There is nothing more mistaken than the view that because a thing is
serious you must be thinking about it seriously all the time. If you do
that you cease to be the master of your subject: the subject becomes the
master of you. That is what is the matter with the fanatic. He is so
obsessed by his idea that he cannot relate it to other ideas, and loses all
sense of proportion, and often all sense of sanity. I have seen more
unrelieved seriousness in a lunatic asylum than anywhere else.
The key to success is to come to a task with a fresh mind. That was the
meaning of the very immoral advice given by a don to a friend of mine on
the day before an examination. "What would you advise me to read to-night?"
asked my friend, anxious to make the most of the few remaining hours. "If
I were you," said the don, "I shouldn't read anything. I should get drunk."
He did not mean that the business was so unimportant that it did not matter
what he did. He meant that it was so important that he must forget all
about it, and come to it afresh from the outside.
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