doesn't. Just because he isn't
aware that he is on a machine at all. He has never examined what he is
on. And at the back of his consciousness is a dim idea that he is
perched on a piece of solid, immutable rock that runs on castors.

II

AMATEURS IN THE ART OF LIVING

Considering that we have to spend the whole of our lives in this human
machine, considering that it is our sole means of contact and compromise
with the rest of the world, we really do devote to it very little
attention. When I say 'we,' I mean our inmost spirits, the instinctive
part, the mystery within that exists. And when I say 'the human machine'
I mean the brain and the body--and chiefly the brain. The expression of
the soul by means of the brain and body is what we call the art of
'living.' We certainly do not learn this art at school to any
appreciable extent. At school we are taught that it is necessary to
fling our arms and legs to and fro for so many hours per diem. We are
also shown, practically, that our brains are capable of performing
certain useful tricks, and that if we do not compel our brains to
perform those tricks we shall suffer. Thus one day we run home and
proclaim to our delighted parents that eleven twelves are 132. A feat of
the brain! So it goes on until our parents begin to look up to us
because we can chatter of cosines or sketch the foreign policy of Louis
XIV. Good! But not a word about the principles of the art of living yet!
Only a few detached rules from our parents, to be blindly followed when
particular crises supervene. And, indeed, it would be absurd to talk to
a schoolboy about the expression of his soul. He would probably mutter a
monosyllable which is not 'mice.'

Of course, school is merely a preparation for living; unless one goes to
a university, in which case it is a preparation for university. One is
supposed to turn one's attention to living when these preliminaries are
over--say at the age of about twenty. Assuredly one lives then; there
is, however, nothing new in that, for one has been living all the time,
in a fashion; all the time one has been using the machine without
understanding it. But does one, school and college being over, enter
upon a study of the machine? Not a bit. The question then becomes, not
how to live, but how to obtain and retain a position in which one will
be able to live; how to get minute portions of dead animals and plants
which one can swallow, in order not to die of