an, know thyself. These words are so hackneyed
that verily I blush to write them. Yet they must be written, for they
need to be written. (I take back my blush, being ashamed of it.) Man,
know thyself. I say it out loud. The phrase is one of those phrases
with which everyone is familiar, of which everyone acknowledges the
value, and which only the most sagacious put into practice. I don't
know why. I am entirely convinced that what is more than anything else
lacking in the life of the average well-intentioned man of to-day is
the reflective mood.

We do not reflect. I mean that we do not reflect upon genuinely
important things; upon the problem of our happiness, upon the main
direction in which we are going, upon what life is giving to us, upon
the share which reason has (or has not) in determining our actions, and
upon the relation between our principles and our conduct.

And yet you are in search of happiness, are you not? Have you
discovered it?

The chances are that you have not. The chances are that you have
already come to believe that happiness is unattainable. But men have
attained it. And they have attained it by realising that happiness does
not spring from the procuring of physical or mental pleasure, but from
the development of reason and the adjustment of conduct to principles.

I suppose that you will not have the audacity to deny this. And if you
admit it, and still devote no part of your day to the deliberate
consideration of your reason, principles, and conduct, you admit also
that while striving for a certain thing you are regularly leaving
undone the one act which is necessary to the attainment of that thing.

Now, shall I blush, or will you?

Do not fear that I mean to thrust certain principles upon your
attention. I care not (in this place) what your principles are. Your
principles may induce you to believe in the righteousness of burglary.
I don't mind. All I urge is that a life in which conduct does not
fairly well accord with principles is a silly life; and that conduct
can only be made to accord with principles by means of daily
examination, reflection, and resolution. What leads to the permanent
sorrowfulness of burglars is that their principles are contrary to
burglary. If they genuinely believed in the moral excellence of
burglary, penal servitude would simply mean so many happy years for
them; all martyrs are happy, because their conduct and their principles
agree.

A