Essays on Work and Culture
Mabie, Hamilton Wright, 1845-1916
English
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ESSAYS ON WORK AND CULTURE
BY
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!
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