n we can
dine exclusively off jam. What frightful prigs we should become if we
had nothing to do but cultivate our noblest faculties! I beg the
despisers of artificiality to reflect upon these observations, however
incomplete these observations may be, and to consider whether they
would be quite content if they got what they are crying out for.

IX

THE SECRET OF CONTENT

I have said lightly a propos of the conclusion arrived at by several
correspondents and by myself that the cry for the simple life was
merely a new form of the old cry for happiness, that I would explain
what it was that made life worth living for me. The word has gone
forth, and I must endeavour to redeem my promise. But I do so with
qualms and with diffidence. First, there is the natural instinct
against speaking of that which is in the core of one's mind. Second,
there is the fear, nearly amounting to certainty, of being
misunderstood or not comprehended at all. And third, there is the
absurd insufficiency of space. However!... For me, spiritual content
(I will not use the word "happiness," which implies too much) springs
essentially from no mental or physical facts. It springs from the
spiritual fact that there is something higher in man than the mind,
and that that something can control the mind. Call that something the
soul, or what you will. My sense of security amid the collisions of
existence lies in the firm consciousness that just as my body is the
servant of my mind, so is my mind the servant of _me_. An unruly
servant, but a servant--and possibly getting less unruly every day!
Often have I said to that restive brain: "Now, O mind, sole means of
communication between the divine _me_ and all external phenomena, you
are not a free agent; you are a subordinate; you are nothing but a
piece of machinery; and obey me you _shall_."

The mind can only be conquered by regular meditation, by deciding
beforehand what direction its activity ought to take, and insisting
that its activity takes that direction; also by never leaving it idle,
undirected, masterless, to play at random like a child in the streets
after dark. This is extremely difficult, but it can be done, and it is
marvellously well worth doing. The fault of the epoch is the absence
of meditativeness. A sagacious man will strive to correct in himself
the faults of his epoch. In some deep ways the twelfth century had
advantages over the twentieth. It practised meditation. The tw