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Love of Work
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Thursday, 12 July 2007 |
Love of Work. How to establish a love of work.
The first thing, then, for our modern world to acquire is the conviction and experience that well-directed work is the necessary and universal condition of physical and intellectual health, and for this reason is the way to happiness. From this it necessarily follows that the idle class is to be regarded, not as a superior and favored class, but as that which they are, spiritually defective and diseased persons who have lost the right principle for the guidance of their lives. As soon as this opinion becomes general and established, then, and only then, will the better era for the world begin. Until that time, the world will suffer from the excessive work of some, balancing the insufficient work of others, and it still remains a question which of these two types is in reality the more unfortunate.
Why is it then that these principles to which the experience of thousands of years testifies, which any one, whether he works or does not work, can test for himself, and which ail the religions and philosophies preach have not made their just impression? Why is it, for instance, that there are still thousands of women who "defend with much passion many passages of Bible-teaching, and yet, with astonishing composure and in opposition to an express command of the Bible, take one day at the most, or perhaps none at all, for work, and six for refined idleness? All this proceeds in large degree from an irrational division and arrangement of work, which thus ill-arranged may indeed become a positive burden.
And this brings me back to the title of my Essay. Instruction in the art of work is possible only for him who is already convinced of my first proposition, that some work is necessary, and who would gladly give himself to work if it were not that, to his surprise, some hindrance confronts him. Yet, work, like every other art, has its ways of dexterity, by means of which one may greatly lessen its laboriousness; and not only the willingness to work, but even the capacity to work, is so difficult to acquire that many persons fail of it altogether.
The first step, then, toward the overcoming of a difficulty is in recognizing the difficulty. And what is the difficulty which chiefly hinders work? It is laziness. Every man is naturally lazy. It always costs one an effort to rise above one's customary condition of physical indolence. Moral laziness is, in short, our original sin. No one is naturally fond of work; there are only differences of natural and constitutional excitability. Even the most active-minded, if they yielded to their natural disposition, would amuse themselves with other things rather than with work.
Love of work must, therefore, proceed from a motive which is stronger than the motive of physical idleness. And this motive is to be found in either of two ways. It may be a low motive, as, for instance, a passion like ambition or self-seeking, or, indeed, the sense of necessity, as in the preservation of life; or it may be a high motive, like the sense of duty or love, either for the work itself, or for the persons for whom the work is done. The nobler motive has this advantage, that it is the more permanent and is not dependent on the mere success of work. It does not lose its force either through the disheartening effect of failure, or the satisfying effect of success. Thus it happens that ambitious and self-seeking persons are often very diligent workers, but are seldom continuous and evenly progressive workers. They are almost always content with that which looks like work, if it produce favorable conditions for themselves, although it does nothing of this for their neighbors. Much of our mercantile and industrial activity and, alas! We must add, much of the work of scholars and artists has this mark of unreality.
If, then, one were to give to a young man entering into lifea word of preliminary counsel, it would be this: Do your work from a sense of duty, or for love of what you are doing, or for love of certain definite persons : attach yourself to some great interest of human life to a national movement for political liberty; to the extension of the Christian religion; to the elevation of the neglected classes; to the abolition of drunkenness; to the restoration of permanent peace among the nations; to social reform; to ballot reform; to prison reform; there are plenty of such causes inviting us to-day; and you will soon discover an impulse proceeding
from these causes to yourself; and in addition you will have what at first is a great help companionship in your work. There should be no young person, man or woman, today among civilized nations who is not actively enlisted in some such army of progress. The only means of elevating and strengthening youth, and training it in perseverance, is this: that early in life one is freed from himself, and does not live for himself alone. Selfishness is always enfeebling, and from it proceeds no work that is strong.
I go on to remark that the most effective instrument to overcome one's laziness in work is the force of habit. Why should we use this mighty force in the service of our physical nature and not put it to use in our higher life as well? As a matter of fact, one can as well accustom himself to work or to self-control, to virtue, or truthfulness, or generosity, as he can to laziness, or self-indulgence, or extravagance, or exaggeration, or stinginess. And this is to be said further that no virtue is securely possessed until it has become a habit. Thus it is that as a man trains himself to the habit of work, the resistance of idleness constantly diminishes until at last work becomes a necessity. When this happens, one has become free from a very great part of the troubles of life.
There remain a few elementary rules with which one can the more easily find his way to this habit of work. And first among such rules is the knowing how to begin. The resolution to set oneself to work and to fix one's whole mind on the matter in hand is really the hardest part of working. When one has once taken his pen or his spade in hand, and has made the first stroke, his whole work has already grown easier. There are people who always find something especially hard about beginning their work, and who are always so busy with preparations, behind which lurks their laziness, that they never apply themselves to their work until they are compelled; and then the intellectual and even the physical excitement roused by the sense of insufficient time in which to do one's work injures the work itself. Other people wait for some special inspiration, which in reality is much more likely to come by means of, or in the midst of, work itself. It is at least my experience that one's work, while one is doing it, takes on a different look from that which one anticipated, and that one does not reach so many fruitful and new ideas in his times of rest as he does during the work itself. From all this follows the rule, not to postpone work, or lightly to accept the pretext of physical or intellectual indisposition, but to dedicate a definite and well-considered amount of time every day to one's work. Then, if the "old man," as St. Paul calls him, is cunning enough to see that he must in any event do some work at a special time and cannot wholly give himself to rest, he may usually be trusted to resolve to do each day that which for each day is most necessary.
Again, there are a great many men, occupied in intellectual work of a productive kind, who waste their time and lose the happiness of work by devoting themselves to the arrangement of their work, or still oftener,to the introduction of their work. As a general rule, no artistic, or profound, or remote introduction to one's work is desirable. On the contrary, it usually anticipates unsuitably that which should come later. Even if this be doubted, the advice is at any rate good that one's introduction and one's title should be written last. Thus composed, they commonly cost no labor. One makes a beginning much more easily when he starts without any preamble, with that chapter of his work with which he is most familiar. For the same reason, when one reads a book, it is well to omit at the first reading the preface and often the first chapter. For my own part, I never read a preface until I have finished a book, and I discover, almost without exception, that when, after reading the book, I turn back for a look at the preface, I have lost nothing by omitting it. Of course, it must be said that there are books of which the preface is the best part. Of these, however, it may also be said that they are not worth reading at all.
And now I may safely take still another step and add, that, with the exception of an introduction to your work or its central treatment, it is best to begin with that part which is easiest to you. The chief thing is to begin. One may indeed advance less directly in his work by doing it unsystematically, but this loss is more than made good by his gain of time. Under this head also should be added two other rules. One is the law: "Take no thought for the morrow : for thejmorrow shall take thought for the things of itself." Man is endowed with the dangerous gift of imagination, and imagination has a much larger realm than that of one's capacity. Through one's imagination one sees his whole work lying before him as a task to be achieved all at once, while his capacity, on the other hand, can conquer its task only by degrees, and must constantly renew its strength. Do your work, then, as a rule, for each day. The morrow will come in its own time, and with it will come the strength for the morrow. The second rule is this : In intellectual work one should, indeed, deal with his material thoroughly; but he should not expect: to exhaust his material, so that there shall be nothing further left to say or to read. No man's strength is in these days sufficient for absolute thoroughness. The best principle is to be completely master of a relatively small region of research ; and to deal with the larger inquiries only in their essential features. He who tries to do too much usually accomplishes too little.
A further condition of good work is this, that one should not persist in working when work has lost its freshness and pleasure. I have already said that one may begin without pleasure, for otherwise one, as a rule, would not begin at all. But one should stop as soon as his work itself brings fatigue. This does not mean that one should, for this reason, stop all work, but only that he should stop the special kind of work which is fatiguing him. Change in work is almost as refreshing as complete rest. Indeed, without this characteristic of human nature, we should hardly accomplish anything.
Again, in order to be able to do much work, one must economize one's force, and the practical means to this is by wasting no time on useless activities. I can hardly make plain how much pleasure and power for work is lost by this form of wastefulness. First of all, among such ways of wasting time should be reckoned the excessive reading of newspapers ; and to this should be added the excessive devotion to societies and meetings. An immense numberof people, for instance, begin their morning, the best time they have for work, with the newspaper, and end their day quite as regularly in some club or meeting. They read each morning the whole of a paper, or perhaps of several papers, but it would be hard, as a rule, to savrwhat intellectual acquisition remained the next day from such reading. This, at least, is certain, that after one has finished his paper, he experiences a certain disinclination for work, and snatches up another paper, if it happen to be within reach. Any one, therefore, who desires to do much work must carefully avoid all useless occupation of his mind, and, one may even add, of his body. He must reserve his powers for that which it is his business to do.
Finally, and for intellectual work, with which throughout I am specially concerned, there is one last and important help. It is the habit of reviewing, and revising, one's material. Almost every intellectual work is
at first grasped only in its general outlines, and then, as one attacks it a second time, its finer aspects reveal themselves, and the appreciation of them becomes more complete. One's chief endeavor, then, should be, as a famous writer of our day remarks, "not to achieve the constant productiveness which permits itself no pause, but rather to lose oneself in that which one would create. Hence issues the desire to reproduce one's ideal in visible forms. External industry, the effort to grasp one's material and promptly master it, these are, indeed, obvious conditions of authorship, but they are of less value than that higher and spiritual industry which steadily works toward an unattained end."
The conception of work, thus excellently stated, meets a final difficulty which our discussion has already recognized. For work, under this view, maintains continuity, in spite of and even during one's necessary rest. Here is the ideal of the highest work. The mind works continuously, when it has once acquired the genuine industry which comes through devotion to one's task. In fact, it is curious to notice how often, after pauses in one's work not excessively prolonged, one's material has unconsciously advanced. Everything has grown spontaneously. Many difficulties seem suddenly disposed of, one's first supply of ideas is multiplied, assumes picturesqueness, and lends itself to expression ; so that the renewal of one's work occurs with ease, as though it were merely the gathering of fruit which in the interval had ripened without effort of our own.
This, then, is a second reward of work, in addition to that which one commonly recognizes. Only he who works knows what enjoyment and refreshment are. Rest which does not follow work is like eating without appetite. The best, the pleasantest, and the most rewarding and also the cheapest way of passing the time is to be busy with one's work. And as matters stand in the world today, it seems reasonable to anticipate that at the end of our century some social revolution will make those who are then at work the ruling class; just as at the beginning of the last century a social revolution gave to industrious citizens their victory over the idle nobility and the idle priests. Wherever any social class sinks into idleness, subsisting like those idlers of the past on incomes created by the work of others, there such non-productive citizens again must yield. The ruling class of the future must be the working class.
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