ereof.

I am ready to believe it. I do believe it. I know it. I always knew
it. Both in London and in the provinces it has been my lot to spend
long years in subordinate situations of business; and the fact did not
escape me that a certain proportion of my peers showed what amounted to
an honest passion for their duties, and that while engaged in those
duties they were really _living_ to the fullest extent of which they
were capable. But I remain convinced that these fortunate and happy
individuals (happier perhaps than they guessed) did not and do not
constitute a majority, or anything like a majority. I remain convinced
that the majority of decent average conscientious men of business (men
with aspirations and ideals) do not as a rule go home of a night
genuinely tired. I remain convinced that they put not as much but as
little of themselves as they conscientiously can into the earning of a
livelihood, and that their vocation bores rather than interests them.

Nevertheless, I admit that the minority is of sufficient importance to
merit attention, and that I ought not to have ignored it so completely
as I did do. The whole difficulty of the hard-working minority was put
in a single colloquial sentence by one of my correspondents. He wrote:
"I am just as keen as anyone on doing something to 'exceed my
programme,' but allow me to tell you that when I get home at six thirty
p.m. I am not anything like so fresh as you seem to imagine."

Now I must point out that the case of the minority, who throw
themselves with passion and gusto into their daily business task, is
infinitely less deplorable than the case of the majority, who go
half-heartedly and feebly through their official day. The former are
less in need of advice "how to live." At any rate during their
official day of, say, eight hours they are really alive; their engines
are giving the full indicated "h.p." The other eight working hours of
their day may be badly organised, or even frittered away; but it is
less disastrous to waste eight hours a day than sixteen hours a day; it
is better to have lived a bit than never to have lived at all. The real
tragedy is the tragedy of the man who is braced to effort neither in
the office nor out of it, and to this man this book is primarily
addressed. "But," says the other and more fortunate man, "although my
ordinary programme is bigger than his, I want to exceed my programme
too! I am living a bit; I want to l