Mental efficiency and other hints to men and women
()
About this ebook
CHAPTER II. EXPRESSING ONE’S INDIVIDUALITY
CHAPTER III. BREAKING WITH THE PAST
CHAPTER IV. SETTLING DOWN IN LIFE
CHAPTER V. MARRIAGE
CHAPTER VI. BOOKS
CHAPTER VII. SUCCESS
CHAPTER VIII. THE PETTY ARTIFICIALITIES
CHAPTER IX. THE SECRET OF CONTENT
Arnold Bennett
Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) was an English novelist renowned as a prolific writer throughout his entire career. The most financially successful author of his day, he lent his talents to numerous short stories, plays, newspaper articles, novels, and a daily journal totaling more than one million words.
Read more from Arnold Bennett
30 Occult & Supernatural masterpieces you have to read before you die (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsProsperity Super Pack #5 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow to Live on 24 Hours a Day: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5How to Live on 24 Hours a Day: The Original Guide to Living Life to the Full Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5HOW TO LIVE ON 24 HOURS A DAY (A Self-Improvement Guide) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Human Machine Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Prosperity Bundle #5 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Game of Life and How to Play It & How to Live on 24 Hours a Day Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Grand Babylon Hotel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Anna of the Five Towns Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Live on 24 Hours a Day Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How To Live on 24 Hours a Day Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/530 Occult & Supernatural masterpieces you have to read before you die Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLiterary Taste and How to Form It Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How to Live on 24 Hours a Day (A Classic Guide to Self-Improvement) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Books and Persons; Being Comments on a Past Epoch, 1908-1911 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThese Twain (Unabridged) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Card (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Literary Taste: How to Form It (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Related to Mental efficiency and other hints to men and women
Related ebooks
Mental efficiency and other hints to men and women Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMental Efficiency: Including Other Hints to Men and Women Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow to Increase your Mental Efficiency Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe best of Arnold Bennett Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMental Efficiency And Other Hints Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mental efficiency (translated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMental Efficiency Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMental Efficiency (Barnes & Noble Digital Library): And Other Hints to Men and Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Maximizing Mental Potential: Insights for Both Men and Women Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCobwebs of Thought Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow to Go to a Medium Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHuman Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPainting As a Pastime Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unravelling - Letting Go, Getting Well Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Origin of Thought and Speech Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Mother of All Minds: Leaping Free of an Outdated Human Nature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFear Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReinventing yourself Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Illusory Truth Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Art of Being Happy: In a Series of Letters from a Father to His Children: with Observations and Comments Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhymap: all life in a diagram Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSeven Pillars: A Handbook for Existence Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThoughts on Man, His Nature, Productions and Discoveries: Interspersed with Some Particulars Respecting the Author Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsQuit Your Worrying! Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThoughts on Man Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPractical Poetry: Essays From Clinical Work Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Human Situation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMission Reality Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Common Sense View of the Mind Cure: Experience the life-changing power Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Self-Improvement For You
A Stolen Life: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Don't Believe Everything You Think: Why Your Thinking Is The Beginning & End Of Suffering Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Boundaries Updated and Expanded Edition: When to Say Yes, How to Say No To Take Control of Your Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Four Loves Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Big Book of 30-Day Challenges: 60 Habit-Forming Programs to Live an Infinitely Better Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Think and Grow Rich (Illustrated Edition): With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Less Fret, More Faith: An 11-Week Action Plan to Overcome Anxiety Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Self-Care for People with ADHD: 100+ Ways to Recharge, De-Stress, and Prioritize You! Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Art of Witty Banter: Be Clever, Quick, & Magnetic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chop Wood Carry Water: How to Fall In Love With the Process of Becoming Great Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How May I Serve Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Win Friends and Influence People: Updated For the Next Generation of Leaders Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wild at Heart Expanded Edition: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You're Not Dying You're Just Waking Up Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Language of Letting Go: Daily Meditations on Codependency Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Mastery of Self: A Toltec Guide to Personal Freedom Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies About Who You Are so You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and into Your Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Grief Observed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Child Called It: One Child's Courage to Survive Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Girl, Stop Apologizing: A Shame-Free Plan for Embracing and Achieving Your Goals Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Reviews for Mental efficiency and other hints to men and women
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Mental efficiency and other hints to men and women - Arnold Bennett
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I. MENTAL EFFICIENCY
THE APPEAL
THE REPLIES
THE CURE
MENTAL CALISTHENICS
CHAPTER II. EXPRESSING ONE’S INDIVIDUALITY
CHAPTER III. BREAKING WITH THE PAST
CHAPTER IV. SETTLING DOWN IN LIFE
CHAPTER V. MARRIAGE
THE DUTY OF IT
THE ADVENTURE OF IT
THE TWO WAYS OF IT
CHAPTER VI. BOOKS
THE PHYSICAL SIDE
THE PHILOSOPHY OF BOOK-BUYING
CHAPTER VII. SUCCESS
CANDID REMARKS
THE SUCCESSFUL AND THE UNSUCCESSFUL
THE INWARDNESS OF SUCCESS
CHAPTER VIII. THE PETTY ARTIFICIALITIES
CHAPTER IX. THE SECRET OF CONTENT
MENTAL EFFICIENCY
AND
OTHER HINTS TO MEN AND WOMEN
BY
ARNOLD BENNETT
First digital edition 2019 by Gianluca Ruffini
CHAPTER I. MENTAL EFFICIENCY
THE APPEAL
If there is any virtue in advertisements, and a journalist should be the last person to say that there is not, the American nation is rapidly reaching a state of physical efficiency of which the world has probably not seen the like since Sparta. In all the American newspapers and all the American monthlies are innumerable illustrated announcements of physical-culture specialists
, who guarantee to make all the organs of the body perform their duties with the mighty precision of a 60 h.p. motor-car that never breaks down. I saw a book the other day written by one of these specialists, to show how perfect health could be attained by devoting a quarter of an hour a day to certain exercises. The advertisements multiply and increase in size. They cost a great deal of money. Therefore, they must bring in a great deal of business. Therefore, vast numbers of people must be worried about the non-efficiency of their bodies, and on the way to achieve efficiency. In our more modest British fashion, we have the same phenomenon in England. And it is growing. Our muscles are growing also. Surprise a man in his bedroom of a morning, and you will find him lying on his back on the floor, or standing on his head, or whirling clubs, in pursuit of physical efficiency. I remember that once I went in
for physical efficiency myself. I, too, lay on the floor, my delicate epidermis separated from the carpet by only the thinnest of garments, and I contorted myself according to the fifteen diagrams of a large chart (believed to be the magna charta of physical efficiency) daily after shaving. In three weeks my collars would not meet round my prize-fighter’s neck; my hosier reaped immense profits, and I came to the conclusion that I had carried physical efficiency quite far enough.
A strange thing - was it not? - that I never had the idea of devoting a quarter of an hour a day after shaving to the pursuit of mental efficiency. The average body is a pretty complicated affair, sadly out of order, but happily susceptible to culture. The average mind is vastly more complicated, not less sadly out of order, but perhaps even more susceptible to culture. We compare our arms to the arms of the gentleman illustrated in the physical efficiency advertisement, and we murmur to ourselves the classic phrase: This will never do.
And we set about developing the muscles of our arms until we can show them off (through a frock coat) to women at afternoon tea. But it does not, perhaps, occur to us that the mind has its muscles, and a lot of apparatus besides, and that these invisible, yet paramount, mental organs are far less efficient than they ought to be; that some of them are atrophied, others starved, others out of shape, etc. A man of sedentary occupation goes for a very long walk on Easter Monday, and in the evening, is so exhausted that he can scarcely eat. He wakes up to the inefficiency of his body, caused by his neglect of it, and he is so shocked that he determines on remedial measures. Either he will walk to the office, or he will play golf, or he will execute the post-shaving exercises. But let the same man after a prolonged sedentary course of newspapers, magazines, and novels, take his mind out for a stiff climb among the rocks of a scientific, philosophic, or artistic subject. What will he do? Will he stay out all day, and return in the evening too tired even to read his paper? Not he. It is ten to one that, finding himself puffing for breath after a quarter of an hour, he won’t even persist till he gets his second wind, but will come back at once. Will he remark with genuine concern that his mind is sadly out of condition and that he really must do something to get it into order? Not he. It is a hundred to one that he will tranquilly accept the status quo, without shame and without very poignant regret. Do I make my meaning clear?
I say, without a very poignant regret, because a certain vague regret is indubitably caused by realizing that one is handicapped by a mental inefficiency which might, without too much difficulty, be cured. That vague regret exudes like a vapour from the more cultivated section of the public. It is to be detected everywhere, and especially among people who are near the half-way house of life. They perceive the existence of immense quantities of knowledge, not the smallest particle of which will they ever make their own. They stroll forth from their orderly dwellings on a starlit night, and feel dimly the wonder of the heavens. But the still small voice is telling them that, though they have read in a newspaper that there are fifty thousand stars in the Pleiades, they cannot even point to the Pleiades in the sky. How they would like to grasp the significance of the nebular theory, the most overwhelming of all theories! And the years are passing; and there are twenty-four hours in every day, out of which they work only six or seven; and it needs only an impulse, an effort, a system, in order gradually to cure the mind of its slackness, to give tone
to its muscles, and to enable it to grapple with the splendours of knowledge and sensation that await it! But the regret is not poignant enough. They do nothing. They go on doing nothing. It is as though they passed for ever along the length of an endless table filled with delicacies, and could not stretch out a hand to seize. Do I exaggerate? Is there not deep in the consciousness of most of us a mournful feeling that our minds are like the liver