My idea is that this idea should be presented to people not for what it is worth—not as a high moral idea or as a spiritual luxury but as a plain practical every day convenience in our world as it is, for getting the things done one wants to do, and for getting what one wants.
If I were hiring a man to help me get what I want out of other people and if I had my choice between hiring a man who is a skilled expert in making people understand me and hiring a man who is a skilled expert in making people afraid of me, it would not take me long to say which would be the more practical thing for me to do.
If I could go down town and engage a man at so much a year who would be an expert in making me understand myself and in making me make fun of myself, so that I could get myself into fairly good shape for other people to understand, it would be still more practical.
I would soon find myself after the first few séances with the man I was hiring to sit down with me and be a lawyer backwards to me—I would soon find myself having things done to me that would be so plain, so pointed, so sensible, so scientific and matter of fact and thorough that I would be able in a minute to cut down to the quick with any man I met,—cut down to the quick and get what I wanted on any subject I took up, because nobody could fool me, because I couldn't even be fooled by myself.
I do not know how long it is going to take but I do know that if the world is going to be reformed it is going to be by men who—either by doing it personally, or by hiring somebody else to help them do it, have reformed themselves.
My own personal observation is, so far, that when I set out to see things against myself I seem to need somehow, a great deal of assistance.
In such a naturally disagreeable mussy job of course, instead of going to my friends, to people one goes out to dine with, I feel there ought to be some regular professional person one could go to, some more noble refined sort of spiritual hired man—make an appointment by telephone, go down to a room down town on the way to one's office and then just as a plain matter of course be done off for the day, be done over, be put in shape for one's fellow human beings to get on with.
Then one could go out into the midst of the people and keel over a world.
After one had hired some one to be a lawyer backwards to one and got used to it, one would soon be in shape to go to one's employers and let them put in some touches, go to one's employees, go to anybody and everybody right and left. One would soon get so that one could learn something from everybody. One would take points even from relatives.
The main difficulty in a thing like this would be one that would come at the start, the difficulty of getting people to look upon undergoing the truth about themselves, respectfully and seriously and like an operation.