on
the sum of your character. It may be the strongest of all your habits.
The only quality that differentiates it from the others is that it has a
definite object (most likely a good object), and that it wholly or
partially fulfils that object. There is not a man who reads these lines
but has, in this detail or that, proved in himself that the will,
forcing the brain to repeat the same action again and again, can modify
the shape of his character as a sculptor modifies the shape of damp
clay.

But if a grown man's character is developing from day to day (as it is),
if nine-tenths of the development is due to unconscious action and
one-tenth to conscious action, and if the one-tenth conscious is the
most satisfactory part of the total result; why, in the name of common
sense, henceforward, should not nine-tenths, instead of one-tenth, be
due to conscious action? What is there to prevent this agreeable
consummation? There is nothing whatever to prevent it--except
insubordination on the part of the brain. And insubordination of the
brain can be cured, as I have previously shown. When I see men unhappy
and inefficient in the craft of _living_, from sheer, crass inattention
to their own development; when I see misshapen men building up
businesses and empires, and never stopping to build up themselves; when
I see dreary men expending precisely the same energy on teaching a dog
to walk on its hind-legs as would brighten the whole colour of their own
lives, I feel as if I wanted to give up the ghost, so ridiculous, so
fatuous does the spectacle seem! But, of course, I do not give up the
ghost. The paroxysm passes. Only I really must cry out: 'Can't you see
what you're missing? Can't you see that you're missing the most
interesting thing on earth, far more interesting than businesses,
empires, and dogs? Doesn't it strike you how clumsy and short-sighted
you are--working always with an inferior machine when you might have a
smooth-gliding perfection? Doesn't it strike you how badly you are
treating yourself?'

Listen, you confirmed grumbler, you who make the evening meal hideous
with complaints against destiny--for it is you I will single out. Are
you aware what people are saying about you behind your back? They are
saying that you render yourself and your family miserable by the habit
which has grown on you of always grumbling. 'Surely it isn't as bad as
that?' you protest. Yes, it is just as bad as that. You say: 'The fact
i