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

he will aim at complete self-development. His ultimate aim will be not material but spiritual; he cannot rest short of the perfect self- expression. The rewards of work-money, influence, position, fame-will be the incidents, not the ends, of his toil. He has a right to look for them and count upon them; but if he be a true workman they will never be his inspirations, nor can they ever be his highest rewards. The man in public life who sets out to secure a certain official position as the ultimate goal of his ambition may be a successful politician but can never be a statesman; for a statesman is supremely concerned with the interests of the state, and only subordinately with his own interests. Such a man may definitely seek a Presidency or a Premiership; but he will seek it, in any final analysis of his motives, not for that which it will give him in the way of reward, but for that which it will give him in the way of opportunity. A genuine man seeks a great place, not that he may be seen of men, but that he may speak, influence and lead men.

The motives of the vast majority of men are, to a certain extent, confused and contradictory; for the noblest man never quite completes his education and brings his nature into final harmony; but the genuine man is inspired by generous motives, and to such an one success becomes not a snare but an education, in the process of which all that is noblest becomes controlling and all that is merely personal becomes subordinate. In this way the politician often develops into the statesman, and the merely clever and successful painter or writer grows to the stature of the artist. It is one of the saving qualities of ability that it has the power of growth, and great responsibilities often educate an able man out of selfish aims.

The ultimate aim which the worker sets before him ought always to have a touch of idealism because it must always remain a little beyond his reach. The man who attains his ultimate aim has come to the end of the race; there are no more goals to beckon him on; there is no more inspiration or delight in life. But no man ought ever to come to the end of the road; there ought always to be a further stretch of highway, an inviting turn under the shadow of the trees, a bold ascent, an untrodden summit shining beyond.

If a man sets a specific position or an external reward of any kind before him as the limit of his journey, he is in danger of getting to the end before he has fully put forth his strength, and so giving his life the pathos of an anti-climax. The more noble and able a man is, the less satisfaction can he find in any material return which his work brings him; no man with a touch of the artist in him can ever rest content with anything short of the complete putting forth of all that is in him, and the consciousness of having done his work well.

For a man's ultimate responsibility is met by what he is and does, not by what he gains. When he sets an exterior reward of any kind before him as the final goal of his endeavour, he breaks away from the divine order of life and destroys that deep interior harmony which ought to keep a man's spirit in time and tune with the creative element in the world.

We are not to seek specific rewards; they must come to us. They are the recognition and fruit of work, not its inspiration and sustaining power. Let a man select the right seed and give it the right soil, and sun, rain, and the warm earth must do the rest. Goethe touched the heart of the matter when he wrote:

"Shoot your own thread right through the earthly tissue
Bravely; and leave the gods to find the issue."

In all work of the highest quality God must be taken into account. No man works in isolation and solitude; he works within the circle of a divine order, and his chief concern is to work with that order. To aim exclusively at one's own advancement and ease is to put oneself outside that order and to sever oneself from those sources of power which feed and sustain all whom they reach. In that order a man finds his place by bringing to perfection all that is in him, and so making himself a new centre of life and power among men.

Whatever is true of the religious life is true also of the working life; the two are different aspects of the same vital experience. In the field of work he who would keep his life must lose it, and in losing his life a man secures it for immortality. The noble worker pours himself into his work with sublime indifference to its rewards, and by the very completeness of his self-surrender and self-forgetfulness touches degrees of excellence and attains a splendour of vision which are denied those whose ventures are less daring and complete. And the largeness of conception, the breadth of treatment, the beauty of skill which a man gains when he casts all his spiritual fortune into his work often secure the richest measure of those returns which men value so highly because they are the tangible evidences of success. No man can forget himself for the sake of fame; but let him forget himself for the sake of his work, and fame will gladly serve him while lesser men are vainly wooing her. The man who is superior to fortune is much more likely to be fortunate than he who flatters fortune and wears her livery. Notwithstanding the successes that attend cleverness and dexterity and the flattery of popular taste and the study of the weaknesses of men, it remains true that greatness rules in every sphere, and that in the exact degree in which a man is superior is he authoritative and finally successful. Notoriety is easily bought, but fame remains unpurchasable; external successes, sought as final ends, are but the hollow mockeries of true achievement.


Chapter XV

Securing Right Conditions


To secure the finest growth of a plant there must be a careful study of the conditions of soil, exposure, and moisture, or sun which it needs; when these conditions are supplied and the necessary oversight furnished, nature may be trusted to do her work with ideal completeness. Now, the perfect unfolding of a rich personality involves the utmost intelligence in the discernment of the conditions which are essential, and the utmost persistence in the maintenance of those conditions after they have been secured. Perfectly developed men and women are rare, not only because circumstances are so often unfavourable, but also because so little thought is given, as a rule, to this aspect of life. The majority of men make use of such conditions and material as they find at hand; they do not make a thorough study of the things they need, and then resolutely set about the work of securing these essential things. Many men use faithfully the opportunities which come to hand, but they do not, by taking thought, convert the whole of life into one great opportunity.

When a man discovers that he has a special gift or talent, his first duty is to turn that gift into personal power by securing its fullest development. The recognition of such a gift generally brings with it the knowledge of the conditions which it needs for its complete unfolding; and when that discovery is made a man holds the clew to the solution of the problem of his life. The world is full of unintelligent sacrifice,- sacrifice which is sound in motive, and therefore does not fail to secure certain results in character, but which is lacking in clear discernment, and fails, therefore, to accomplish the purpose for which it was made. Such unavailing sacrifice is always pathetic, for it involves a waste of spiritual power. One of the chief sources of this kind of waste is the habit which so many American communities have formed of calling a man into all kinds of activity before he has had time to thoroughly train and develop himself. Let a young teacher, preacher, speaker, or artist give promise of an unusual kind, and straightway all manner of enterprises solicit his support, local organisations and movements urge their claims upon him, reforms and philanthropies command his active co-operation; and if he wisely resists the pressure he is in the way of being set down as selfish, unenterprising, and lacking in public spirit.

As a matter of fact, in most cases, it is the community, not the individual, which is selfish; for communities are often ruthless destroyers of promising youth.

The gifted young preacher must clearly discern the needs of his own nature or he will miss the one thing which he was probably sent into the world to accomplish, the one thing which all men are sent into the world to secure,-free and noble self-development. He must be wiser than his parish or the community; he must recognise the peril which comes from the too close pressure of near duties at the start. The community will thoughtlessly rob him of the time, the quiet, and the repose necessary for the unfolding of his spirit; it will drain him in a few years of the energy which ought to be spread over a long period of time; and at the end of a decade it will begin to say, under its breath, that its victim has not fulfilled the promise of his youth. It will fail to discern that it has blighted that promise by its own urgent demands. The young preacher who is eager to give the community the very greatest service in his power will protect it and himself by locking his study door and resolutely keeping it locked.

The young artist and writer must pass through the same ordeal, and must learn before it is too late that he who is to render the highest service to his fellows must be most independent in his relations to them. He cannot commit the management of his life to others without maiming or blighting it. The community insists upon immediate activity at the expense of ultimate service, upon present productivity at the cost of ultimate power. The artist must learn, therefore, to bar his door against the public until he has so matured his own strength and determined his own methods that neither crowds nor applause nor demands can confuse or disturb him. The great spirits who have nourished the best life of the race have not turned to their fellows for their aims and habits of work; they have taken counsel of that ancient oracle which speaks in every man's soul, and to that counsel they have remained steadfastly true. There is no clearer disclosure of divine guidance in the confusion of human aims and counsels than the presence of a distinct faculty or gift in a man; and when such a gift reveals itself a man must follow it, though it cost him everything which is most dear; and he must give it the largest opportunity of growth, though he face the criticism of the world in the endeavour.

Life is always a struggle, and no man comes to any kind of mastery without a conflict. The really great man is often compelled to light for his right to live in the freedom of spirit. Prophets, poets, teachers, and artists have known the scorn, hatred, and rejection of society; they have known also its flatteries, rewards, and imperious demands;