“You were born like that, and you can’t alter yourself, and so it’s no use talking.” If you really believe this, why make any effort at all? Why not let the whole business beautifully slide and yield to your instincts? What object can there be in trying to control yourself in any manner whatever if you are unalterable? Assert yourself to be unalterable, and you assert yourself a fatalist. Assert yourself a fatalist, and you free yourself from all moral responsibility – and other people, too. Well, then, act up to your convictions, if convictions they are. If you can’t alter yourself, I can’t alter myself, and supposing that I come along and bash you on the head and steal your purse, you can’t blame me. You can only, on recovering consciousness, affectionately grasp my hand and murmur: “Don’t apologise, my dear fellow; we can’t alter ourselves.”
This, you say, is absurd. It is. That is one of my innumerable points. The truth is, you do not really believe that you cannot alter yourself. What is the matter with you is just what is the matter with me – sheer idleness. You hate getting up in the morning, and to excuse your inexcusable indolence you talk big about Fate. Just as “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” so fatalism is the last refuge of a shirker. But you deceive no one, least of all yourself. You have not, rationally, a leg to stand on. At this juncture, because I have made you laugh, you consent to say: “I do try, all I can. But I can only alter myself a very little. By constitution I am mentally idle. I can’t help that, can I?” Well, so long as you are not the only absolutely unchangeable thing in a universe of change, I don’t mind. It is something for you to admit that you can alter yourself even a very little. The difference between our philosophies is now only a question of degree.
In the application of any system of perfecting the machine, no two persons will succeed equally. From the disappointed tone of some of your criticisms it might be fancied that I had advertised a system for making archangels out of tailors’ dummies. Such was not my hope. I have no belief in miracles. But I know that when a thing is thoroughly well done it often has the air of being a miracle. My sole aim is to insist that every man shall perfect his machine to the best of his powers, not to the best of somebody else’s powers. I do not indulge in any hope that a man can be better than his best self. I am, however, convinced that every man fails to be his best self a great deal oftener than he need fail – for the reason that his will-power, be it great or small, is not directed according to the principles of common sense.