can't alter myself, and supposing
that I come along and bash you on the head and steal your purse, you
can't blame me. You can only, on recovering consciousness,
affectionately grasp my hand and murmur: 'Don't apologise, my dear
fellow; we can't alter ourselves.'

This, you say, is absurd. It is. That is one of my innumerable points.
The truth is, you do not really believe that you cannot alter yourself.
What is the matter with you is just what is the matter with me--sheer
idleness. You hate getting up in the morning, and to excuse your
inexcusable indolence you talk big about Fate. Just as 'patriotism is
the last refuge of a scoundrel,' so fatalism is the last refuge of a
shirker. But you deceive no one, least of all yourself. You have not,
rationally, a leg to stand on. At this juncture, because I have made you
laugh, you consent to say: 'I do try, all I can. But I can only alter
myself a very little. By constitution I am mentally idle. I can't help
that, can I?' Well, so long as you are not the only absolutely
unchangeable thing in a universe of change, I don't mind. It is
something for you to admit that you can alter yourself even a very
little. The difference between our philosophies is now only a question
of degree.

In the application of any system of perfecting the machine, no two
persons will succeed equally. From the disappointed tone of some of your
criticisms it might be fancied that I had advertised a system for making
archangels out of tailors' dummies. Such was not my hope. I have no
belief in miracles. But I know that when a thing is thoroughly well
done it often has the air of being a miracle. My sole aim is to insist
that every man shall perfect his machine to the best of _his_ powers,
not to the best of somebody else's powers. I do not indulge in any hope
that a man can be better than his best self. I am, however, convinced
that every man fails to be his best self a great deal oftener than he
need fail--for the reason that his will-power, be it great or small, is
not directed according to the principles of common sense.

Common sense will surely lead a man to ask the question: 'Why did my
actions yesterday contradict my reason?' The reply to this question will
nearly always be: 'Because at the critical moment I forgot.' The supreme
explanation of the abortive results of so many efforts at
self-alteration, the supreme explanation of our frequent miserable
scurrying into a doctrine of fatalism, is s