hygiene; notably such matters
as lying in bed. Instead of being regarded, as it ought to be, as
a matter of personal convenience and adjustment, it has come to be
regarded by many as if it were a part of essential morals to get up
early in the morning. It is upon the whole part of practical wisdom; but
there is nothing good about it or bad about its opposite.

.....

Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get
up the night before. It is the great peril of our society that all its
mechanisms may grow more fixed while its spirit grows more fickle.
A man's minor actions and arrangements ought to be free, flexible,
creative; the things that should be unchangeable are his principles, his
ideals. But with us the reverse is true; our views change constantly;
but our lunch does not change. Now, I should like men to have strong and
rooted conceptions, but as for their lunch, let them have it sometimes
in the garden, sometimes in bed, sometimes on the roof, sometimes in the
top of a tree. Let them argue from the same first principles, but let
them do it in a bed, or a boat, or a balloon. This alarming growth of
good habits really means a too great emphasis on those virtues which
mere custom can ensure, it means too little emphasis on those virtues
which custom can never quite ensure, sudden and splendid virtues of
inspired pity or of inspired candour. If ever that abrupt appeal is made
to us we may fail. A man can get use to getting up at five o'clock in
the morning. A man cannot very well get used to being burnt for his
opinions; the first experiment is commonly fatal. Let us pay a little
more attention to these possibilities of the heroic and unexpected.
I dare say that when I get out of this bed I shall do some deed of an
almost terrible virtue.

For those who study the great art of lying in bed there is one emphatic
caution to be added. Even for those who can do their work in bed (like
journalists), still more for those whose work cannot be done in bed (as,
for example, the professional harpooners of whales), it is obvious that
the indulgence must be very occasional. But that is not the caution
I mean. The caution is this: if you do lie in bed, be sure you do it
without any reason or justification at all. I do not speak, of course,
of the seriously sick. But if a healthy man lies in bed, let him do it
without a rag of excuse; then he will get up a healthy man. If he
does it for some secondary hygie