also a lot of sheer dogma. But it is the least unsatisfactory manual of
the brain that I have met with. And if the profane reader ignores all
that is either Greek or twaddle to him, there will yet remain for his
advantage a vast amount of very sound information and advice. All these
three books are cheap.




XIV

A MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT


I now come to an entirely different aspect of the whole subject.
Hitherto I have dealt with the human machine as a contrivance for
adapting the man to his environment. My aim has been to show how much
depends on the machine and how little depends on the environment, and
that the essential business of the machine is to utilise, for making the
stuff of life, the particular environment in which it happens to find
itself--and no other! All this, however, does not imply that one must
accept, fatalistically and permanently and passively, any preposterous
environment into which destiny has chanced to throw us. If we carry far
enough the discipline of our brains, we can, no doubt, arrive at
surprisingly good results in no matter what environment. But it would
not be 'right reason' to expend an excessive amount of will-power on
brain-discipline when a slighter effort in a different direction would
produce consequences more felicitous. A man whom fate had pitched into a
canal might accomplish miracles in the way of rendering himself
amphibian; he might stagger the world by the spectacle of his philosophy