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ESSAYS ON WORK AND CULTURE
ESSAYS ON WORK AND CULTURE HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE To
Henry Van Dyke
"Along the slender wires of speech
Some message from the heart is sent;
But who can tell the whole that's meant?
Our dearest thoughts are out of reach."
CONTENTS
I. Tool or Man?
II. The Man in the Work
III. Work as Self-Expression
IV. The Pain of Youth
V. The Year of Wandering
VI. The Ultimate Test
VII. Liberation
VIII. The Larger Education
IX. Fellowship
X. Work and Pessimism
XI. The Educational Attitude
XII. Special Training
XIII. General Training
XIV. The Ultimate Aim
XV. Securing Right Conditions
XVI. Concentration
XVII. Relaxation
XVIII. Recreation
XIX. Ease of Mood
XX. Sharing the Race-Fortune
XXI. The Imagination in Work
XXII. The Play of the Imagination
XXIII. Character
XXIV. Freedom from Self-Consciousness
XXV. Consummation
Work and Culture
Chapter I
Tool or Man?
A complete man is so uncommon that when he appears he is looked upon with
suspicion as if there must be something wrong about him. If a man is
content to deal vigorously with affairs and leave art religion and
science to the enjoyment or refreshment or enlightenment of others he is
accepted as strong sounds and wise; but let him add to practical sagacity
a love of poetry and some skill in the practice of it; let him be not only
honest and trustworthy but genuinely religious; let him be not only
keenly observant and exact in his estimate of trade influences and
movements but devoted to the study of some science and there goes abroad
the impression that he is superficial. It is written apparently in the
modern and especially in the American consciousness that a man can do
but one thing well; if he attempts more than one thing he betrays the
weakness of versatility. If this view of life is sound man is born to
imperfect development and must not struggle with fate. He may have natural
aptitudes of many kinds; he may have a passionate desire to try three or
four different instruments; he may have a force of vitality which is equal
to the demands of several vocations or avocations; but he must disregard
the most powerful impulses of his nature; he must select one tool and
with that tool he must do all the work appointed to him.
If he is a man of business he must turn a deaf ear to the voices of art;
if he writes prose he must not permit himself the delight of writing
verse; if he uses the pen he must not use the voice. If he ventures to
employ two languages for his thought to pour his energy into two
channels the awful judgment of superficiality falls on him like a decree
of fate.
So fixed has become the habit of confusing the use of manifold gifts with
mere dexterity that men of quality and power often question the promptings
which impel them to use different or diverse forms of expression; as if a
man were born to use only one limb and enjoy only one resource in this
many-sided universe!
Specialisation has been carried so far that it has become an organised
tyranny through the curiously perverted view of life which it has
developed in some minds. A man is permitted in these days to cultivate
one faculty or master one field of knowledge but he must not try to live
a whole life or work his nature out on all sides under penalty of public
suspicion and disapproval. If a Pericles were to appear among us he would
be discredited by the very qualities which made him the foremost public
man of his time among the most intelligent and gifted people who have yet
striven to solve the problems of life. If Michelangelo came among us he
would be compelled to repress his tremendous energy or face the suspicion
of the critical mind of the age; it is not permitted a man in these days
to excel in painting sculpture architecture and sonnet-writing. If in
addition such a man were to exhibit moral qualities of a very unusual
order he would deepen the suspicion that he was not playing the game of
life fairly; for there are those who have so completely broken life into
fragments that they not only deny the possibility of the possession of the
ability to do more than one thing well but the existence of any kind of
connection between character and achievement.
Man is not only a fragment but the world is a mass of unrelated parts;
religion science morals and art moving in little spheres of their own
without the possibility of contact. The arts were born at the foot of the
altar as we are sometimes reminded; but let the artist beware how he
entertains religious ideas or emotions to-day; to suggest that art and
morals have any interior relation is in certain circles to awaken pity
that one's knowledge of these things is still so rudimentary. The scholar
must beware of the graces of style; if like the late Master of Balliol
he makes a translation so touched with distinction and beauty that it is
likely to become a classic in the language in which it is newly lodged
there are those who look askance at his scholarship; for knowledge to be
pure and genuine must be rude slovenly and barbarous in expression. The
religious teacher may master the principles of his faith but let him
beware how he applies them to the industrial or social conditions of
society. If he ventures to make this dangerous experiment he is promptly
warned that he is encroaching on the territory of the economist and
sociologist. The artist must not permit himself to care for truth because
it has come to be understood in some quarters that he is concerned with
beauty and with beauty alone. To assume that there is any unity in life
any connection between character and achievement any laws of growth which
operate in all departments and in all men is to discredit one's
intelligence and jeopardise one's influence. One field and one tool to
each man seems to be the maxim of this divisive philosophy--if that can be
called a philosophy which discards unity as a worn-out metaphysical
conception and separates not only men but the arts occupations and
skills from each other by impassable gulfs.
Versatility is often a treacherous ease which leads the man who possesses
it into fields where he has no sure footing because he has no first-hand
knowledge and therefore no real power; and against this tendency so
prevalent in this country the need of concentration must continually be
urged. The great majority of men lack the abounding vitality which must
find a variety of channels to give it free movement. But the danger which
besets some men ought not to be made a limitation for men of superior
strength; it ought not to be used as a barrier to keep back those whose
inward impulse drives them forward not in one but in many directions.
Above all the limitations of a class ought not to be made the basis of a
conception of life which divides its activities by hard and fast lines
and tends by that process of hardening which shows itself in every field
of thought or work to make men tools and machines instead of free
creative forces in society.
A man of original power can never be confined within the limits of a
single field of interest and activity nor can he ever be content to bear
the marks and use the skill of a single occupation. He cannot pour his
whole force into one channel; there is always a reserve of power beyond
the demands of the work which he has in hand at the moment. Wherever he
may find his place and whatever work may come to his hand he must always
be aware of the larger movement of life which incloses his special task;
and he must have the consciousness of direct relation with that central
power of which all activities are inadequate manifestations. To a man of
this temper the whole range of human interests must remain open and such
a man can never escape the conviction that life is a unity under all its
complexities; that all activities stand vitally related to each other;
that truth beauty knowledge and character must be harmonised and
blended in every real and adequate development of the human spirit. To the
growth of every flower earth sun and atmosphere must contribute; in the
making of a man all the rich forces of nature and civilisation must have
place.
Chapter II
The Man in the Work
The general mind possesses a kind of divination which discovers itself in
those comments criticisms and judgments which pass from man to man
through a wide area and sometimes through long periods of time. The
opinion which appears at first glance to be an expression of materialism
often shows upon closer study an element of idealism or a touch of
spiritual discernment. It is customary for instance to say of a man that
he lives in his works; as if the enduring quality of his fame rested in
and was dependent upon the tangible products of his genius or his skill.
There is truth in the phrase even when its scope is limited to this
obvious meaning; but there is a deeper truth behind the truism--the truth
that a man lives in his works not only because they commemorate but
because they express him. They are products of his skill; but they are
also the products of his soul. The man is revealed in them and abides in
them not as a statue in a temple but as a seed in the grain and the
fruit. They have grown out of him and they uncover the secrets of his
spiritual life. No man can conceal himself from his fellows; everything he
fashions or creates interprets and explains him.
This deepest significance of work has always been divined even when it has
not been clearly perceived. Men have understood that there is a spiritual
quality even in the most material products of a man's activity and even
in ruder times they have discerned the inner relation of the things which
a man makes with the man himself. In our time when the immense
significance of this essential harmony between spirit and product has been
accepted as a guiding principle in historic investigation the stray
spear-head and broken potsherd are prized by the anthropologist because a
past race lives in them. The lowest and commonest kind of domestic vessels
and implements disclose to the student of to-day not only the stage of
manual skill which their makers had reached but also the general ideas of
life which those makers held. When it comes to the higher products
character temperament and genius are discerned in every mutilated
fragment. The line on an urn reveals the spirit of the unknown sculptor
who cut it in the enduring stone. It has often been said that if every
memorial of the Greek race save the Parthenon had perished it would be
possible to gain a clear and true impression of the spiritual condition
and quality of that race.
The great artists are the typical and representative men of the race and
whatever is true of them is true in a lesser degree of men in general.
There is in the work of every great sculptor painter writer composer
architect a distinctive and individual manner so marked and unmistakable
as to identify the man whenever and wherever a bit of his work appears. If
a statue of Phidias were to be found without any mark of the sculptor upon
it there would be no delay in determining whose work it was; no educated
musician would be uncertain for a moment about a composition of Wagner's
if he heard it for the first time without knowledge of its source; nor
would a short story from the hand of Hawthorne remain unclaimed a day
after its publication. Now this individual manner and quality so evident
that it is impossible not to recognise it whenever it appears is not a
trick of skill; it has its source in a man's temperament and genius; it is
the subtlest and most deep-going disclosure of his nature. In so far as a
spiritual quality can be contained and expressed in any form of speech
known among men--and all the arts are forms of speech--that which is most
secret and sacred in a man is freely given to the world in his work.
Work is sacred therefore not only because it is the fruit of self-
denial patience and toil but because it uncovers the soul of the
worker. We deal with each other on so many planes and have so much speech
with each other about things of little moment that we often lose the
sense of the sanctity which attaches to personality whenever it appears.
There come moments however when some intimate experience is confided to
us and then in the pause of talk we become aware that we are in
presence of a human soul behind the familiar face of our friend and that
we are on holy ground. In such moments the quick emotion the sudden
thrill bear eloquent witness to that deeper and diviner life in which we
all share but of which we rarely seem aware. This perception of the
presence of a man's soul comes to us when we stand before a true work of
art. We not only uncover our heads but our hearts are uncovered as well.
Here is one who through all his skill speaks to us in a language which we
understand but which we rarely hear. A great work of art not only
liberates the imagination but the heart as well; for it speaks to us more
intimately than our friends are able to speak and that reticence which
holds us back from perfect intercourse when we look into each other's
faces vanishes. A few lines read in the solitude of the woods or before
the open fire often kindle the emotion and imagination which slumber
within us; in companionship with the greatest minds our shyness vanishes;
we not only take but give with unconscious freedom. When we reach this
stage we have reached the man who lives not only by but in the work and
whose innermost nature speaks to us and confides in us through the form of
speech which he has chosen.
The higher the quality of the work the clearer the disclosure of the
spirit which fashioned it and gave it the power to search and liberate.
The plays of Sophocles are in many ways the highest and most
representative products of the Greek literary genius; they show that
genius at the moment when all its qualities were in harmony and perfectly
balanced between the spiritual vision which it formed of life and the art
form to which it commits that precious and impalpable possession. One of
the distinctive qualities of these plays is their objectivity; their
detachment from the moods and experiences of the dramatist. This
detachment is so complete that at first glance every trace of the
dramatist seems to have been erased. But there are many passages besides
the famous lines descriptive of the grove at Colonus which betray the
personality behind the plays; and studied more closely the very
detachment of the drama from the dramatist is significant of character. In
the poise harmony and balance of these beautiful creations there is
revealed the instinct for proportion the self-control and the
subordination of the parts to the whole which betray a nature committed by
its very instincts to a passionate devotion to beauty. In one of the poems
of our own century which belongs in the first rank of artistic
achievements "In Memoriam" the highest themes are touched with the
strength of one who knows how to face the problems of life with impartial
and impersonal courage and with the tenderness of one whose own heart has
felt the immediate pressure of these tremendous questions. So every great
work whether personal or impersonal in intention conveys to the
intelligent reader an impression of the thought behind the skill and of
the character behind the thought. Goethe frankly declared that his works
constituted one great confession. All work is confession and revelation as
well.
Chapter III
Work as Self-Expression
The higher the kind and quality of a man's work the more completely does
it express his personality. There are forms of work so rudimentary that
the touch of individuality is almost entirely absent and there are forms
of work so distinctive and spiritual that they are instantly and finally
associated with one man. The degree in which a man individualises his work
and gives it the quality of his own mind and spirit is therefore the
measure of his success in giving his nature free and full expression. For
work in this large sense is the expression of the man; and as the range
and significance of all kinds of expression depend upon the scope and
meaning of the ideas forces skills and qualities expressed so the
dignity and permanence of work depend upon the power and insight of the
worker. All sound work is true and genuine self-expression but work has
as many gradations of quality and significance as has character or
ability. Dealing with essentially the same materials each man in each
generation has the opportunity of adding to the common material that touch
of originality in temperament insight or skill which is his only
possible contribution to civilisation.
The spiritual nature of work and its relation to character are seen in the
diversity of work which the different races have done and in the
unmistakable stamp which the work of each race bears. First as a matter of
instinct and later as a matter of intelligence each race has followed
in its activities the lines of least resistance and put its energies
forth in ways which were most attractive because they offered the freest
range and were nearest at hand. The attempt of some historians of a
philosophical turn of mind to fit each race into a category and to give
each race a sharply defined sphere of influence has been carried too far
and has discredited the effort to interpret arbitrarily the genius of the
different races and to assign arbitrarily their functions. It remains
true however that in a broad sense each race has had a peculiar
quality of mind and spirit which may be called its genius and each has
followed certain general lines and kept within certain general limits in
doing its work. The people who lived on the great plains of Central Asia
worked in a different temper and with wide divergence of manner from the
people who lived on the banks of the Nile; and the Jew the Greek and the
Roman showed their racial differences as distinctly in the form and
quality of their work as in the temper of their mind and character. And
thus on a great historical scale the significance of work as an
expression of character is unmistakably disclosed.
In this sense work is practically inclusive of every force and kind of
life since every real worker puts into it all that is most distinctive in
his nature. The moral quality contributes sincerity veracity solidity of
structure; the intellectual quality is disclosed in order lucidity and
grasp of thought; the artistic quality is seen in symmetry proportion
beauty of construction and of detail; the spiritual quality is revealed in
depth of insight and the scope of relationships brought into view between
the specific work and the world in which it is done. In work of the finer
order dealing with the more impressionable material there are
discoverable not only the character and quality of the worker but the
conditions under which he lives; the stage of civilisation the vigour or
languor of vital energy the richness or poverty of social life the
character of the soil and of the landscape the pallor or the bloom of
vegetation the shining or the veiling of the skies. So genuinely and
deeply does a man put himself into the thing he does that whatever affects
him affects it and all that flows into him of spiritual human and
natural influence flows into and is conserved by it. A bit of work of the
highest quality is a key to a man's life because it is the product of that
life and it brings to light that which is hidden in the man as truly as
the flower lays bare to the sun that which was folded in the seed. What a
man does is therefore an authentic revelation of what he is and by
their works men are fairly and rightly judged.
For this reason no man can live in any real sense who fails to give his
personality expression through some form of activity. For action in some
field is the final stage of development; and to stop short of action to
rest in emotion or thought is to miss the higher fruits of living and to
evade one's responsibility to himself as well as to society. The man whose
artistic instinct is deep cannot be content with those visions which rise
out of the deeps of the imagination and wait for that expression which
shall give them objective reality; the vision brings with it a moral
necessity which cannot be evaded without serious loss. Indeed the
vitality of the imagination depends largely upon the fidelity with which
its images are first realised in thought and then embodied by the hand. To
comprehend what life means in the way of truth and power one must act as
well as think and feel. For action itself is a process of revelation and
the sincerity and power with which a man puts forth that which is
disclosed to him determine the scope of the disclosure of truth which he
receives. To comprehend all that life involves of experience or offers of
power one must give full play to all the force that is in him. It is
significant that the men of creative genius are as a rule men of the
greatest productive power. One marvels at the magnitude of the work of
such men as Michelangelo and Rembrandt as Beethoven and Wagner as
Shakespeare Balzac Thackeray Carlyle and Browning; not discerning
that as these master workers gave form and substance to their visions and
insight the power to see and to understand deepened and expanded apace
with their achievements.
Chapter IV
The Pain of Youth
It is the habit of the poets and of many who are poets neither in vision
nor in faculty to speak of youth as if it were a period of unshadowed
gaiety and pleasure with no consciousness of responsibility and no sense
of care. The freshness of feeling the delight in experience the joy of
discovery the unspent vitality which welcomes every morning as a
challenge to one's strength invest youth with a charm which art is always
striving to preserve and which men who have parted from it remember with
a sense of pathos; for the morning of life comes but once and when it
fades something goes which never returns. There are ample compensations
there are higher joys and deeper insights and relationships; but a magical
charm which touches all things and turns them to gold vanishes with the
morning. In reaching its perfection of beauty the flower must part with
the dewy promise of its earliest growth.
All this is true of youth which in many ways symbolises the immortal part
of man's nature and must be therefore always beautiful and sacred to
him. But it is untrue that the sky of youth has no clouds and the spirit
of youth no cares; on the contrary no period of life is in many ways more
painful. The finer the organisation and the greater the ability the more
difficult and trying the experiences through which the youth passes.
George Eliot has pointed out a striking peculiarity of childish grief in
the statement that the child has no background of other griefs against
which the magnitude of its present sorrow may be measured. While that
sorrow lasts it is complete absolute and hopeless because the child has
no memory of other trials endured of other sorrows survived. In this fact
about the earliest griefs lies the source also of the pains of youth. The
young man is an undeveloped power; he is largely ignorant of his own
capacity often without inward guidance towards his vocation; he is
unadjusted to the society in which he must find a place for himself. He is
full of energy and aspiration but he does not know how to expend the one
or realise the other. His soul has wings but he cannot fly because like
the eagle he must have space on the ground before he rises in the air. If
his imagination is active he has moments of rapture days of exaltation
when the world seems to lie before him clear from horizon to horizon. His
hours of study overflow with the passion for knowledge and his hours of
play are haunted by beautiful or noble dreams. The world is full of wonder
and mystery and the young explorer is impatient to be on his journey. No
plan is then too great to be accomplished no moral height too difficult
to be attained. After all that has been said the rapture of youth when
youth means opportunity remains unexpressed. No poet will ever entirely
compass it as no poet will ever quite ensnare in speech the measureless
joy of those festival mornings in June when Nature seems on the point of
speaking in human language.
But this rapture is inward; it has its source in the earliest perception
of the richness of life and man's capacity to appropriate it. It is the
rapture of discovery not of possession; the rapture of promise not of
achievement. It is without the verification of experience or the
corroborative evidence of performance. Youth is possibility; that is its
charm its joy and its power; but it is also its limitation. There lies
before it the real crisis through which every man of parts and power
passes: the development of the inward force and the adjustment of the
personality to the order of life. The shadow of that crisis is never quite
absent from those radiant skies which the poets love to recall; the
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