Mental Efficiency
Arnold Bennett, 1911
Why does the decision to work on yourself so often fade after two weeks? In 1911 the English writer Arnold Bennett saw the cause not in laziness or a lack of wanting, but in a lack of will to keep going and in a mind that has long gone untrained. In short, ironic essays he explains how to guard that will, what exercises to give the mind, why to break with the past, and why success works nothing like the books about success promise.
Who it is for
For those who have more than once promised themselves to study, to read something serious and to live differently, and then dropped it within a couple of weeks. And for those who have grown tired of books claiming that anyone can achieve success.
Prepare to live, of course, but for heaven’s sake don’t forget to live.
The body is in shape, but the mind?
Picture a man who sits at his desk all year and then, on a holiday Monday, sets off on a long walk out of town. By evening he is so worn out that he cannot eat. The next morning he is ashamed of his body and takes action: he will walk to work, play golf or do exercises. Now let the same man, after months of newspapers and light novels, lead his mind up a steep climb: into science, philosophy or art. After a quarter of an hour he is out of breath and turns back. And he does not panic. He accepts it calmly, as it is.
With this scene the English writer Bennett opens his 1911 collection of short essays. He notices a vague regret in many adults: around them lie vast stores of knowledge, and yet they will never make it their own. A person reads in the paper that there are many stars in the Pleiades, but cannot point out the Pleiades in the sky itself. So they walk past an endless table laden with food and never reach out a hand.
Bennett asked his readers to write to him whether anyone had tried to cure their mind of sluggishness. Many letters came, and almost all of them expected him to become “Sandow for the brain” himself, a trainer for the mind, as the famous strongman had been a trainer for muscles. Nobody had a ready system. Bennett had to build one from his own experience, which he calls bitter and comic.
His diagnosis is simple. People are not short of desire. They lack willpower, and not the kind needed to start, but the kind needed to keep going. And a mind weakened by long idleness gets in the way too, like an untrained body. Next come his pieces of advice against both troubles, and then larger questions: what to do with the past, when to start living, what success is and where calm comes from.
Resolve breaks where it seems not to
One reader sent Bennett lines by the poet Matthew Arnold: tasks conceived in an hour of insight can be carried out in hours of gloom. Bennett replied briefly: “No, no and no!” In his experience, what is resolved in a bright moment most often never gets done. So before taking up the mind again, it is worth understanding why it did not work out the first time.
Bennett takes a case he considers typical. A man of about thirty, living in comfort, with cares and work but not too many. Sitting in the garden with a tennis racket, he suddenly decides to take up his mind. Bennett asks him to sit down again and think: willpower now is no stronger than before, and the old failures have left a wound that may open at the most inconvenient moment. According to Bennett, those failures usually have three causes.
• Too big a leap. No grand programme. Start with a ridiculously easy step, for example reading a small book on education by Herbert Spencer twice in a month, a book that cost sixpence, and writing in pencil on its back cover what struck you. “That’s trifling,” you will say. Then do it. A completed resolution gives the mind confidence, and above all you will not get a new wound. Only after this does Bennett allow a plan for three months.
• Friends’ mocking smiles. A drunkard, Bennett notes, is sometimes less embarrassed by the drink than by having to tell a friend that he has sworn off it. So no announcements. Work quietly, and when you have won a couple of battles, the smile will die before it is born.
• The day is not rearranged. A new activity is usually squeezed in as if the day were elastic. Something large and definite will have to go. Stealing from sleep does not help, nor does fitting lessons in between other things. If you want to study for half an hour, free up an hour: for a beginner, a margin of a hundred per cent is not too much.
About the author
Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) was an English novelist and journalist, author of “The Old Wives’ Tale”. For a general readership he wrote short, wry and practical books on how to live more sensibly.
All books by this author: Arnold Bennett
Terms from the book
- Johnson
- Franklin
- meditation
- Monte Carlo
- Pleiades: A star cluster in the constellation Taurus, visible to the naked eye on a clear night sky.
- Sandow: Eugen Sandow (1867-1925), the famous strongman of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and founder of a popular system of physical exercises. Bennett makes an image of his name: “Sandow for the brain”.
- Arnold: Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), English poet and critic. Bennett argues with two lines from one of his poems.
- Spencer: Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), English philosopher. Bennett mentions his small book on education, which cost sixpence.
- anthology: A collection of selected passages from different books. Bennett advises compiling one for yourself from whatever touched you personally.
- Alhambra: A London theatre and music hall on Leicester Square, popular in Bennett’s time.
- roulette: A gambling game: a ball drops into one of the numbered slots of a spinning wheel, and players bet on a number or a colour.
All terms
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