The Educational Attitude
The man whose life is intelligently ordered is always preparing himself for the highest demands of his work; he is not only doing that work with adequate skill from day to day, but he is always fitting himself in advance for more exacting and difficult tasks.
If a man is to become an artist in his work, his specific preparation for particular occasions and tasks must be part of a general preparation for all possible occasions and tasks. It is not only impossible to foresee opportunities, but it is often impossible to recognise their importance until they are past. It is well to know by heart Emerson's significant lines,—
"Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,And marching single in an endless file,Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.To each they offer gifts after his will,Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,Forgot my mourning wishes, hastilyTook a few herbs and apples, and the DayTurned and departed silent. I, too late,Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn."
The Days, which come so unobtrusively and go so silently, are opportunities in disguise, and to enable a man to penetrate that disguise and discern the royal figure in the meanest dress is one of the great ends of that education which must always, in some form, precede real success. For nothing which endures is ever done without some kind of preliminary training. Men do not happen, by chance, upon greatness; they achieve it. Noble work of any kind is the fruit of laborious apprenticeship, and from the higher forms of success the idler and the amateur are for ever shut out. A man often enters a new field or takes up a new tool with surprising facility and power; but in these cases the man is only carrying into a fresh field the skill already acquired elsewhere. It has sometimes happened that a sudden occasion has called an obscure man to his feet, and he has sat down famous. In such instances it is the custom to say that the orator has spoken without preparation; as a matter of fact, the man knows that he has been all his life preparing for that critical moment. If he had not risen full of his theme, with the rich material of noble speech within reach of his memory or imagination, he would have left the hour empty and unmarked. In such a moment a man rises as high as the reach of his nature and no higher, and the reach of his nature depends on the training he has given himself.
The hour for commanding speech comes to the politician, whose study of public affairs is chiefly a study of the management of his constituents, and he sits down as empty as he arose; the same hour, arriving unexpectedly to Burke or Webster, draws upon vast accumulations of knowledge, thought, and illustration. In the famous debate with Hayne, Webster had practically but one day in which to prepare his reply to his persuasive and accomplished adversary; but when he spoke it was to put into language for all time the deep conviction of the reality of the national idea. The great orator had scant time to make ready for the greatest opportunity of his life, but, in reality, he had been preparing from boyhood to make that immortal speech. Brilliant speeches are often made extemporaneously; but such speeches are never made without long and arduous preparation. "The gods sell anything and to everybody at a fair price," says Emerson; and he might have added that they give nothing away. Whatever a man secures in the way of power or fame he pays for in preliminary preparation; nothing is given him except his native capacity; everything else he must pay for. To recognise opportunity when it comes, or to make the highest use of it when it is not to be recognised at the moment, involves constant enrichment and education of the whole nature.
It is one of the secrets of the higher kind of success to make life interesting, and this secret is committed mainly to those who get the educational value of events, conditions, and relationships. The man who can rationalise his entire experience is in the way of learning the deepest lesson of life and of keeping the keenest interest in all its happenings. A mass of facts exhausts and wearies the student, but when they fall into order, disclose connections, and reveal truth they awaken enthusiasm. The body of fact without the soul of truth is a dead and repellent thing; but if the soul of truth shine through straightway it becomes vital, companionable, stimulating. Now, the most fruitful preparation for opportunities and tasks of all degrees of importance is that attitude towards life which habitually secures from it the truth behind the experience and the principle behind the fact. Some men are enriched by everything they touch because they seem instinctively to get at the spiritual meaning of events; other men get nothing but material results from their dealing with the world. One man takes nothing off his broad acres but crops; another harvests his crops with as large results, but harvests also knowledge of the chemistry of nature, appreciation of the landscape beyond his own fields, and those qualities of character which have their root in honest work in the open fields.
A striking difference is discernible between two classes of men of business; one class is shrewd, keen, successful, but entirely uninteresting, because it fastens its attention exclusively upon the bare, hard facts of the situation; the other class is not only equally successful, but possesses a rare interest, because it penetrates behind the facts of trade to the laws of trade, studies general conditions, and continually deals with the situation from the point of view of large intelligence. No human being is so entirely devoid of interest to his fellows as the trader who barters one commodity for another without any comprehension of higher values or wider connections; on the other hand, few men are more interesting than the great merchants whose vision penetrates to the principles behind business, and who acquire a kind of wisdom which is the more engaging because it is constantly verified by contact with affairs. The man who is a trader never gets beyond the profit of his shrewd bargain; the man who trains himself to study general conditions puts himself in the way, not only of great wealth, but of leadership and power.
Behind every trade and occupation there are the most intimate human connections; beneath every trade and occupation there are deep human relationships; and it is only as we discern these fundamental relations and connections that we get at a true conception of the magnitude of the practical activities of society and of their significance in civilisation. The man who treats his trade as mere opportunity of making money, without taking into account the service of that trade to men or its relation to the totality of social activities, is as truly anti-social in his spirit and methods as an anarchist. Such a man breaks society into selfish fragments, and turns commerce into vulgar bartering. The penalty of such a sordid and narrow view of life is never evaded; the trader makes gains and often swells them by hoarding; but he rarely secures great wealth,—for great fortunes are built by brains and force,—and he never secures leadership. He who is to win the noblest successes in the world of affairs must continually educate himself for larger grasp of principles and broader grasp of conditions.
Special Training
It is a very superficial conception of workmanship which sets it in conflict with originality. There is often an inherent antagonism between the impulse for freedom and spontaneity which is characteristic of genius, and a conventional, hard-and-fast rule or method of securing certain technical results; but there is no antagonism between the boldest originality and the most complete mastery of craftsmanship. There is, rather, a deep and vital relationship between the two. For every art is a language, and to secure power and beauty and adequacy of expression a man must command all the secrets and resources of the form of speech which he has chosen. The power of the great artist rests, in the last analysis, upon the freedom with which he uses his material; and this freedom does not come by nature; it comes by training. It is fatal to the highest success to have the command of a noble language and to have nothing to say in it; it is equally fatal to have noble thoughts and to lack the power of giving them expression. Technical skill is not, therefore, an exterior, mechanical possession; it is the fitting of tools and material to heart and mind; it is the fruit of character; it is the evidence of sincerity, thoroughness, truthfulness. In his characteristically suggestive comment upon the Japanese artist Hokusai, Mr. John La Farge gives an interesting account of the training established and enforced in the school of the Kanos, a family of painters which survived the vicissitudes of more than four centuries. The course of study in a Kano school covered at least ten years, and the average age of graduation was thirty. The rules of conduct were rigid; the manner of life simple to the point of bareness; the discipline of work severe and unbroken. During the first year and a half of study the pupil devoted his entire time to copying certain famous works in the possession of the school; making, in the first instance, a copy from the picture set before him, and then reproducing his own copy again and again until every stroke and detail was thoroughly comprehended and mastered. In the course of eighteen months sixty pictures were studied with this searching thoroughness; the secrets of skill in each were uncovered, the sources of beauty or power discerned; and the eye and hand of the pupil gained intelligence, quickness, penetration. Month after month passed in what seemed to be a monotony of mechanical imitation; but in this arduous and literal reproduction of the skill of others was laid the sure foundations of individual skill. This devout attention to methods secured for a considerable number of men a technical expertness for which we look, as a rule, only in the work of the greatest artists. The result of this training was not mechanical skill, but truth and freshness of observation. The signature of the artist in question reveals not an imitative but an original nature, not a faculty absorbed in accuracy but in passion for expression: "Hokusai, the Old Man Crazy about Painting."
The arduous patience of these Oriental students of painting bore its fruit in a tradition of skill which was in itself an immense stimulus to the aspiring and ambitious; it established standards of craftsmanship which made the possession of expert knowledge a necessity on the part of every one who seriously attempted to practice the art. Mr. La Farge comments upon the level of superior artistic culture which these Japanese artists had attained. They had advanced their common skill so far that a superior man began at a great height of attainment, and was compelled to exhibit power of a very rare order before he could claim any kind of prominence among his fellows.
The establishment of such a standard in any art, profession, or occupation has the immense educational value of making clear to the student, at the very beginning of his career, the prime importance of mastering in detail every part of the work which he has undertaken to do. There is no place in the modern working world for the sloven, the indifferent, or the unskilled; no one can hope for any genuine success who fails to give himself the most thorough technical preparation, the most complete special education. Good intentions go for nothing, and industry is thrown away, if one cannot infuse a high degree of skill into his work. The man of medium skill depends upon fortunate conditions for success; he cannot command it, nor can he keep it. In the fierce competition of the day the trained man has all the advantages on his side; the untrained man invites all the tragic possibilities of industrial and economic failure. He is always at the mercy of conditions. To know every detail, to gain an insight into every secret, to learn every method, to secure every kind of skill, are the prime necessities of success in any art, craft, or trade. No time is too long, no study too hard, no discipline too severe for the attainment of complete familiarity with one's work and complete ease and skill in the doing of it. As a man values his working life, he must be willing to pay the highest price of success in it,—the price which severe training exacts.
The external prosperity which is called success is of value because it evidences, as a rule, thoroughness and ability in the man who secures it, and because it supplies the ease of body and of mind which is essential to the fullest and most effective putting forth of one's power; and the sane man, even while he subordinates it to higher things, never entirely ignores or neglects success. The possession of skill is to-day the inexorable condition of securing this outward prosperity; and, as a rule, the greater a man's skill the more enduring his success. But skill has other and deeper uses and ends. Thoroughness and adequacy in the doing of one's work are the evidences of the presence of a moral conception in the worker's mind; they are the witnesses to the pressure of his conscience on his work. Slovenly, careless, and indifferent work is dishonest and untruthful; the man who is content to do less than the best he is capable of doing for any kind of compensation—money, reputation, influence—is an immoral man. He violates a fundamental law of life by accepting that which he has not earned.
Skill in one's art, profession, or trade is conscience applied; it is honesty, veracity, and fidelity using the eye, the voice, and the hand to reveal what lies in the worker's purpose and spirit. To become an artist in dealing with tools and materials is not a matter of choice or privilege; it is a moral necessity; for a man's heart must be in his skill, and a man's soul in his craftsmanship.
General Training
It was the habit of an American statesman who rose to the highest official position, to prepare himself in advance upon every question which was likely to come before Congress by thorough and prolonged study. His vacations and his leisure hours during the session were spent in familiarising himself with pending questions in all their aspects. He was not content with a mastery of the details of a measure; he could not rest until he had mastered the principle behind it, had studied it in the light of history, and in its relation to our political institutions and character. His voluminous note-books show the most thorough study, not only of particular measures and questions as they came before the country from time to time, but of a wide range of related subjects. He once said that for every speech he had delivered he had prepared five; and the statement throws clear light on a career of extraordinary growth and success.
For the characteristic of this career was its steady expansion along intellectual lines. It was exceptional in its disclosure of that inward energy which carries the man who possesses it over all obstacles, enables him to master adverse conditions, to secure education without means and culture without social opportunity; but it was not unexampled in a country which has seen many men of ultimate distinction emerge from entire obscurity. Its material success has been paralleled many times; but its intellectual success has rarely been paralleled. It disclosed inward distinction; a passion for the best in life and thought; an eager desire to see things in their largest relations. And so out of conditions which generally breed the politician the statesman was slowly matured. History, religion, literature, art were objects of his constant and familiar study; and he made himself rich in general knowledge as well as in specific information. This ample background of knowledge of the best which the world has known and done in all the great fields of its activity gave his discussions of specific questions breadth, variety, charm, and literary interest. He brought to the particular measure largeness of view, dispassionateness of temper, and the philosophic mind; and his work came to have cultural significance and quality.
Such a career, the record of which may be clearly traced not only in public history but in a vast mass of preparatory notes and memoranda of every description, illustrates in a very noble way the importance of that constant and general preparation which ought to include special preparation as a landscape includes the individual field. That field may have great value and ought to have the most careful tillage; but it cannot be separated, in any just and true vision, from the other fields which it touches and which run, in unbroken continuity, to the horizon; and this preparation not only involves the fruitful attitude towards life upon which comment has been made, but it involves also constant study in many directions with the definite purpose of enrichment and enlargement. No kind of knowledge comes amiss in this larger training. History, literature, art, and science have their different kinds of nurture to impart, and their different kinds of material to supply; and the wise man will open his mind to their teaching and his nature to their ripening touch. The widely accepted idea that a man not only needs nothing more for a specific task than the specific skill which it demands, but that any larger skill tends to superficiality, is the product of that tendency to excessive specialisation which has impaired the harmony of modern education and dwarfed many men of large native capacity.
In some departments of knowledge and activity the demands are so great on time and strength that the man who works in them can hardly venture outside of them without impairing the totality of his achievement; but even in these cases it is often a question whether too great a price has not been paid for a narrow and highly specialised skill. There is not only no conflict between a high degree of technical skill and wide interests and knowledge; there is a clear and definite connection between the two. For in all those higher forms of work which involve not only expert workmanship but a spiritual content of some kind, the worker must bring to his task not only skill but ideas, force, personality, temperament; and, sound workmanship being secured, his rank will depend not on specific expertness, but on the depth, energy, and splendour of the personality which the work reveals.
Creative men feel the necessity of many interests and of wide activities. Their natures require rich pasturage; they must be fed from many sources. They secure the skill of the specialist, but they never accept his limitations of interest and work. The clearer their vision of the unity of all forms of human action and expression, the deeper their need of studying at first hand these different forms of action and expression. Goethe did not choose that comprehensiveness of temper which led him into so many fields; it was the necessity of a mind vast in its range and deep in its insight. Herbert Spencer has done work which discloses at every point the tireless industry and rigorous method of the specialist; but the field in which he has concentrated his energy has included practically the development of the universe and of human life and society. Mr. Gladstone was a master of all the details, skill, and knowledge of his profession; but how greatly he gained in power by the breadth of his interests, and what charm there was in the disclosure of the man of religious enthusiasm, of ardent devotion, and of ripe culture behind the politician and statesman!
Byron knew the secrets of the art which he practiced with such splendid success as few men have known them. His command of the lyric form was complete. And yet who that loves his work has not felt that lack in it which Matthew Arnold had in mind when he said that with all his genius Byron had the ideas of a country squire? The poet was a master of the technique of his art; he had rare gifts of passion and imagination; but he lacked breadth, variety, and depth of thought. There is a monotony of theme and of motive in his compositions. Tennyson, on the other hand, exalted his technical skill by the reality and richness of his culture. Nothing which contains and reveals the human spirit was alien to him. He did not casually touch a great range of themes; he studied them patiently, thoroughly, persistently. Religion, philosophy, science, literature, history were his familiar friends; he lived with them, and they so completely confided to him their richest truths that he became their interpreter. So wide were his interests and so varied his studies that he came to be one of those men in whom the deeper currents of an age flow together and from whom the tumult of angry and contending currents issues in a great harmonious tide. No modern man has prepared himself more intelligently for specific excellence by special training, and no man has more splendidly illustrated the necessity of combining the expertness of the skilled workman with the insight, power, and culture of a great personality. A life which issues in an art so beautiful in form and so significant in content reveals both the necessity of constant and general preparation, and the identity of great working power with great spiritual energy.
The Ultimate Aim
Workers of all kinds are divided into two classes by differences of skill and by differences of aim. The artist not only handles his materials in a different way from that which the artisan employs, but he uses them for a different end and in a different spirit. The peculiar spiritual quality of the artist is his supreme concern with the quality of his work and his subordinate interest in the returns of reputation or money which the work brings him. No wise man ought to be indifferent to recognition and to material rewards, because there is a vital relation between honest work and adequate wages of all kinds; a relation as clearly existing in the case of Michael Angelo or of William Shakespeare as in the case of the farmhand or the day labourer. But when the artist plans his work, and while he is putting his life into it day by day, the possible rewards which await him are overshadowed by the supreme necessity of making the work sound, true, adequate, and noble. A man is at his best only when he pours out his vital energy at full tide, without thought or care for anything save complete self-expression.
He who hopes to reach the highest level of activity in work will not aim, therefore, to gain specific ends or to touch external goals of any kind; 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 tissueBravely; 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.
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; and they have learned that in both moods society is the foe of the highest development and of the noblest talent. He who breaks under the scorn or yields to the adulation becomes the creature of those whom he would serve, and so misses his own highest fortune and theirs as well; he who forgets the indifference in steadfast work, and holds to his aims and habits when success knocks at his door, gains the most and the best for himself and for others.
For the highest service which a man can render to his kind is possible only when he secures for himself the largest and noblest development; to stop short of that development is to rob himself and society. Selfishness does not lie in turning a deaf ear to present calls for work and help; it lies in indifference to the ultimate call. Goethe was by no means a man of symmetrical character, and there were reaches of spiritual life which he never traversed; but the charge of selfishness urged against him because he gave himself up completely to the work which he set out to do cannot be sustained. The very noblest service which he could render to the world was to hold himself apart from its multiform activities in order that he might enrich every department of its thought. For life consists not only in the doing of present duties, but in the unfolding of the relations of men to the entire spiritual order of which they are part, and in the enrichment of human experience by insight, interpretation, and the play of the creative faculties. The artist finds his use in the enrichment of life, and his place in the order of service is certainly not less assured and noble than that of the man of action. Such a nature as Dante's does more for men than a host of those who are doing near duties and performing the daily work of the world. Let no man decry the spiritual greatness of these obvious claims and tasks; but on the other hand, let not the man of practical affairs and of what may be called the executive side of ethical activity decry the artists, the thinkers, and the poets.
It is the duty of some men to leave reforms alone, and to give themselves up to study, meditation, and the creative spirit and mood. Of men of practical ability the world stands in little need; of men of spiritual insight, imaginative force, and creative energy it stands in sore need. When such a gift appears it ought to be sacredly guarded. It may be that it has a work to do which demands absolute detachment from the ordinary affairs of society. To assault it with the claims of the hour is to defeat its purpose and rob the future. It must have quiet, leisure, repose. Let it dream for a while in the silence of sweet gardens, within the walls of universities, in the fruitful peace of undisturbed days; for out of such dreams have come "As You Like It," "The Tempest," "In Memoriam," and "The Vision of Sir Launfal." Out of such conditions have come also the work of Darwin, Spencer, Martineau, Maurice, Jowett, and Childs. He who is bent on making a wise use of his abilities may safely be left to choose his own methods and to create his own conditions.
Concentration
When a man has discovered the conditions which are necessary to his most complete development, he will, if he is wise and strong, resolutely preserve these conditions from all disturbing influences and claims. He will not hesitate to disappoint the early and eager expectation of his friends by devoting himself to practice while they are clamorous for work; he will take twenty years for preparation, if necessary, and cheerfully accept indifference and the pangs of being forgotten, if at the end of that time he can do a higher work in a better way. He who takes a long range must expect that his target will be invisible to those who happen to be taking note of him; he will need, therefore, to have a very clear perception of the end he is pursuing, and great persistence in the pursuit of that end.
The alertness and facility of the American temperament are very engaging and useful qualities, but they involve serious perils for those who are bent upon doing the best thing in the best way. The man who can turn his hand readily to many things is likely to do many things well, but to do nothing with commanding force and skill. One may have a fund of energy which needs more than one field to give it adequate play; but he who hopes to achieve genuine distinction in any kind of production must give some particular work the first place in his interest and activity, and must pour his whole soul into the doing of that work. A man may enjoy many diversions by the way, but he must never forget the end of his journey. If he is wise, he will not hasten; he will not miss the sights and sounds and pleasures which give variety to travel and bring rest to the traveller; but he will hold all these things subordinate to the accomplishment of his journey. He will rest for the sake of the strength it will give him; he will turn aside for the enjoyment of the view; he will linger in sweet and silent places to take counsel with his own thoughts; but the staff and wallet will never be laid aside.
There are no men so interesting as those who are quietly and steadfastly following some distant aim which is invisible to others. One recognises them because they seem to be moving silently but surely onward. Skill, insight, and power steadily flow to them; and, apparently without effort, they climb step by step the steep acclivity where influence and fame abide. They are supremely interesting because, through absorption in their work, they are largely free from self-consciousness, and because they bring with them the air and stir of growth and movement. They rarely obtrude their interests or pursuits upon others, but they give the impression of a definiteness of aim which cannot be obscured or blurred, and a concentration of energy which steadily reacts in increase of power. They are not only the heroic workers of the world, but they also set in motion the deeper currents of thought and action; into the atmosphere of a sluggish age they infuse freshness and vitality; they do not drift with majorities, they determine their own courses, and sweep others into the wide circles of influence which issue from them. They are the leaders, organisers, energising spirits of society; they do not copy, but create; they do not accept, but form conditions; they mould life to their purpose, and stamp themselves on materials.
To the making of genuine careers concentration is quite as essential as energy; to achieve the highest success, a man must not only be willing to pour out his vitality without stint or measure, but he must also be willing to give himself. For concentration is, at bottom, entire surrender of one's life to some definite end. In order to focus all one's powers at a single point, there must be abandonment of a wide field of interest and pleasure. One would like to do many things and take into himself many kinds of knowledge, many forms of influence; but if one is to master an art, a craft, or a profession, one must be willing to leave many paths untrod, to build many walls, and to lock many doors. When the boy has learned his lessons he may roam the fields and float on the river at his own sweet will; but so long as he is at the desk he must be deaf to the invitation of sky and woods. When a man has mastered his work he may safely roam the world; but while he is an apprentice let him be deaf and blind to all things that interrupt or divert or dissipate the energies.
Mr. Gladstone's astonishing range of interests and occupations was made possible by his power of concentration. He gave himself completely to the work in hand; all his knowledge, energy, and ability were focussed on that work, so that his whole personality was brought to a point of intense light and heat, as the rays of the sun are brought to a point in a burning-glass. When the power of concentration reaches this stage of development, it liberates a man from dependence upon times, places, and conditions; it makes privacy possible in crowds, and silence accessible in tumults of sound; it withdraws a man so completely from his surroundings that he secures complete isolation as readily as if the magic carpet of the "Arabian Nights" were under him to bear him on the instant into the solitude of lonely deserts or inaccessible mountains. More than this, it enables a man to work with the utmost rapidity, to complete his task in the shortest space of time, and to secure for himself, therefore, the widest margin of time for his own pleasure and recreation.
The marked differences of working power among men are due chiefly to differences in the power of concentration. A retentive and accurate memory is conditioned upon close attention. If one gives entire attention to what is passing before him, he is not likely to forget it or to confuse persons or incidents. The book which one reads with eyes which are continually lifted from the page may furnish entertainment for the moment, but cannot enrich the reader, because it cannot become part of his knowledge.
Attention is the simplest form of concentration, and its value illustrates the supreme importance of that focussing of all the powers upon the thing in hand which may be called the sustained attention of the whole nature.
Here, as everywhere in the field of man's life, there enters that element of sacrifice without which no real achievement is possible. To secure a great end, one must be willing to pay a great price. The exact adjustment of achievement to sacrifice makes us aware, at every step, of the invisible spiritual order with which all men are in contact in every kind of endeavour. If the highest skill could be secured without long and painful effort it would be wasted through ignorance of its value, or misused through lack of education; but a man rarely attains great skill without undergoing a discipline of self-denial and work which gives him steadiness, restraint, and a certain kind of character. The giving up of pleasures which are wholesome, the turning aside from fields which are inviting, the steady refusal of invitations and claims which one would be glad to accept or recognise, invest the power of concentration with moral quality, and throw a searching light on the nature of all genuine success. To do one thing well, a man must be willing to hold all other interests and activities subordinate; to attain the largest freedom, a man must first bear the cross of self-denial.
Relaxation
The ability to relax the tension of work is as important as the power of concentration; for the two processes combine in the doing of the highest kind of work. There are, it is true, great differences between men in capacity for sustained toil. Some men are able to put forth their energy at the highest point of efficiency for a short time only, while the endurance of others seems to be almost without limit. In manual or mechanical work it is mainly a question of physical or nervous resources; in creative work, however relaxation is not a matter of choice; it is a matter of necessity, because it affects the quality of the product. In the alertness of attention, the full activity of every faculty, the glow of the imagination, which accompany the putting forth of the creative power, the whole force of the worker is concentrated and his whole nature is under the highest tension. Everything he holds of knowledge, skill, experience, emotion flows to one point; as waters which have gathered from the surface of a great stretch of country sometimes run together and sweep, in deep, swift current, through a narrow pass. In such moments there is a concentration of thought, imagination, and spiritual energy which fuses all the forces of the worker into one force and directs that force to a single point.
In such a moment there is obviously a closing in of a man's nature from outward influences. The very momentum with which the absorbed worker is urged on in the accomplishment of his design shuts him from those approaches of truth and knowledge which are made only when the mind is at ease. One sees a hundred things in the woods as he saunters through their depths which are invisible as he rushes through on a flying train; and one is conscious of a vast world of sights, sounds, and odours when he sits out of doors at ease, of which he is oblivious when he is absorbed in any kind of task. Now, in order to give work the individuality and freshness of the creative spirit, one must be, at certain times, as open to these manifold influences from without as one must be, at other times, closed against them; the tension of the whole being which is necessary for the highest achievement must be intermitted. The flow of energy must be stopped at intervals in order that the reservoir may have time to fill. In the lower forms of work relaxation is necessary for health; in the higher forms of work it is essential for creativeness.
It is a very superficial view of the nature of man which limits growth to periods of self-conscious activity; a view so superficial that it not only betrays ignorance of the real nature of man's relation to his world, but also of the real nature of work. Activity is not necessarily work; it is often motion without direction, progress, or productiveness; mere waste of energy. In every field of life—religious, intellectual, material—there is an immense amount of activity which is sheer waste of power. Work is energy intelligently put forth; and intelligence in work depends largely upon keeping the whole nature in close and constant relation with all the sources of power. To be always doing something is to be as useless for the higher purposes of growth and influence as to be always idle; one can do nothing with a great show of energy, and one can do much with very little apparent effort. In no field of work is the difference between barren and fruitful activity more evident than in teaching. Every one who has acquaintance with teachers knows the two types: the man who is never at rest, but who pushes through the school day, watch in hand, with gongs sounding, monitors marking, classes marching, recitations beginning and ending with military precision, sharply defined sections in each text-book arbitrarily covered in each period; a mechanic of tireless activity, who never by any chance touches the heart of the subject, opens the mind of the pupil, enriches his imagination, or liberates his personality: and the other type, the real teacher, who is concerned not to sustain a mechanical industry, but to create a dynamic energy; who cares more for truth than for facts, for ability than for dexterity, for skill of the soul than for cunning of the brain; who aims to put his pupil in heart with nature as well as in touch with her phenomena; to disclose the formative spirit in history as well as to convey accurate information; to uncover the depths of human life in literature as well as to set periods of literary development in external order. Such a man may use few methods, and attach small importance to them; the railroad atmosphere of the schedule may be hateful to him in the school-room; but he is the real worker, for he achieves that which his noisier and more bustling colleague misses,—the education of his pupils. He is not content to impart knowledge; he must also impart culture; for without culture knowledge is the barren possession of the intellectual artisan.
Now, culture involves repose, openness of mind, that spiritual hospitality which is possible only when the nature is relaxed and lies fallow like the fields which are set aside in order that they may regain fertility. The higher the worker the deeper the need of relaxation in the large sense. A man must be nourished before he can feed others; must be enriched in his own nature before he can make others rich; must be inspired before he reveal, prophesy, or create in any field. If he makes himself wholly a working power, he isolates himself from the refreshment and re-creative power of the living universe in which he toils; in that isolation he may do many things with feverish haste, but he can do nothing with commanding ability. He narrows his energy to a rivulet by cutting himself off from the hills on which the feeding springs rise and the clouds pour down their richness. The rivulet may be swift, but it can never have depth, volume, or force. The great streams in which the stars shine and on which the sails of commerce whiten and fade are fed by half a continent.
To the man who is bent upon the highest personal efficiency through the most complete self-development a large part of life must be set aside for that relaxation which, by relief from tension and from concentration, puts the worker into relation with the influences and forces that nourish and inspire the spirit. The more one can gain in his passive moods, the more will he have to give in his active moods; for the greater the range of one's thought, the truer one's insight, and the deeper one's force of imagination, the more will one's skill express and convey. A man's life ought to be immensely in excess of his expression, and a man's life has its springs far below the plane of his work. Emerson's work reveals the man, because it contains the man, but the man was fashioned before the work began. The work played no small part in the unfolding of the man's nature, but that which gave the work individuality and authority antedated both poems and essays. These primal qualities had their source in the personality of the thinker and poet, and were developed and refined by long intimacy with nature, by that fruitful quietness and solitude which open the soul to the approach of the deepest truths and most liberating experiences. Emerson knew how to relax, to surrender to the hour and the place, to invite the higher powers by throwing all the doors open; and these receptive hours, when he gave himself into the keeping of the spirit, were the most fertile periods of his life; they enriched and inspired him for the hours of work.
Recreation
There is a radical difference between relaxation and recreation. To relax is to unbend the bow, to diminish the tension, to lie fallow, to open the nature on all sides. Relaxation involves passivity; it is a negative condition so far as activity is concerned, although it is often a positive condition so far as growth is concerned. Recreation, on the other hand, involves activity, but activity along other lines than those of work. Froebel first clearly developed the educational significance and uses of play. Earlier thinkers and writers on education had seen that play is an important element in the unfolding of a child's nature, but Froebel discerned the psychology of play and showed how it may be utilised for educational purposes. His comments on this subject are full of significance: "The plays of the child contain the germ of the whole life that is to follow; for the man develops and manifests himself in play, and reveals the noblest aptitudes and the deepest elements of his being. …The plays of childhood are the germinal leaves of all later life; for the whole man is developed and shown in these, in his tenderest dispositions, in his innermost tendencies." And one of Froebel's most intimate associates suggests another service of play, when he says: "It is like a fresh bath for the human soul when we dare to be children again with children." Play is the prelude to work, and stands in closest relation to it; it is the natural expression of the child's energy, as work is the natural expression of the man's energy. In play and through play the child develops the power that is in him, comes to knowledge of himself, and realises his relation with other children and with the world about him. In the free and unconscious pouring out of his vitality he secures for himself training, education, and growth.
The two instincts which impel the child to play are the craving for activity and the craving for joy. In a healthy child the vital energy rushes out with a fountain-like impetuosity and force; he does not take thought about what he shall do, for it is of very little consequence what he does so long as he is in motion. A boy, with the high spirits of perfect health, is, at times, an irresponsible force. He acts instinctively, not intelligently; and he acts under the pressure of a tremendous vitality, not as the result of design or conviction. The education of play is the more deep and fundamental because it is received in entire unconsciousness; like the landscape which sank into the soul of the boy blowing mimic hootings to the owls on the shore of Winander. The boy who has the supreme good fortune of physical, mental, and moral health often passes the invisible line between play and work without consciousness of the critical transition. In the life of a man so harmonious in nature and so fortunate in condition, work is a normal evolution of play; and the qualities which make play educational and vital give work its tone and temper. Activity and joy are not dissevered in such a normal unfolding of a man's life.
Now, play is as much a need of the man's nature as of the boy's, and if work is to keep its freshness of interest, its spontaneity, and its productiveness, it must retain the characteristics of play; it must have variety, unconsciousness of self, joy. Activity it cannot lose, but joy too often goes out of it. The fatal tendency to deadness, born of routine and repetition, overtakes the worker long before his force is spent, and blights his work by sapping its vitality. Real work always sinks its roots deep in a man's nature, and derives its life from the life of the man; when the vitality of the worker begins to subside, through fatigue, exhaustion of impulse, or loss of interest, the work ceases to be original, vital, and genuine. Whatever impairs the worker's vitality impairs his work. So close is the relation between the life of the artist and the life of his art that the stages of his decline are clearly marked in the record of his work. It is of the highest importance, therefore, that a man keep himself in the most highly vitalised condition for the sake of productiveness.
No one can keep in this condition without the rest which comes from self- forgetfulness and the refreshment which comes from joy; one can never lose the capacity for play without some sacrifice of the capacity for work. The man who never plays may not show any loss of energy, but he inevitably shows loss of power; he may continue to do a certain work with a certain efficiency, but he cannot give it breadth, freshness, spiritual significance. To give one's work these qualities one must withdraw from it at frequent intervals, and suffer the energies to play in other directions; one must not only diminish the tension and lessen the concentration of attention; one must go further and seek other objects of interest and other kinds of activity; and these objects and activities must be sought and pursued freely, joyfully, and in forgetfulness of self. The old delight of the playground must be called back by the man, and must be at the command of the man. The boy's play, in a real sense, creates the man; the man's play re-creates him by re-vitalising him, refreshing him and restoring to him that delight in activity for its own sake which is the evidence of fresh impulse.
This is the true meaning of recreation; it involves that spiritual recuperation and reinforcement which restore a man his original energy of impulse and action. Recreation is, therefore, not a luxury, but a necessity; not an indulgence, but a duty. When a man is out of health physically and neglects to take the precautions or remedies which his condition demands, he becomes, if he has intelligence, a suicide; for he deliberately throws his life away. In like manner, the man who destroys his freshness and force by making himself a slave to work and so transforming what ought to be a joy into a task, commits a grave offence against himself and society. The highest productivity will never be secured until the duty of recreation is set on the same plane with that of work, and the obligation to nourish one's life made as binding as the obligation to spend one's life.
How a man shall secure recreation and in what form he shall take it depends largely upon individual conditions. Mr. Gladstone found recreation not only in tree-cutting but in Homeric studies; Lord Salisbury finds it in chemistry; Washington found it in hunting; Wordsworth in walking; Carlyle in talking and smoking; Mr. Balfour finds it in golf, and Mr. Cleveland in fishing. Any pursuit or occupation which takes a man out of the atmosphere of his work-room and away from his work, gives him different interests, calls into activity different muscles or faculties, brings back the spirit of play, recalls the spontaneous and joyous mood, and re-creates through diversion, variety, and the appeal to another side of the nature. To work long and with cumulative power, one must play often and honestly; that is to say, one must play for the pure joy of it.
Ease of Mood
Ease, it has been said, is the result of forgotten toil; and ease is essential to the man who works continuously and on a large scale. It is fortunate, rather than the reverse, when one's work is not easily done at the start; for early facility is often fatal to real proficiency. The man who does his work without effort at the beginning is tempted to evade the training and discipline which bring ease to the mind and the hand because both have learned the secret of the particular work and mastered the art of doing it with force and freedom. Facility is mere agility; ease comes from the perfect adjustment of the man to his tools, his materials, and his task. The facile man, as a rule, does his work with as little effort at twenty as at fifty; the man of trained skill does his work with increasing comfort and power. The first starts more readily; the second has the greater faculty of growth, and is more likely to become an artist in the end.
It is significant that the most original and capacious minds, like the most powerful bodies, often betray noticeable awkwardness at the start; they need prolonged exercise in order to secure freedom of movement; they must have time for growth. Minds of a certain superficial brilliancy, on the other hand, often mature early because they have so little depth and range. To be awkward in taking hold of one's work is not, therefore, a thing to be regretted; as a rule it is a piece of good fortune.
But awkwardness must finally give place to ease if one is to do many things or great things, and do them well. Balzac wrote many stories before he secured harmony and force of style; but if, as the result of his long apprenticeship, he had failed to secure these qualities, the creation of the "Comedie Humaine" would have been beyond his power. The work was so vast that no man could have accomplished it who had not learned to work rapidly and easily. For ease, when it is the result of toil, evidences the harmonious action of the whole nature; it indicates that mastery which comes to those only who see all the possibilities of the material in hand and readily put all their power into the shaping of it. A great work of art conveys an impression, not of effort, but of force and resource. One is convinced that Shakespeare could have written plays and Rembrandt painted portraits through an indefinite period of time without strain or exhaustion.
Strain and exhaustion are fatal to fine quality of work,—exhaustion, because it deprives work of vitality; and strain, because it robs work of repose, harmony, and charm. It is interesting to note how deeply an audience enjoys ease in a speaker; when he seems to be entirely at home and to have complete command of his resources, his hearers throw off all apprehension, all fear that their sympathies may be drawn upon, and give themselves up to the charm of beautiful or compelling speech. Let a speaker show embarrassment or anxiety, on the other hand, and his hearers instantly share his anxiety. There are speakers, moreover, who give no occasion for any concern about their ability to deal with a subject or an occasion, but whose exertion is so evident that the audience, which is always sensitive to the psychologic condition of a speaker, is wearied and sometimes exhausted. It is one of the characteristics of art that it conceals all trace of toil; and a man's work never takes on the highest qualities until all evidences of labour and exertion are effaced from it. Not many months ago the members of a court of very high standing expressed great pleasure in the prospect of hearing a certain lawyer of eminence on the following morning. These judges were elderly men, who had listened patiently through long years to arguments of all kinds, presented with all degrees of skill. They had doubtless traversed the whole field of jurisprudence many times, and could hardly anticipate any surprises of thought or novelties of argument. And yet these patient and long-suffering jurists were looking forward with delight to the opportunity of hearing another argument on an abstruse question of legal construction! The explanation of their interest was not far to seek. The jurist whose appearance before them was anticipated with so much pleasure is notable in his profession for ease of manner, which is in itself a very great charm. This ease invests his discussions of abstract or obscure questions with a grace and finish which are within the command of the artist only; and the artist is always fresh, delightful, and captivating. Mr. Gladstone's friends recall as one of his captivating qualities the ease with which he seemed to do his work. He was never in haste; he always conveyed the impression of having ample time for his varied and important tasks. If he had felt the spur of haste he would have lost his power of winning through that delightful old-fashioned courtesy which none could resist; if in his talks, his books, or his speeches there had been evidences of strain, he would not have kept to the end an influence which was due in no small measure to the impression of reserve power which he always conveyed.
Ease of mood is essential to long-sustained working-power. The anxious man loses force, and the laborious man time, which cannot be spared from the greater tasks. Wellington used to say that a successful commander must do nothing which he could get other men to do; he must delegate all lesser tasks and relieve himself of all care of details, in order that he might concentrate his full force on the matter in hand. It is said that the most daring and compelling men are invariably cool and quiet in manner. Such men lose nothing by friction or waste of energy; they work with the ease which is born of toil.
Sharing the Race-Fortune
The development of one's personality cannot be accomplished in isolation or solitude; the process involves close and enduring association with one's fellows. If work were purely a matter of mechanical skill, each worker might have his cell and perform his task, as in a prison. But work involves the entire personality, and the personality finds its complete unfolding, not in detachment, but in association. Talent, says Goethe, thrives in solitude, but character grows in the stream of the world. It is a twofold discovery which a man must make before the highest kind of success lies within his grasp: the discovery of his own individual gift, force, or aptitude, and the discovery of his place in society. If it were possible to secure complete development of one's power in isolation, the product would be, not the full energy of a man expressing itself through a congenial activity, but a detached skill exercised automatically and apart from a personality.
In order to stand erect on his feet, in true and fruitful relations with the world about him, a man must join hands with his fellows. For a very large part of his education must come from his contact with the race. Since men began to live and to learn the lessons of life, each generation has added something to that vital knowledge of the art of living which is the very soul of culture, and something to the constructive and positive product of this vital knowledge wrought out into institutions, organisations, science, art, and religion. This inheritance of culture and achievement is the richest possession into which the individual member of the race is born, and he cannot take possession of his share of the race- fortune unless he becomes one of the race family. This race-fortune is the product of the colossal work of the race through its entire history; it represents the slow and painful toil and saving of countless multitudes of men and women. It is a wealth beside which all purely monetary forms of riches are fleeting and secondary; it is the enduring spiritual endowment of the race secured by the incalculable toil of all past generations.
Now, no man can secure his share in this race-fortune until he joins the ranks of the workers and takes his place in the field, the shop, the factory, the study, or theatelier. The idle man is always a detached man, and is, therefore, excluded from the privileges of heirship. To get the beauty of any kind of art one must train himself to see, to understand, and to enjoy; for art is a sealed book to the ignorant. To secure the largeness of view which comes from a knowledge of many cities and races, one must travel with a mind already prepared by prolonged study. The approach to every science is guarded by doors which open only to the hand which has been made strong by patient and persistent exercise. Every department of knowledge is barred and locked against the ignorant; nothing which represents achievement, thought, knowledge, skill, beauty, is within reach of the idle. Society has secured nothing which endures save as the result of persistent and self-denying work; and nothing which it has created can be understood, nothing which it has accumulated can be appropriated, without kindred self-denial and toil. It is evident, therefore, that the material for the education of the individual cannot be secured save by intimate fellowship with the race. This fellowship must rest also in present relations; for while man may get much that is of vast importance by contact with the working race of the past, he cannot get either the richest material or put himself under the deepest educational process without making himself one with the working race of to-day. The race-fortune, unlike other fortunes, does not increase by its own productive powers; it grows only as it is employed by those who inherit it. Investments of capital often lose their vitality; they still represent a definite sum of money, but they make no returns of interest. In like manner the accumulations of the race become dead unless they are constantly vitalised by effective use. The richest material for culture is valueless unless it is so employed as continually to renew the temper of culture in those who possess it. The richest results of past toil, genius, and life are without significance in the hands of the ignorant; and it has happened more than once that the pearls of past civilisation have been trampled into the mire by the feet of swine.
The architectural remains of the older Rome were ruthlessly destroyed in the years before the Renaissance and put to menial use as mere building material. They had reverted to the condition and value of crude stone, because no one perceived their higher values.
There is, unfortunately, another kind of ignorance, not quite so dense as that which does not recognise beauty of form or value of historical association, but not less destructive; there is that ignorance of the spiritual force behind the form which makes a fetish of the form, and so misses the interior wealth which it contains. There has spread among men and women of thedilettantetemper the belief that to know the results and products of the past simply as curios and relics is to share the culture which these things of beauty and skill embody and preserve; and this false idea has helped to spread abroad the feeling that culture is accomplishment rather than force, and that it is for the idle rather than for the active and creative. There never was a more radical misconception of a fundamental process, for culture in the true sense involves, as a process, the highest and truest development of a race, and, as a product, the most enduring spiritual expression of race genius and experience. The culture of the Greeks was the highest form of their vital force; and the product of that culture was not only their imperishable art, but their political, social, and religious organisation and ideals. Their deepest life went into their culture, and the most enduring fruits of that culture are also the most significant expressions of their life.
To get at the sources of power in Shakespeare's plays, one must not only understand the secrets of their structure as works of art, but one must also discern their value as human documents; one must pass through them into the passion, the suffering, the toil of the race. No one can get to the heart of those plays without getting very near to the heart of his race; and no one can secure the fruits of culture from their study until he has come to see, with Shakespeare, that the unrecorded life-experience of the race is more beautiful, more tragic, and more absorbing than all the transcriptions of that experience made by men of genius. In other words, the ultimate result of a true study of Shakespeare is such an opening of the mind and such a quickening of the imagination that the student sees on all sides, in the lives of those about him, the stuff of which the drama is made. Not to the idle, but to the workers, does Shakespeare reveal himself.