view of his work. I never feel sure of an article until I have put it away,
forgotten it, and read it again with a fresh mind, disengaged from the
subject and seeing it objectively rather than subjectively. It is the
affliction of the journalist that he has to face the light before he has
had time to withdraw to a critical distance and to see his work with the
detachment of the public.

There is nothing more mistaken than the view that because a thing is
serious you must be thinking about it seriously all the time. If you do
that you cease to be the master of your subject: the subject becomes the
master of you. That is what is the matter with the fanatic. He is so
obsessed by his idea that he cannot relate it to other ideas, and loses all
sense of proportion, and often all sense of sanity. I have seen more
unrelieved seriousness in a lunatic asylum than anywhere else.

The key to success is to come to a task with a fresh mind. That was the
meaning of the very immoral advice given by a don to a friend of mine on
the day before an examination. "What would you advise me to read to-night?"
asked my friend, anxious to make the most of the few remaining hours. "If
I were you," said the don, "I shouldn't read anything. I should get drunk."
He did not mean that the business was so unimportant that it did not matter
what he did. He meant that it was so important that he must forget all
about it, and come to it afresh from the outside. And he used the most
violent illustration he could find to express his meaning.

It is with the mind as with the soil. If you want to get the best out of
your land you must change the crops, and sometimes even let the land lie
fallow. And if you want to get the best out of your mind on a given theme
you must let it range and have plenty of diversion. And the more remote the
diversion is from the theme the better. I know a very grave man whose days