Mental efficiency : and other hints to men and women / by Arnold Bennett.

  • Arnold Bennett
Date:
[1911?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Mental efficiency : and other hints to men and women / by Arnold Bennett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    while you are living in a society. It would be delightful for you if you could, but you can’t. There are two further reasons for the continuance of conventionality. And one is the mysterious but indisputable fact that the full beauty of an activity is never brought out until it is subjected to discipline and strict ordering and nice balancing. A life without petty artifici- ality would be the life of a tiger in the forest. A beautiful life, perhaps, a life of “ burning bright,” but not reaching the highest ideal of beauty ! Laws and rules, forms and ceremonies are good in themselves, from a merely aesthetic point of view, apart from their social value and necessity. And the other reason is that one cannot always be at the full strain of “ self-improvement,” and “ evolutionary progress,” and generally beating the big drum. Human nature will not stand it. There is, if we will only be patient, ample time for the “ artificial ” as well