provided you don't mind it. The weak point in the
argument is that nine times out of ten you can't help minding it.

"No misfortune can harm me," says Marcus Aurelius, "without the consent
of the daemon within me."

The trouble is our daemon cannot always be relied upon. So often he does
not seem up to his work.

"You've been a naughty boy, and I'm going to whip you," said nurse to a
four-year-old criminal.

"You tant," retorted the young ruffian, gripping with both hands the
chair that he was occupying, "I'se sittin' on it."

His daemon was, no doubt, resolved that misfortune, as personified by
nurse, should not hurt him. The misfortune, alas! proved stronger than
the daemon, and misfortune, he found did hurt him.

The toothache cannot hurt us so long as the daemon within us (that is to
say, our will power) holds on to the chair and says it can't. But,
sooner or later, the daemon lets go, and then we howl. One sees the
idea: in theory it is excellent. One makes believe. Your bank has
suddenly stopped payment. You say to yourself.

"This does not really matter."

Your butcher and your baker say it does, and insist on making a row in
the passage.

You fill yourself up with gooseberry wine. You tell yourself it is
seasoned champagne. Your liver next morning says it is not.

The daemon within us means well, but forgets it is not the only thing
there. A man I knew was an enthusiast on vegetarianism. He argued that
if the poor would adopt a vegetarian diet the problem of existence would
be simpler for them, and maybe he was right. So one day he assembled
some twenty poor lads for the purpose of introducing to them a vegetarian
lunch. He begged them to believe that lentil beans were steaks, that
cauliflowers were chops. As a third course he placed before them a
mixture of carrots and savoury herbs, and urged them to imagine they were
eating saveloys.

"Now, you all like saveloys," he said, addressing them, "and the palate
is but the creature of the imagination. Say to yourselves, 'I am eating
saveloys,' and for all practical purposes these things will be saveloys."

Some of the lads professed to have done it, but one disappointed-looking
youth confessed to failure.

"But how can you be sure it was not a saveloy?" the host persisted.

"Because," explained the boy, "I haven't got the stomach-ache."

It appeared that saveloys, although a dish of which he was fond,
invariably and immediately disa