using it. But, we say, he is doing us harm! Where? In our minds. He has
robbed us of our peace, our comfort, our happiness, our good temper.
Even if he has, we might just as well inveigh against a shower. But has
he? What was our brain doing while this naughty person stepped in and
robbed us of the only possessions worth having? No, no! It is not that
he has done us harm--the one cheerful item in a universe of stony facts
is that no one can harm anybody except himself--it is merely that we
have been silly, precisely as silly as if we had taken a seat in the
rain with a folded umbrella by our side.... The machine is at fault. I
fancy we are now obtaining glimpses of what that phrase really means.




VII

WHAT 'LIVING' CHIEFLY IS


It is in intercourse--social, sentimental, or business--with one's
fellows that the qualities and the condition of the human machine are
put to the test and strained. That part of my life which I conduct by
myself, without reference--or at any rate without direct reference--to
others, I can usually manage in such a way that the gods do not
positively weep at the spectacle thereof. My environment is simpler,
less puzzling, when I am alone, my calm and my self-control less liable
to violent fluctuations. Impossible to be disturbed by a chair!
Impossible that a chair should get on one's nerves! Impossible to blame
a chair for not being as reasonable, as archangelic as I am myself! But
when it comes to people!... Well, that is