I am ready to believe it.I do believe it.I know it.I always knew it.Both in London and in the provinces it has been my lot to spend long years in subordinate situations of business;and the fact did not escape me that a certain proportion of my peers showed what amounted to an honest passion for their duties,and that while engaged in those duties they were really *living*to the fullest extent of which they were capable.But I remain convinced that these fortunate and happy individuals (happier perhaps than they guessed)did not and do not constitute a majority,or anything like a majority.I remain convinced that the majority of decent average conscientious men of business (men with aspirations and ideals)do not as a rule go home of a night genuinely tired.I remain convinced that they put not as much but as little of themselves as they conscientiously can into the earning of a livelihood,and that their vocation bores rather than interests them.
Nevertheless,I admit that the minority is of sufficient importance to merit attention,and that I ought not to have ignored it so completely as I did do.The whole difficulty of the hard-working minority was put in a single colloquial sentence by one of my correspondents.He wrote:"I am just as keen as anyone on doing something to 'exceed my programme,'but allow me to tell you that when I get home at six thirty p.m.I am not anything like so fresh as you seem to imagine."Now I must point out that the case of the minority,who throw themselves with passion and gusto into their daily business task,is infinitely less deplorable than the case of the majority,who go half-heartedly and feebly through their official day.The former are less in need of advice "how to live."At any rate during their official day of,say,eight hours they are really alive;their engines are giving the full indicated "h.p."The other eight working hours of their day may be badly organised,or even frittered away;but it is less disastrous to waste eight hours a day than sixteen hours a day;it is better to have lived a bit than never to have lived at all.