Work
Ss=sOO :.:< fmmmt s n WORK WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR FRIENDSHIP Seventh Edition. Crown 8vo. Cloth, zs. 6d. ' A wise and charming little book on Friendship. It is full of good things winningly expressed, and though very simply written, is the result of real thought and experience. Mr. Black's is the art that conceals art. F'or young men especially this volume will be a golden possession, and it can hardly fail to affect their after lives.' — British Weekly. CULTURE AND RESTRAINT Third Edition. Crown 8vo. Cloth, 6s. ' I am profoundly thankful for the book, and I only wish I could put it in the hands of all those who murder the word culture by calling it "culchaw," as they murder the true ideal of culture by im agining that it is ministering to their own self- centred appetites. I would also like to put the book in the hands of all tho'c people who imagine that it is the essence of Christianity to live in utter separation from all the possibilities of life suggested within their own personality, people who are never happy unless they are unhappy. The book is strong and healthy, and loyal to Christ, and I trust it may have the circulation it demands.' — Rev. G. 'Campbell Jforg-an. LONDON : HODDER AND STOUGHTON 27 Paternoster Row. I p % (WORK! w\ ^ 1 i ' -HUGH- N 5LACK-M-A ^ 1 1 ' ]/ .• A i \ f. A &, i .'. s y <,' • TORONTO FLEMING H.  ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D. WHOSE EXAMPLE OF WORK HAS INSPIRED MANY 'Not thine to complete the work, yet neither art thou free to lay it down.'— THE TALMUD. CONTENTS i PAGE IDLENESS AND WORK 3 II THE HABIT OF WORK 27 III THE MORAL NEED OF WORK 51 IV THE DUTY OF WORK . • • • 73 V THE FRUITS OF WORK 97 vii viii CONTENTS VI PAGE THE IDEAL OF WORK 121 VII THE GOSPEL OF WORK I47 VIII REST AND WORK . TTT IX THE CONSECRATION OF WORK 193 IDLENESS AND WORK ' There is a working class— strong and happy— among both rich and poor : there is an idle class- weak, wicked, and miserable— among both rich and poor.'— RUSKIN. I. IDLENESS AND WORK T N some moods there are few things more irritating than a panegyric of work and a denunciation of idleness ; for to workers it seems like beating the air so far as they are concerned. They are inclined to think that those who speak most eloquently in praise of work, as if labour were a luxury, are usually people who know little of its burden. Still there is no subject which has more right to be considered, since there is no single subject which fills so large a space in the lives of most. We may object that we have no choice in the matter, and no need for encouragement or reproof. We at least have the spur of neces sity which would soon prick our side if we tried to dispense with what is our lot. It might seem also as if it could be said with s 4 IDLENESS AND WORK some truth that idleness is not a very glaring fault of our race, that our country compared with some others is a perfect hive of industry, and that many among us suffer from overwork rather than underwork. It may be worth while considering the subject, though all this be true, and though we ourselves be even desperately industrious ; for is it not the case that the false and foolish standard is set up in society which almost looks upon it as a disgrace to work, or at least makes idleness an ideal? If we search for it we may find it in some corner of our own heart. Many work hard with little thought either of the nobility or the meaning of work, but only to get rich so that some fine day they too may be able to be idle. In spite of our activities we may hanker after what we conceive to be the paradise of idleness. The ultimate ambition in our minds is to be freed from the necessity of work, as if work and not idleness were the evil. We do not value work for its own sake, but think of it as a disagreeable necessity. The common social ideal is certainly a life IDLENESS AND WORK 5 of ease and pleasure, not a life of work and service. Society among us seems to be care fully graded in inverse proportion according to the amount of leisure enjoyed. We know how ' Society' looks down on trade and busi ness, the industry which alone makes it pos sible for them to live at all ; and as for manual labour, that is in another hemisphere ! If we do value business, it is for its returns, its profits, not for the honest employment which trains body and mind and develops character. This is not just the ignorant contempt of a select class ; it has permeated all classes so that to climb the social ladder means getting rid of work. Burton gives a chapter full of his quaint and pedantic learning about exercise, quoting the wisdom of the ancients as to the necessity of labour for health of body and mind, citing Seneca and Xenophon, the prac tice of the Egyptians of old, Jews, Turks, and then he draws the contrast in irony, ' But amongst us the badge of gentry is idleness: to be of no calling, not to labour, for that's derogatory to their birth, to be a mere spec- 6 IDLENESS AND WORK tator, a drone.' This ideal affects the whole social organism, and influences the thought and conduct of all. Some of us, who are very diligent and industrious, have the makings of pretty fair specimens of the sluggard in us, since our hearts are set on that as the great end of life. Certainly, one of the commonest modern ideals is that of no work, or as near that as , possible. This does not refer to the demands of some sections to have more leisure, which will give at least opportunities for fuller self- education. Some of these demands are just enough in a civilised community, and must be granted where practicable. The reference is to the ideal to be found in all classes, which looks upon toil as only an evil, and which has lost the old moral dignity of labour. This false ideal has cut deep. We find it in litera ture and in religion. A good many books have been written to show what Utopian life on this earth would be, and they are almost all spoiled by making work an evil thing, to be got rid of as much as possible. IDLENESS AND WORK 7 The objection is often made against any form of socialism that nobody would be found willing to do the necessary lower forms of work needed by society. It is a very poor objection. If that were the only objection to socialism, some of us would have little diffi culty in believing in it. There are in our midst men and women cheerfully taking upon themselves burdens, and bending their neck to duties, from which they could easily escape. It is incredible that in any state of society the spirit of Christ will die out. Men are this day serving Him faithfully as hewers of wood and drawers of water, doing for their daily task what the world calls lower work, and who might well be envied for their con tent of mind and largeness of soul. A stronger objection to socialist ideals is precisely the opposite, that they make too much of the mere externals of life. It is assumed too often that man can live by bread alone. Most of the ideals for perfect human life and society have this flaw. The notion of happiness is like that described in such books as Lord 8 IDLENESS AND WORK Lytton's The Coming Race, where social and political felicity is made to consist of having all they need. The motto of their lives is, They were born ; they were happy ; they died. There is no stimulus of want, no goad of poverty, no fierce rivalry. We pray for the time when there will be no want and less rivalry, but never for the time when men will be above effort. Was there not a philosopher who thought that the earth was turning into a bun, and the sea into lemonade, that mankind might be happy without effort ? Some kinds of work are evil because of unhealthy surroundings or fierce competition, but work must have a place in all schemes to ameliorate the race. Work is needed to attain moral progress, and to conserve it when at tained. There is nothing more astonishing on this earth of ours than the spectacle of some who do not know how to kill time — so long as there are thorns and thistles of various kinds to keep down. And there is nothing more pathetic than that of others, willing to work and unable to find a place where to use a IDLENESS AND WORK 9 spade or handle a tool. There is something wrong somewhere, which it behoves us to put right, when these two classes exist. The subject of this book is, however, not a discussion of economic problems, but the more personal one of our actual work, with its claims on us and its lessons for us. This subject of personal duty is distinct from the larger ques tion of social rearrangement and schemes for the reorganisation of labour, by which fervent reformers hope to bring in a condition of society in which labour will be more fairly apportioned and the fruits of labour be more equably distributed. We are here not con cerned with criticising the present state of industry, or discussing the projects of re formers. Such larger considerations do affect the subject, since we are all influenced for good and evil by the social state in which we are placed. Industrial conditions im mensely affect the individual worker. But our subject is a primary one, and simpler, if narrower, than such economic discussions. It is the personal duty incumbent on each in this io IDLENESS AND WORK or any other order of society. Here we have our feet on fact, and are not just treading the air vaguely, as is so often the case in dealing with the more grandiose questions about an ideally perfect social reconstruction. We do not need to wait till society has been trans formed by social reformers before we can have a school for character. The school is here, and the door is open. The labour market, as we know it to-day, is sometimes a rough and stern teacher, but it has valuable lessons to enforce, and it is a duty we owe to ourselves to submit ourselves to the discipline. ; A further instance of the prevalence of the false ideal is seen in the way it even colours religious thought. Many treat the work and service of life as a painful necessity in order to qualify for the Rest that remaineth, and look forward to a millennium of ease and not to a millennium of holiness. It is of a piece with the offence taken at Christ's birth and home and occupation. The Jews sneered at the Nazarite, and the Nazarites sneered at the IDLENESS AND WORK n Carpenter. Every class has its prejudices, and men could not easily rid their minds of a natural prejudice against a provincial trades man as a teacher of religion. Celsus, who wrote the first great polemic against Chris tianity, made it one of his objections that Christ had worked with His own hands. It was a natural objection to a learned philo sopher, who did not enter into the heart of the faith, and who, therefore, could not see the bearing of the strange fact. Even many defenders of the faith have stumbled at the same thing, and seem to think it unworthy of their Lord to have ever appeared in such a humble guise. The Apocryphal gospels, for example, show Christ above work and worry, doing everything miraculously even when a child. The moral dignity and the spiritual power of the simple gospel story are lost in the stilted artificial divinity, which good men with the best will in the world attributed to the Master. The mediaeval stories and legends which gathered round Christ have many of them the same fatal misapprehension. 12 IDLENESS AND WORK In the miracle-play introduced into Long fellow's Golden Legend this is seen. In one scene the boy Jesus is at play with His school mates by the river-side, where their game was to make sparrows out of clay. Jesus claps His hands, and the clay sparrows become real birds and fly away singing. These mistakes of friends and enemies of the faith are due to failure to apprehend the deep bearing of what we call Christ's humiliation. We fail utterly if we do not, see that common work has been sanctified by Him, and common duty hallowed. He has taken away the curse from work by His life, as well as the curse of sin by His death. It is remarkable how St. Paul exalts the common duties of daily life — all the more remarkable because he was by nature open to the high enthusiasms which usually neglect, if not despise, the humbler things of practical life. He never lets his mystical raptures and religious fervour cut him off from the ordinary world of work and duty. Rather, he lifts this up to a plane where the highest IDLENESS AND WORK 13 motives rule. He links the humblest life to the loftiest spiritual thoughts, and reinforces plain duty by unearthly sanctions. It shames us to see how he ennobles the meanest tasks, the work of a slave, for example, not content with calling it useful and necessary work, but exalting it as truly spiritual. He never de spised manual labour, according to the social standard of his time, and even of our own time. He knew too well what it could do for a man, as he worked at his own trade in the intervals of other labours. Perhaps, too, he felt that it brought him into a great succession when he remembered that his Lord had been a carpenter! He knew the value of steady, honest work, and was never more severe in his judgments than when condemning those who neglected work on the plea of religion. The heathen world gave honour to certain kinds of work, that of government and war, intellectual work, and even the laborious training of the athletes to fit themselves for the great games, but manual labour was classed by them as servile, and that meant work fit only for slaves. 14 IDLENESS AND WORK They of course recognised that it was neces sary in order to keep society going, but it had no honour on that account, but only contempt It was looked upon as taking away from human dignity, unworthy of a free man. St. Paul insisted that instead of a man being lowered by his work he was raised by it in manhood, growing in character and even in grace, if it were done honestly and faithfully. The common callings of humble life are taken as of God's appointment, a test of conscience and an open way to character. The false standard of life also widens the cleavage between different classes of the com munity. The foolish envy of idleness creates bitterness among the workers, and it has to be confessed that the frivolous work of idlers gives ground for the bitterness. The envy is foolish, whatever we may say about the worse than folly of selfish idleness. Richard Jefferies in one of his sketches tells of meeting three women field-workers. He envied them and thought their health ideal. What would he IDLENESS AND WORK 15 not give to be like them ? ' There was that in their cheeks that all the wealth of London could not purchase, a superb health in their carnage princesses could not obtain.' But he could see plainly that they regarded him with bitter envy, jealousy, and hatred written in their eyes. They cursed him in their hearts, simply because they worked and he seemed to be idle. Because he did not appear to be doing any visible work, they hated and envied him ; and he who knew both lives would have gladly exchanged places to get their unwearied step, and to be always in the open air and abroad upon the earth. Whether it be a cause or effect of the pre valent ideal, there is a pleasure-loving spirit abroad. We are looking more and more to excitements, and less to duty for our true happiness. In our day there are more tempta tions than ever before to a great number of people to lead an aimless, useless existence. This is due to the accumulation and extension of wealth in our country, making it possible for many to live without work. Perhaps as a 16 IDLENESS AND WORK consequence of this the general standard for all of us has been relaxed. There are more occasions for pleasure, for amusements of all sorts, which though innocent in themselves make it easy for us to fritter away a great deal of time, which might be spent with equal recreation to much more purpose. One has only to mention the subject of reading to call up a vision of the mass of trivial and ephemeral and stupid waste of printer's ink. How much of our reading is disconnected, purposeless, inane — merely to pass the time as we even say. There is a place for recreative literature, but surely the great treasures of the world deserve better treatment, and demand more serious study than most of us ever give them. Of course there is the very idlest of all idle society, where waste of time is raised to a fine art. Addison, in the Spectator of 1712, satirises the emptiness of many lives of his day, and the satire is perhaps the keener that it consists merely in transcribing from sup posed diaries. One is that of a man who had nothing to put into his diary but when he got IDLENESS AND WORK 17 up in the morning and when he went to bed, when he smoked three pipes of Virginia tobacco and read the papers, what he had for dinner and when he went to the coffee-house, which was the substitute for the club of these days. It is satire, not of a vicious man, but of an idle man, ' designed,' as he says, ' not so much to expose vice as idleness, and aimed at those persons who pass away their time rather in trifle and impertinence, than in crimes and immoralities.' He recommends his readers to keep a journal of their lives for one week, a kind of self-examination which will give them a true state of themselves, and incline them to consider seriously what they are about. The other extract is from the journal of a fashionable woman whom he calls Clarinda, detailing for five days the time spent in dressing, in washing and combing her lap- dog, in shopping and cheapening a couple of fans, and in seeing company, with a little mild employment thrown in of working half a violet leaf on a flowered handkerchief. Complaints are common among employers of the lack of efficient and zealous help in business. Young men, we are told, are keen about their sport and their games, and seem to want to do as little as possible in return for their salary. Work is something to be gone 20 IDLENESS AND WORK through, a disagreeable necessity in order to get recreation. No wise man grudges the young their relaxations and pleasures, but when these usurp the first place we cannot be without qualms for the future. Business men are quite unanimous in asserting that laziness is at the root of most failures. It is possible to make too much of worldly success, but it is also possible to make too little of it. If the want of success, as is often the case, is the result of moral failure, we cannot afford to pass it by as of no account. Even in our day there is no manual of conduct, which young men might take for practical guidance, more to the point than the old book of Proverbs. As is to be expected from a book which deals so largely with wisdom in the conduct of practical life, it is full of praise of industry and of satire on sloth. It approaches the subject from almost all possible angles, now from the national stand point, stating that the vigorous nation rules and the weak and slothful is under tribute, and now from the individual standpoint in all IDLENESS AND WORK 21 the relationships of life. The industrious man attains wealth — 'The hand of the diligent maketh rich ' : he attains honour and a position of influence — 'Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings.' It satirises the incapacity and negligence and shiftlessness of the lazy man, sometimes in such a humorous couplet as this, ' The sluggard dips his hand in the dish, and will not so much as bring it to his mouth again ' ; sometimes showing humorously the nuisance a sluggard is to others by his lack of activity and punctuality, 'As vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to them that send him.' Sometimes it sternly states the inevitable result of idleness in poverty and misery. Again, it points the plain moral to all who have discretion, as it paints the picture of the sluggard's garden grown over with thorns, its face covered with nettles, and its wall broken down, while the slothful owner murmurs in stupid dulness, ' A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep.' 22 IDLENESS AND WORK It is chiefly the evident and surface aspects of the question which are treated by the book ; and its chief argument is naturally of a piece. Its great argument is the success which attends industry either in wealth or power or position ; but we are inclined to be such finical moralists to-day that we despise such plain and vulgar standards. It is not the last nor the highest argument, nor is it a rule without exceptions ; but at the same time this argument is too palpable to be safely omitted, when we are speaking to men who need all the aids to virtue and all the argu ments to right conduct that can be gathered together. It was most natural for this wise book to point to results, to the experience of everybody who could see or think ; and it was natural to attempt to reinforce moral action by the evident sanctions that could be estab lished offhand. The book, it should be remembered in this connection, makes plain that diligence is not merely a physical thing, the mere thoughtless activity of body that never tires and never rests. It satirises that type almost as much as the sluggard, the fussy busy worker who goes on without intelligence and without thought. The industry praised here is not exclusively manual, but asks for reflection and prudence and foresight and management In the counsels of this book it is difficult some times to distinguish between the workman and the wise man. The one is implied in the other. The wise man works ; and the true worker uses all his faculties of mind. Now it is a fact, allowing for all possible exceptions, that earnest, serious diligence does succeed. Such a labourer is worthy of his hire at least. Prosperity is the natural reward of industry. This is true of peoples as well as of individuals. The prosperous nations are those with the fewest slack hands. It is in keeping 24 IDLENESS AND WORK with the great natural law which has ordained work for life. The earth bringeth forth fruit of herself while man sleeps and rises, but before that there must have been the pre paratory toil, ploughing, sowing, and weeding ; and when nature has done all there must still be labour, the labour of harvest, reaping, and gathering, and winnowing. Nothing thrives, as Proverbs asserts, in the sluggard's garden. If a man will do nothing for his farm, his farm will do nothing for him. Human life and the whole order of society are maintained by labour, and those who will not work have no real place in the social scheme. The world's means of subsistence is won by labour, and life without some sort of service in it can only be classed as parasitic. Wilful and persistent idleness puts a man outside of the plan of campaign. To prophesy reward for industry is not just to state a low form of prudential morality ; it is to state a fact on which the very world is built. THE HABIT OF WORK ' Do the duty that lies nearest to thee. Thy second duty will already become clearer.' — CARLYLE. ' The secret of order and proportion in our studies is the true secret of economy in time.'— P. G. HAMERTON. II THE HABIT OF WORK '""PHE place of habit in life can hardly be overestimated. Habit works a groove for us into which we fall easily and in which we move swiftly, so that the great bulk of our actions are done automatically, and the whole trend of our life is established. Habit cuts a pathway from the brain through the nerve- centres, until after a time a thing is done almost mechanically. We do not stop to think how we will walk when we want to go any where. We have laboriously acquired the art of walking, till it is done without any conscious attention. The law extends its sway over every region of life. We have gone on doing acts and making judgments along a certain line till it could be foretold what we will do on any one occasion. No wonder that all 27 28 THE HABIT OF WORK moralists make much of the importance of the formation of habits. It is the way character is formed, and life is moulded, and destiny is fixed. What can match it for importance? It is ' by reason of use,' as the Apostle says, that ' the senses are exercised ' ; by reason of use the body is developed ; by reason of use the mind is coloured and twisted and shaped ; by reason of use the soul prays and communes and grows in grace ; by reason of use each is made the person he is. Even natural dis position, of which we make so much when we speak of heredity, is only a tendency till habit takes it and sets it and hardens it and drives it to a settled goal. Habit is the process by which acts and thoughts and feelings are organised into life. There is nothing that is outside of this law in business or art or morality or religion. 'The harper is not made otherwise than by harping, nor the just man otherwise than by doing just deeds,' says Aristotle with his keen insight into the ethical interests of life. And it is not merely in such specialised lines that THE HABIT OF WORK 29 habit tells, as when a man sets himself to be a skilled musician, or an exact scholar, or a master of an art, or a just man. It touches us all along the line, never leaving us at any point, but ceaselessly making its mark. Everything counts, registering its effects in the mysterious region of nerve-cells and fibres, and has its corresponding result on mind and character. There is a dreadful warning to youth in this, a warning which all moralists give with passionate earnestness. Every observer of life has the same story to tell, every psycho logist has the same sermon to preach, every physician has the same moral to point. Evil assumes its despotic sway gently and insidi ously at the beginning of habit. It moves by little and little, till it enthrones itself in the nerve-structure itself. Says R. L. Stevenson : 'Evil was called youth till he was old, and then he was called Habit.' We usually hear of the evil of this great force, the power of bad habits and the difficulty of breaking them. Habit is spoken of as if it were a diabolic influence menacing us on every 30 THE HABIT OF WORK side. We forget that it is a law of life designed for its best interests. We forget that it is full of good and blessing, and is meant not to destroy but to conserve and strengthen human life. If this force is meant as a preservative, it is in its deepest intention an inducement to good habit ; and the law is as strong on this side as on the other. It ought always to be remembered that the odds are on the side of health and good ; and in every sincere moral endeavour we put both nature and God on our side. If by reason of use evil can lay hold and grasp the mastery, so by reason of use good also grows — faith, and love, and moral vigour, and spiritual vision. By reason of use good habits attain and secure and increase good. There is no habit more important than the habit of work, because it is open to all of us in our place and degree, and because to most the working hours mean a big slice of our lives. We will work all the more intelligently if we look at the hopeful side of this sphere of life, and if we see how it is linked on to moral life THE HABIT OF WORK 31 generally, how the law of habit uses it to bless and strengthen the whole man. Professor James closes a chapter in his Psychology with a passage which I cannot refrain from quoting, because for one thing he is speaking from the strict scientific standpoint, and because it presents the hopeful and obverse side of the power of habit. ' As we become permanent drunkards by so many separate drinks, so we become saints in the moral, and authorities and experts in the practical and scientific spheres, by so many separate acts and hours of work. Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working day, he may safely leave the final result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation in whatever pursuit he may have singled out. Silently, between all the details of his business, the power of judging in all that class of matter will have built itself up within him as a possession 32 THE HABIT OF WORK that will never pass away. Young people should know this truth in advance. The ignorance of it has probably engendered more discouragement and faint-heartedness in youths embarking on arduous careers than all other causes put together.' But apart from the ambition to become competent — though there is not such a ple thora of completely competent ones in any line of activity to make us want to depreciate such an ambition — the value of assiduous and faithful and regular work is that it accumu lates moral force, which not only tells by success in the particular occupation, but gives steadiness and backbone to the whole charac ter. The beauty of this is, that it does not matter what we are working at ; in work we are creating habit which is sending a stream of healthful influence over the whole life, and is strengthening the complete character. We are bringing training and discipline to bear on our entire self. Nothing will make up for the want of this habit of work, either in the particular line or in the effect on the character. No brilliance or quickness or cleverness or special aptitude can make up for want of it. There is a pro found truth in the old fables, like that of the hare beaten by the tortoise even in its own line of running. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who preached this doctrine untiringly, says in his Second Discourse on the Method of Study : ' If you have great talents industry will im prove them ; if you have but moderate abilities industry will supply their deficiency. Nothing is denied to well-directed labour ; nothing is to be obtained without it. Not to enter into meta physical discussions on the nature or essence of genius, I will venture to assert that assi duity unabated by difficulty and a disposition c 32 THE HABIT OF WORK 'eagerly directed to the object of its pursuit, will produce effects similar to those which some call the result of natural powers.' There should be some necessary qualification here, especially in speaking about art. It might tempt some, who have no aptitude, to think that labour alone is enough for any branch of I work. There is truth in Hazlitt's criticism that industry alone will only produce mediocrity, and mediocrity in art is not worth the trouble of industry. Efforts of course may be mis guided, and end in inevitable failure. Appli cation the most laborious can never take the place of the initial gift, without which high art is impossible. But allowing for this, Sir Joshua's preaching of industry and the per sistent habit of labour may well be taken to heart. Careless slovenly work is responsible for more failures in art than any other cause. Men trust to what they call their genius, and many a gifted artist has never come to his kingdom because he has never learned to toil. It is one of the subtlest temptations THE HABIT OF WORK 35 in all productive work, whether it be paint ing pictures, or writing books, or preparing sermons, or pursuing any subject of study, to trust to happy inspirations, with the result that desultory efforts alternate with long spells of indolence. It not only hurts the work, but it hurts the morale of the worker. There is no finer lesson from the lives of many scientific workers of our time than that of the patient investigation and tireless labour with which they pursue their branch of truth. Darwin, in a letter to Romanes, refers to this as a necessity if a man is to advance any science at all. He writes, ' Trollope in one of his novels gives us a maxim of constant use by a brickmaker, " It is dogged as does it," and I have often and often thought that this is the motto for every scientific worker.' Here in its own degree, in the sphere of scientific truth as in the sphere of spiritual truth, it is by reason of use that the senses are exercised to discern good and evil. To accept our work as part of our duty, to cultivate it as a habit, is to safeguard our lives from many s mistake 36 THE HABIT OF WORK and error, and even from many a sin. We are traitors to our opportunities and gifts unless we make them the servant of habit. Many illustrations could be culled from the lives and writings of great men, showing how they cultivated this habit till it was ingrained both in tfyeir work and in their characters. Take just one other illustration, this time a very different type of man from Sir Joshua Reynolds or Darwin — Lord Macaulay, whose work is often ignorantly thought facile and shallow. One thing certainly in it is its amazing industry, the patience and energy with which he carried on his historical investi gations, whether we accept his conclusions or not. Thackeray gives him deserved credit in this. ' Take at hazard any three pages of the Essays or History : and glimmering below the stream of the narrative you, an average reader, see one, two, three, a half-score of allusions to other historical facts, characters, literature, poetry, with which you are acquainted. Your neighbour, who has his reading and his little stock of literature THE HABIT OF WORK 37 stowed away in his mind, shall detect more points, allusions, happy touches, indicating not only the prodigious memory and vast learning of this master, but the wonderful industry, the honest humble previous toil of this great scholar. He reads twenty books to write a sentence ; he travels a hundred miles to make a line of description.' This is no exaggeration. We see from his private journal the terrible toil he pledged himself to undertake for the writing of the second part of his History — visits to Holland, Belgium, Scotland, Ireland, France; ransacking Dutch and French archives ; turning over thousands of pamphlets; exploring in libraries; soaking his mind in the literature of the period. True success in working will only come from treating work itself as an art, the best methods of which have to be learned and practised. A man must bring himself into discipline before he becomes a perfect in strument for his work. No great work of art is possible without previous training in the 38 THE HABIT OF WORK art of work. When the habit of industry is ingrained in a man's nature he has mastered the art, although his methods of working may be peculiar to himself. Illustrations from litera ture are specially valuable in treating of this subject, because it is a sphere in which a man is usually thought to be altogether dependent on intuition and inspiration. We speak vaguely of ' genius ' as explaining any achieve ment in writing ; but we only need to know a little of the inner literary history of any time or country to see what toil lies back of what we call genius. Even those forms of art which appear most spontaneous, such as poetry and music, are not struck off at a flash, or if any single piece of work seems to be so struck off, that is made possible by years of past training. Improvisa tion can only be done by one who is a master of his art. Even Shakespeare, who is often spoken of as an improvisatore, was a careful artist, as can be seen by comparing the first edition of one of his plays with the later editions. This can also be seen in the re- 39 markable growth and intellectual develop ment displayed in the order of his works which . has been at least approximately established by critics. Beginning with adaptations of other plays, improving upon every model he took, his growing power in dramatic art and in rich mellow wisdom can be traced. 