X

MISCHIEVOUSLY OVERWORKING IT

I have dealt with the two general major causes of friction in the daily use of the machine.  I will now deal with a minor cause, and make an end of mere dailiness.  This minor cause—­and after all I do not know that its results are so trifling as to justify the epithet ’minor’—­is the straining of the machine by forcing it to do work which it was never intended to do.  Although we are incapable of persuading our machines to do effectively that which they are bound to do somehow, we continually overburden them with entirely unnecessary and inept tasks.  We cannot, it would seem, let things alone.

For example, in the ordinary household the amount of machine horse-power expended in fighting for the truth is really quite absurd.  This pure zeal for the establishment and general admission of the truth is usually termed ‘contradictoriness.’  But, of course, it is not that; it is something higher.  My wife states that the Joneses have gone into a new flat, of which the rent is L165 a year.  Now, Jones has told me personally that the rent of his new flat is L156 a year.  I correct my wife.  Knowing that she is in the right, she corrects me.  She cannot bear that a falsehood should prevail.  It is not a question of L9, it is a question of truth.  Her enthusiasm for truth excites my enthusiasm for truth.  Five minutes ago I didn’t care twopence whether the rent of the Joneses’ new flat was L165 or L156 or L1056 a year.  But now I care intensely that it is L156.  I have formed myself into a select society for the propagating of the truth about the rent of the Joneses’ new flat, and my wife has done the same.  In eloquence, in argumentative skill, in strict supervision of our tempers, we each of us squander enormous quantities of that h.-p. which is so precious to us.  And the net effect is naught.

Now, if one of us two had understood the elementary principles of human engineering, that one would have said (privately):  ’Truth is indestructible.  Truth will out.  Truth is never in a hurry.  If it doesn’t come out to-day it will come out to-morrow or next year.  It can take care of itself.  Ultimately my wife (or my husband) will learn the essential cosmic truth about the rent of the Joneses’ new flat.  I already know it, and the moment when she (or he) knows it also will be the moment of my triumph.  She (or he) will not celebrate my triumph openly, but it will be none the less real.  And my reputation for accuracy and calm restraint will be consolidated.  If, by a rare mischance, I am in error, it will be vastly better for me in the day of my undoing that I have not been too positive now.  Besides, nobody has appointed me sole custodian of the great truth concerning the rent of the Joneses’ new flat.  I was not brought into the world to be a safe-deposit, and more urgent matters summon me to effort.’  If one of us had meditated thus, much needless friction would have been avoided and power saved; amour-propre would not have been exposed to risks; the sacred cause of truth would not in the least have suffered; and the rent of the Joneses’ new flat would anyhow have remained exactly what it is.