is in a very small minority and should therefore be howled down.