Essays on Work and Culture, Hamilton Wright Mabie [classic literature list TXT] 📗

material out of which order, symmetry, utility, beauty, culture may be wrought, and men must unfold these higher uses by intelligence, skill, toil, and character. At some time every particle of the civilised world has been like the old frontier on this continent, and men have reclaimed either the desert or the wilderness by their heroic sacrifices and labours. It is a misuse of language, therefore, to say that the world is made; it is not made, because it is being made century by century through the toil of successive generations.

Now, this creative process, in which God and men unite, is what we call work. It is not a process introduced among men as an afterthought or as a form of punishment; it was involved in the initial creative act, and it is part of the complete creative act. The conception of a process of development carries with it the idea, not of a finished but of an unfinished world; it interprets history not as a record of persons and events separate from the stage upon which they appear, like actors on the boards, but as the story of the influence of an unfinished world upon an undeveloped race, and of the marvellous unfolding through which the hidden powers and qualities of the material and the worker are brought into play. Work becomes, therefore, not only a continuation of the divine activity in the world, but a process inwrought in the very constitution of that world. Growth is the divinest element in life, and work is one of the chief factors in growth.

The earth is, therefore, in its full unfolding and its final form, the joint product of the love and power of God and of the toil and sacrifice of men; the creative purpose is not accomplished in a single act; it is being wrought out through a long progression of acts; and in this continuous process God and men are brought together in a way which makes the labour of the hand the work also of the spirit. If one reflects on all that this intimate cooperation of the divine and the human in the fields, the factories, and the shops means, the nobility of work and its possibilities of spiritual education become impressively clear. In this fellowship men are trained in ways of which they are insensible; spiritual results are accomplished within them of which they are unconscious. The Infinite is nowhere more beneficently present than in the strain and anguish of toil; and the necessity of putting forth one's strength in some form of activity is not a hardship but a divine opportunity.

To well-conditioned men work is a joy; under normal conditions, for healthful men, it is always a joy. The spiritual meaning behind the hard face which toil wears makes itself dimly understood at times, and men sing at their tasks not only out of pure exuberance of good spirits and sound health, but because there is something essentially rhythmical and harmonious in their toil. The song of the sailor at the windlass is a song of fellowship; an expression of the deepened consciousness of strength and exhilaration which come from standing together in a joint putting forth of strength. When a man honestly gives himself to any kind of work he makes himself one with his fellows in the creative process; he enters into deepest fellowship with the race. And, as in the intimacy of the family, in its structure and habit, there lies a very deep and rich educational process, so in the community of work there lies a training and enrichment which go to the very centre of the individual life. The ideal development involves harmonious adjustment of the man to the world, through complete development of his personality and through complete unity with the race; and the deepest and most fruitful living is denied those who fail of entire unfolding in either of these hemispheres, which together make up the perfect whole. In genuine culture solitude and society must both find place; a man must secure the strength and poise which enable him to stand alone, and he must also unite himself in hand, mind, and heart with his fellows. In isolation the finer parts of nature wither; in fellowship they bear noble fruitage. To work in one's day with one's fellows; to accept their fortune, bear their burdens, perform their tasks, and accept their rewards; to be one with them in the toil, sorrow, and joy of life,-is to put oneself in the way of the richest growth and the purest happiness.


Chapter X

Work and Pessimism


When perils thickened about him and the most courageous grew faint- hearted, Francis Drake's favourite phrase was: "It matters not; God hath many things in store for us." No man ever wore a more dauntless face in the presence of danger than the great adventurer who destroyed the foundations of Spanish power in this continent, and whose smile always grew sweeter as the situation grew more desperate. That smile carried the conviction of ultimate safety to a crew which was often on the verge of despair; its serenity and confidence were contagious; it conveyed the impression, in the blackest hour, that the leader knew some secret way of escape from encircling peril. He knew, as a rule, no more than his men knew; but as danger deepened, his genius became energised to the utmost quickness of discernment and the utmost rapidity of action. He had no time for despair; he had only time for decision and action. In his dying hour, on a hostile sea, half a hemisphere from home, he arose, dressed himself, and called for his arms; falling before the only foe to whom he ever yielded with the same dauntless courage which had made him the master of untravelled seas and the terror of a continent. He so completely identified himself with the work he had in hand that he sapped the very sources of fear.

Such heroic self-forgetfulness is not the exclusive possession of men of action; it lies within the reach of any man who is strong enough to grasp it. Two writers of our time have nobly worn this jewel of courage in the eyes of the world. John Addington Symonds was for many years an invalid whose life hung on a thread. He had youth, gifts of a high order, culture, ambition, but a desolating shadow blackened the landscape of his life; he might have yielded to the lassitude which came with his disease; he might have become embittered and poured his sorrows into the ear of the world, as too many less burdened men and women have done in these recent decades. Instead of accepting these weak alternatives and wasting his brief years in useless complainings, he plucked opportunity out of the very jaws of death; found in the high Alps the conditions most favourable for activity, and poured his life out in work of such sustained interest and value that he laid the English-reading peoples under lasting obligations. In spite of his invalidism he achieved more than most men who live out the full period of life in complete possession of their powers.

In like manner disease touched Robert Louis Stevenson in his early prime, and would have daunted a spirit less gallant than his. He bore himself in the presence of death as a dashing leader bears himself in the presence of an overwhelming foe; he was intrepid, but he was also wise. He sought such alleviations as climates afforded a man in his condition, and then gave himself to his work with a kind of passionate ardour, as if he would pluck the very heart out of time and toil before the night fell. Neither of these men was blind to his condition; neither was indifferent; both loved life and both had their moments of revolt and depression; but both found in work resource from despair, and both made the world richer not only by the fruits of self-conquest, but by the contagious power of heroic example. Such careers put to shame the self-centred, egotistic, morbid pessimism which has found so many voices in recent years that its cowardly outcries have almost drowned the great, sane, authoritative voices of the world.

Despair has many sources, but one of its chief sources is the attempt to put an incomplete in the place of a complete life, and to substitute a partial for a full and rounded development. The body keeps that physical unconsciousness which is the evidence of health only so long as every part of it is normally used and exercised; when any set of organs is ignored and neglected, some form of disorder begins, and sooner or later physical self-consciousness in some part announces the appearance of disease. In like manner, intellectual and spiritual self-unconsciousness, which is both the condition and the result of complete intellectual and spiritual health, is preserved only so long as a man lives freely and naturally in and through all his activities. Expression of the whole nature through every faculty is essential to entire sanity of mind and spirit. Every violation of this fundamental law is followed by moral or spiritual disorder, loss of balance, decline of power. To see the world with clear eyes, as Shakespeare saw it, instead of seeing it through distorted vision, as Paul Verlaine saw it, one must think, feel, and act. To compress one's vital power into any one of these forms or channels of expression is to limit growth, to destroy the balance and symmetry of development, to lose clarity of vision, and to invite that devastating disease of our time and of all times, morbid self-consciousness. The man who lives exclusively in thought becomes a theorist, an indifferent observer, or a cynic; he who lives exclusively in feeling becomes a sentimentalist or a pessimist; he who lives exclusively in action becomes a mere executive energy, a pure objective force in society. These types are found in all times, and exhibit in a great variety of ways the perils of incomplete development.

In our time the chief peril for men of imagination and the artistic temperament comes from that aloofness of temper which separates its victim from his fellows, isolates him in the very heart of society, and turns his energy inward so that he preys upon himself. The root of a great deal of that pessimism which has found expression in modern literature is found in inactivity. He who contents himself with looking at life as a spectator sees its appalling contradictions and its baffling confusions, and misses the steadying power of the common toil, the comprehension through sympathy, the slow but deep unfolding and education which come from participation in the world's work. He who approaches life only through his feelings is bruised, hurt, and finally exhausted by a strain of emotion unrelieved by thought and action. No man is sound either in vision or in judgment who holds himself apart from the work of society. Participation in that work not only liberates the inward energy which preys upon itself if repressed; it also, through human fellowship, brings warmth and love to the solitary spirit; above all, it so identifies the man with outward activities that his personal force finds free access to the world, and he is delivered from the peril of self-consciousness. He who cares supremely for some worthy activity and gives himself to it has no time to reflect on his own woes, and no temptation to exaggerate his own claims. He sees clearly that he is an undeveloped personality to whom the supreme opportunity comes in the guise of the discipline of work. To forget oneself in heroic action as did Drake, or in heroic toil as did Symonds and Stevenson, is to make even disease contribute to health and mastery.


Chapter XI

The Educational