Chapter XII: The Management of Character

A sound judgment of our own characters essential to moral improvement 235 Analogies between character and taste 236 The strongest desire generally prevails, but desires may be modified 238 Passions and habits 239 Exaggerated regard for the future.--A happy childhood 239 Choice of pleasures.--Athletic games 240 The intellectual pleasures 242 Their tendency to enhance other pleasures.--Importance of specialisation 243 And of judicious selection 243 Education may act specially on the desires or on the will 245 Modern education and tendencies of the former kind 245 Old Catholic training mainly of the will.--Its effects 247 Anglo-Saxon types in the seventeenth century 248 Capriciousness of willpower--heroism often succumbs to vice 249 Courage--its varieties and inconsistencies 250 The circumstances of life the school of will.--Its place in character 251 Dangers of an early competence.--Choice of work 252 Choice of friends.--Effect of early friendship on character 254 Mastery of will over thoughts.--Its intellectual importance 255 Its importance in moral culture 255 Great difference among men in this respect 256 Means of governing thought 258 The dream power--its great place in life 258 Especially in the early stages of humanity 261 Moral safety valves--danger of inventing unreal crimes 262 Character of the English gentleman 266 Different ways of treating temptation 266

CHAPTER XIII

MONEY

Henry Taylor on its relation to character 268 Difference between real and professed beliefs about money 268 Its relation to happiness in different grades of life 269 The cost of pleasures 275 Lives of the millionaires 281 Leaders of Society 284 The great speculator 287 Expenditure in charity.--Rules for regulating it 288 Advantages and disadvantages of a large very wealthy class in a nation 292 Directions in which philanthropic expenditure may be best turned 296

CHAPTER XIV

MARRIAGE

Its importance and the motives that lead to it 300 The moral and intellectual qualities it specially demands 302 Duty to the unborn.--Improvident marriages 305 The doctrine of heredity and its consequences 306 Religious celibacy 308 Marriages of dissimilar types often peculiarly happy 309 Marriages resulting from a common weakness 310 Independent spheres in marriage.--Effect on character 311 The age of marriage 312 Increased independence of women 314

CHAPTER XV

SUCCESS

Success depends more on character than on intellect 316 Especially that accessible to most men and most conducive to happiness 317 Strength of will, tact and judgment.--Not always joined 317 Their combination a great element of success 318 Good nature 319 Tact: its nature and its importance 320 Its intellectual and moral affinities 323 Value of good society in cultivating it.--Newman's description of a gentleman 324 Disparities between merit and success 326 Success not universally desired 326

CHAPTER XVI

TIME

Rebellion of human nature against the essential conditions of life 328 Time 'the stuff of life' 330 Various ways of treating it 330 Increased intensity of life 331 Sleep 332 Apparent inequalities of time 335 The tenure of life not too short 337 Old age 341 The growing love of rest.--How time should be regarded 341

CHAPTER XVII

THE END

Death terrible chiefly through its accessories 343 Pagan and Christian ideas about it 344 Premature death 349 How easily the fear of death is overcome 351 The true way of regarding it 352

THE MAP OF LIFE