The evening review

The teaching

As the Stoics and the Golden Verses, and the examen of Ignatius of Loyola teaches it.

The three questions

The oldest form of the review is in the Golden Verses handed down under the name of Pythagoras. Do not let sleep close your eyes, they say, until you have gone three times over each deed of the day, asking: where did I go wrong? What did I do? What duty did I leave undone? Begin with the first deed and go through them in order; then reproach yourself for what was done badly, and take joy in what was done well.

The three questions cover the whole day. The first finds the faults, the second keeps the plain record of what was done, and the third finds the duties that were missed, which a busy day hides best. Epictetus quoted the verses to his students as words to keep ready for use, not to recite.

The judge and the defendant

Seneca gives the review its tone. The philosopher Sextius, he writes, asked his own mind at the end of every day: what bad habit have you cured today? What fault have you resisted? In what way are you better? Seneca kept the custom. When the lamp was out and his wife, who knew his habit, had fallen silent, he went over his whole day, his deeds and his words, and hid nothing from himself and passed nothing by.

He pleads his case before himself as before a judge, and the verdict is mild: see that you do not do that again; this time I forgive you. His examples are small and exact. In that argument you spoke too fiercely; in future, do not quarrel with people who have never learned. You rebuked that man more frankly than you should have, and so you did not mend him but offended him; another time, ask not only whether what you say is true, but whether the one who hears it can bear the truth. Anger, he says, grows quieter when it knows it must come before a judge every night.

The morning and the evening

The Stoic day has two watches: in the morning the student prepares, and at night the student reviews. Marcus Aurelius opens the second book of his notes with the morning one: 'Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial.' He reminds himself that such people act from not knowing good from bad, that none of them can make him do wrong, and that he is made to work with them, as feet work together and hands work together. The evening review then asks how the day went against what the morning prepared for.

The general examen

Ignatius of Loyola gave the review its Christian form in five points. First, give thanks to God for the good things received. Second, ask for the grace to know one's faults and to put them away. Third, ask an account of oneself from the hour of rising until now, hour by hour or part by part of the day: first of thoughts, then of words, then of deeds. Fourth, ask pardon for the faults. Fifth, resolve to amend, with God's grace. It closes with the Our Father.

The order matters. The review begins with thanks, so that the day is first seen as something given and only then searched; and it ends with a resolve, so that it looks forward and does not stay in the past.

The particular examen

Beside the general review Ignatius sets a narrower one, for one fault at a time. On rising, the person resolves to guard against that single fault. After the midday meal they ask for the grace to remember, go over the hours since rising, and mark on a line in a notebook a dot for each time they fell. In the evening they do the same on a second line. Day is compared with day and week with week, to see whether the dots grow fewer.

Ignatius adds a small gesture. Each time the fault is caught in the moment, the person lays a hand on the breast, as a sign of sorrow, which can be done among other people without their noticing.

Consolation and desolation

Jesuits today often make the review as an examen of consciousness and not of conscience alone. Besides faults, they look for the moments in the day when they felt drawn towards God and other people, a movement Ignatius calls consolation, and the moments when they felt drawn away, dried up, restless or turned in on themselves, which he calls desolation. One moment of each is chosen and prayed over. In this form the question is less 'what did I do wrong?' and more 'where was I most alive, and where least?'

Against scruples

Ignatius knew the danger of the review, because he had suffered it, and among his notes are rules about scruples: the habit of thinking one has sinned when one has not, and of going round and round a fault without end. His counsel is to take the opposite course to the one the trouble pushes. A careless conscience should be made more careful, but a conscience grown too fine should settle itself in the middle, and be at peace.

The Stoics agree. Seneca's verdict is pardon, and the Golden Verses end in joy at what was done well. So the review is kept short, and kept kind, and when it starts to circle one fault, it stops at a single line.

Making the review

Take five minutes before bed, with a pen and a notebook. Begin with one thing to be grateful for. Go through the day in order, from waking to now, and write one line under each of the old questions: what went wrong, what was done, what was left undone. Then write one small thing to do differently tomorrow, and close the notebook.

The voice is Seneca's: plain, honest and forgiving. A person of faith adds its prayer at the beginning and the end; a reader without one keeps the gratitude and the resolve. If the review brings up something heavy that will not leave, it is a matter to talk over with someone, not to carry alone into sleep.