The Angel and the Author | Page 6

is, as you say, so useless; if it touches but the
fringe; if it makes the evil worse, what would you do?"
[And questions a Man of Thought]
"I would substitute Justice," he answered; "there would be no need for

Charity."
"But it is so delightful to give," I answered.
"Yes," he agreed. "It is better to give than to receive. I was thinking of
the receiver. And my ideal is a long way off. We shall have to work
towards it slowly."
CHAPTER II

[Philosophy and the Daemon]
Philosophy, it has been said, is the art of bearing other people's troubles.
The truest philosopher I ever heard of was a woman. She was brought
into the London Hospital suffering from a poisoned leg. The house
surgeon made a hurried examination. He was a man of blunt speech.
"It will have to come off," he told her.
"What, not all of it?"
"The whole of it, I am sorry to say," growled the house surgeon.
"Nothing else for it?"
"No other chance for you whatever," explained the house surgeon.
"Ah, well, thank Gawd it's not my 'ead," observed the lady.
The poor have a great advantage over us better-off folk. Providence
provides them with many opportunities for the practice of philosophy. I
was present at a "high tea" given last winter by charitable folk to a
party of char-women. After the tables were cleared we sought to amuse
them. One young lady, who was proud of herself as a palmist, set out to
study their "lines." At sight of the first toil-worn hand she took hold of
her sympathetic face grew sad.

"There is a great trouble coming to you," she informed the ancient
dame.
The placid-featured dame looked up and smiled:
"What, only one, my dear?"
"Yes, only one," asserted the kind fortune-teller, much pleased, "after
that all goes smoothly."
"Ah," murmured the old dame, quite cheerfully, "we was all of us a
short-lived family."
Our skins harden to the blows of Fate. I was lunching one Wednesday
with a friend in the country. His son and heir, aged twelve, entered and
took his seat at the table.
"Well," said his father, "and how did we get on at school today?"
"Oh, all right," answered the youngster, settling himself down to his
dinner with evident appetite.
"Nobody caned?" demanded his father, with--as I noticed--a sly twinkle
in his eye.
"No," replied young hopeful, after reflection; "no, I don't think so,"
adding as an afterthought, as he tucked into beef and potatoes, "'cepting,
o' course, me."
[When the Daemon will not work]
It is a simple science, philosophy. The idea is that it never matters what
happens to you 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