save as a means to his own good. And it is in accordance with common
sense that this should be so. There is, however, a lower egotism and a
higher. It is the latter which we call unselfishness. And it is the
latter of which Christmas is the celebration. We shall legitimately bear
in mind, therefore, that Christmas, in addition to being the Feast of
St. Friend, is even more profoundly the feast of one's own welfare.





NINE

THE REACTION


A reaction sets in between Christmas and the New Year. It is inevitable;
and I should be writing basely if I did not devote to it a full chapter.
In those few dark days of inactivity, between a fete and the resumption
of the implacable daily round, when the weather is usually cynical, and
we are paying in our tissues the fair price of excess, we see life and
the world in a grey and sinister light, which we imagine to be the only
true light. Take the case of the average successful man of thirty-five.
What is he thinking as he lounges about on the day after Christmas?

His thoughts probably run thus: "Even if I live to a good old age,
which is improbable, as many years lie behind me as before me. I have
lived half my life, and perhaps more than half my life. I have realised
part of my worldly ambition. I have made many good resolutions, and kept
one or two of them in k more or less imperfect manner. I cannot, as a