THE ORDERLY LIFE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23809, 16 May 1939, Page 4

THE ORDERLY LIFE

DOES IT LEAD TO SUCCESS AND HAPPINESS? , There is a certain flavour of other days about the Bishop of London’s remark, in the course of a sermon, that one of the secrets of both happiness and success in life “is to be orderly, methodical, and punctual,” says the Manchester Guardian in a leading article. , _ It sounds a little like Samuel Smiles, who certainly quoted with approval the maxim. “ Punctuality is the politeness of princes,” and added that it was the duty of gentlemen and the necessity of men of affairs. As for precision of method and arrangement, we have Pope’s assurance that “Order is Heaven’s first law,” though in recent years less has been heard about such aspects of the virtuous liL. It will be noticed, too, that the Bishop of London did not actually bestow a certificate of moral merit upon order, method and punctuality: all he said was that they were among the things that would lead to happiness and success. What they certainly do is to ease the passage through daily life for oneself and other people; they act as lubricants, whereas confusion and delay act as grit in the machine. Perhaps one reason why earlier generations praised them so frequently was because they were then less often applied; many important records of the past were kept in an exceedingly haphazard and muddled condition. ' The filing, system and indexes of to-day represent a tremendous advance on the rule-of-thumb accumulations of our ancestors: if we have much more material stowed away we have also applied much greater method to its storage. And one might think that, with all our various triumphs in speed of transport, punctuality should be rather easier than in ths\ days of stage coach and unmetalled quagmires for roads Our resources for the orderly life are much better marshalled than they were; therefore, there may be more of us ha''"” than there used to be. though it is odd to think of the filing cabinet as a symbol of the delectable life. And genius, tidy or untidy, will always, no doubt, continue to blaze its own way through to success, for whatever else genius may be it has been truly observed that it is certainly not an infinite capacity for taking pains. But genius is not always, or even often, happy. Method and mediocrity take the blander line of least resistance.