t very few people are able to be idle
successfully. I think it is not so much because we misuse idleness as
because we misinterpret it that the long days become increasingly
demoralizing. I would ask no one to accept a forced idleness without
objection or regret. Such an acceptance would imply a lack of spirit, to
say the least. But idleness and rest are not incompatible; neither are
idleness and service, nor idleness and contentment. If we can look upon
rest as a preparation for service, if we can make it serve us in the
opportunity it gives for quiet growth and legitimate enjoyment, then it
is fully justified and it may offer advantages and opportunity of the
best.

The chief trouble with idleness is that it so often means introspection,
worry, and impatience, especially to those conscientious souls who would
fain be about their business.

I have for a long time been accustomed to combat the worry and fret of
necessary idleness--not by forbidding it, not by advising struggle and
fight against it, but by insisting that the best way to get rid of it is
to leave it alone, to accept it. When we do this there may come a kind
of fallow time in which the mind enriches and refreshes itself beyond
our conception.

I would rather my patient who must rest for a long time would give up
all thought of method, would give up all idea of making his mind follow
any particular line of thought or absence of thought. I know that the
mind which has been under conscious control a good deal of the time is
apt to rebel at this freedom and to indulge in all kinds of alarming
extravagances. I am sure, however, that the best way to meet these
demands for conscious control is to be careless of them, to be willing
to experience these extravagances and inconsistencies without fear, in
the belief that finally will come a quiet and peace which will be all
that we can ask. The peace of mind that is unguided, in the conscious
and literal sense, is a thing which too few of us know.

Mr. Arnold Bennett, in his little book, "How to Live on Twenty-four
Hours a Day," teaches that we should leave no time unused in our lives;
that we should accomplish a great deal more and be infinitely more
effective and progressive if we devoted our minds to the definite
working-out of necessary problems whenever those times occur in which we
are apt to be desultory. I wish here to make a plea for desultoriness
and for an idleness which goes even beyond the idleness of