s. I am speaking here solely of
the possible adventures of mind and soul; it is good, wholesome,
invigorating, to be tied to a work in life, to have to discharge it
whether one likes it or no, through indolence and disinclination,
through depression and restlessness. But we ought not to be immured
among conventions and received opinions. We ought to ask ourselves why
we believe what we take for granted, and even if we do really believe
it at all. We ought not to condemn people who do not move along the
same lines of thought; we ought to change our minds a good deal, not
out of mere levity, but because of experience. We ought not to think
too much of the importance of what we are doing, and still less of the
importance of what we have done; we ought to find a common ground on
which to meet distasteful people; we ought to labour hard against
self-pity as well as against self-applause; we ought to feel that if
we have missed chances, it is out of our own heedlessness and
stupidity. Self-applause is a more subtle thing even than self-pity,
because, if one rejects the sense of credit, one is apt to
congratulate oneself on being the kind of person who does reject it,
whereas we ought to avoid it as instinctively as we avoid a bad smell.
Above all, we ought to believe that we can do something to change
ourselves, if we only try; that we can anchor our conscience to a
responsibility or a personality, can perceive that the society of
certain people, the reading of certain books, does affect us, make our
mind grow and germinate, give us a sense of something fine and
significant in life. The thing is to say, as the prim governess says
in Shirley, "You acknowledge the inestimable worth of principle?"--it
is possible to get and to hold a clear view, as opposed to a muddled
view, of life and its issues; and the blessing is that one can do this
in any circle, under any circumstances, in the midst of any kind of
work. That is the wonderful thing about thought, that it is like a
captive balloon which is anchored in one's garden. It is possible to
climb into it and to cast adrift; but so many people, as I have said,
seem to end by pulling the balloon in, letting out the gas, and
packing the whole away in a shed. Of course the power of doing all
this varies very much in different temperaments; but I am sure that
there are many people who, looking back at their youth, are conscious
that they had something stirring and throbbing within them