The Imagination in Work
The uses of the imagination are so little understood by the great majority of men, both trained and untrained, that it is practically ignored not only in the conduct of life, but of education. It receives some incidental development as a result of educational processes, but the effort to reach and affect it as the faculties of observation, of reasoning, and of memory are made specific objects of training and unfolding, is rarely made. It is relegated to the service of the poets and painters if it is recognised at all; and so far as they are concerned it is assumed that they will find their own way of educating this elusive faculty. As for other men, dealing with life from the executive or practical sides, it is taken for granted that if they have imagination they can find no proper use for it. Individual teachers have often understood the place and function of the imagination, and have sought to liberate and enrich it by intelligently planned study; but the schools of most, if not of all, times have treated it as a wayward and disorderly gift, not amenable to discipline and training, and of very doubtful value. There has always been, in every highly civilised society, a good deal that has appealed to this divinest of all the gifts with which men have been endowed; there have been periods in which the imagination has been stirred to its depths by the force of human energy and the play and splendour of human experience and achievement; but there has never yet been adequate recognition of its place in the life of the individual and of society, nor intelligent provision for its education. The movements of thought along educational lines in recent years show, however, a slow but steady drift toward a clearer conception of what the imagination may do for men, and of what education may do for the imagination.
So long as the uses of the imagination in creative work are so little comprehended by the great majority of men, it can hardly be expected that its practical uses will be understood. There is a general if somewhat vague recognition of the force and beauty of its achievements as illustrated in the work of Dante, Raphael, Rembrandt, and Wagner; but very few people perceive the play of this supreme architectural and structural faculty in the great works of engineering, or in the sublime guesses at truth which science sometimes makes when she comes to the end of the solid road of fact along which she has travelled. The scientist, the engineer, the constructive man in every department of work, use the imagination quite as much as the artist; for the imagination is not a decorator and embellisher, as so many appear to think; it is a creator and constructor. Wherever work is done on great lines or life is lived in fields of constant fertility, the imagination is always the central and shaping power. Burke lifted statesmanship to a lofty plane by the use of it; Edison, Tesla, and Roebling in their various ways have shown its magical quality; and more than one man of fortune owes his success more to his imagination than to that practical sagacity which is commonly supposed to be the conjurer which turns all baser metals into gold.
That splendour of the spirit which shines in the great art of the world shines also in all lesser work that is genuine and sincere; for the higher genius of man, which is the heritage of all who make themselves ready to receive it, is present in all places where honest men work, and moulds all materials which honest men handle. Indeed the most convincing evidence of the activity of this supreme faculty is to be found, not in the works of men of exceptional gift, but in the work of the obscure and undistinguished. It is impossible to energise the imagination among the workers without energising it among the artists; and artists never appear in great numbers unless there is in the common work of common men a touch of vitality and freshness. A real movement of the imagination is never confined to a class; it is always shared by the community. It does not come in like a group of unrelated rivulets fed by separate fountains; it comes like a tide, slowly or swiftly rising until it enfolds a wide reach of territory. The presence of a true art spirit shows itself not so conclusively in a few noble works as in the touch of originality and beauty on common articles in common use; on furniture, and domestic pottery, and in the love of flowers.
The genius of a race works from below upward, as the seed sends its shoot out of the hidden place where it is buried; and when it becomes luminous in books, painting, and architecture, it grows also in out-of-the-way places and in things of humble use. The instinct for beauty, which is more pronounced and fruitful among the Japanese than among any other modern people, shows itself most convincingly in the originality, variety, and charm of the shapes which household pottery takes on, and in the quiet but deep enjoyment of the blossoming apple or cherry, the blooming vine or the fragrant rose. It is the presence of beauty diffused through the life of a people in habit, taste, pleasure, and daily use which makes the concentration of beauty in great and enduring works not only possible but inevitable; for if a people really care for beauty they will never lack artists to give enduring expression to that craving which, among men of lesser gift, shows itself in a constant endeavour to bring material surroundings into harmony with spiritual aspirations.
This play of the imagination over the whole landscape of life gives it perennial charm, because it perpetually re-forms and re-arranges it; and the free movement of the imagination in all occupations and tasks not only makes work a delight, but gives it a significance and adequacy, which make it the fit expression, not of a mere skill, but of an immortal spirit. The work from which this quality is absent may be honest and sincere, but it cannot be liberalising, joyful, and contagious; it cannot give the nature free play; it cannot express the man. Patience, persistence, fidelity are fundamental but not creative qualities; the true worker must possess and practise them; but he must go far beyond them if he is to put himself into his work, and bring his work into harmony with those spiritual conditions and aims which are the invisible but final standards and patterns of all works and tasks.
One may always get out of hard work the satisfaction which comes from the consciousness of an honest endeavour to do an honest piece of work; but the work which inspires rather than exhausts, and the doing of which gives the hand more freedom and power for the next tasks must be penetrated, suffused, and shaped by the imagination. The great lawyer, physician, electrician, teacher, and builder must give his work largeness, completeness, and nobility of structure by the use of the imagination in as real and true a sense as the great poet or painter. Without it all work is hard, detached, mechanical; with it all work is vital, co-ordinated, original. It must shape, illumine, and adorn; it must build the house, light the lamp within its walls, and impart to it that touch of beauty which invests wood and stone with the lightness, the grace, and the loveliness of spirit itself. We begin with the imagination; it holds its light over the play of childhood; it is the master of the revels, the enchantments, and the dreams of youth; it must be also the inspiration of all toil and the shaping genius of all work.
The Play of the Imagination
It is interesting to study the personality of a man whose work is invested with freshness, charm, and individuality, because such a study invariably makes us aware of that subtle and elusive skill in the use of all materials which is not technical but vital. That skill is impossible without special training, but it is not the product of training; it is not dexterity; it is not facility; it has the ease and grace of a harmonious expression of all that is distinctive and original in the man. No one thinks of technical skill in that moment of revelation which comes when one stands for the first time in the presence of a noble work; later one may study at length and with delight the perfection of workmanship disclosed in solidity of structure and in harmony of detail; but in the moment of revelation it is the essential and interior truth and beauty, which shine from form and colour and texture as the soul shines in a human face, which evoke a thrill of recognition in us.
Now, this higher skill which dominates and subordinates the technical skill, this skill of the spirit which commands and uses the skill of the body, is born in the soul of the worker and is the ultimate evidence and fruit of his mastership. It is conditioned on the free play of the imagination through all the material which the worker uses. It involves that fusion of knowledge, intelligence, facility, and insight which can be effected only by the constant use of the imagination. In statesmanship Burke and Webster are examples of this highest type of worker; men who not only command the facts with which they are called upon to deal, but who so organise and vitalise those facts that, in their final presentation, they possess the force of irresistible argument, and are illumined and clothed with perennial beauty as works of art. In like manner, in the pulpit, Chrysostom, Fenelon, Newman, and Brooks not only set religious truth in impressive order, but gave it the appealing power of a noble and enduring beauty.
It is impossible to do a great piece of work unless one can form an image of it in advance, unless one can see it as it will finally appear. If one were limited in vision to the detail actually in hand, the whole would never be completed; that which makes the perfection of the whole possible is the ability of the worker to keep that whole before him while he deals with the detached parts. Without that power the worker is a mechanical drudge, whose work has no quality save that of dogged fidelity to the task. Now, this power of keeping the whole before the mind while dealing with the parts, of seeing the completed machine while shaping a pin or a cog, of getting the complete effect of the argument while elaborating a minor point, resides in the imagination. It is the light which must shine upon all toil that has in it intelligence, prevision, and freshness; and its glow is as essential in mechanical as in purely artistic work. Whenever, in any kind of work dealing with any kind of material, there is any constructive quality, any fitting of part with part, any adjustment of means to ends, there must be imagination.
Work which is done without imagination is so rudimentary that, at the best, its highest use is to save some one else a little drudgery. This elementary kind of work is often done by those students of literature who confuse the study of grammatical construction with style, and those students of the Bible who think they are illustrating the truths of religion by purely textual study. Theology has suffered many things at the hands of those who have attempted to explain the divine mysteries without the light which alone penetrates these mysteries. To do the commonest work with sincerity and force; to understand the simplest character; to perform the simplest services of friendship; to enter into another's trial and to give the balm of sympathy to one who is smitten and bruised; to conduct a campaign by foreseeing the movements of an adversary, or to carry on successfully a great enterprise by forecasting its probable development; to make any invention or discovery; to be a really great preacher, physician, lawyer, teacher, mechanic;—to do any of these things one must have and one must use the imagination.
The charm with which the imagination invests childhood is due to its habitual and unconscious use by children, and is suggestive of the methods by which this faculty may be made the inspirer of all tasks and toil. The child makes vivid images of the ideas which appeal to it; it gives reality to those ideas by identifying them with the objective world; it clothes all things with which it plays with life. In his autobiography Goethe describes the door in the wall of a certain garden in Frankfort within which many marvellous things happened; a true romance of incident and adventure which became as real to the romancer as to his eager and credulous listeners. De Quincey created an imaginary kingdom, peopled with imaginary beings whom he ruled with benignant wisdom, amid universal prosperity and peace, until, in an unlucky hour, he admitted his brother into a partnership of authority; and that brother, unable to withstand the temptation of absolute power, became a remorseless tyrant. And De Quincey feelingly describes the reality of his anguish when, to protect his innocent subjects from a tyrant's rapacity, he was compelled to destroy his imaginary kingdom. The imaginative boy turns a vacant lot into an African jungle, and hunts wild beasts in constant peril of his life; the imaginative girl carries on social intercourse with her dolls as seriously as with her most intimate playmates. Everything is real and alive to a child, and the world of ideas has as much substance as the world of matter.
These characteristics of a child in its play throw clear light on the true methods of the man in his work; for the play of childhood is prophetic of the work of maturity; it is the prelude in which all the great motives are distinctly audible. The man who gives his work completeness and charm must conceive of that work, not as a detached and isolated activity, but as part of the great order of life; a product of the vital forces as truly as the flower which has its roots in the earth. To the growth of the flower everything contributes; it is not limited to the tiny plot in which it is planted: the vast chemistry of nature in soil, atmosphere, and sky nourish it. In like manner a man must habitually think of his work, not as a mere putting forth of his technical skill, but as the vital product of all the forces which sustain him. A real poem grows out of all that is deepest in a man's nature; to its making in spiritual conception, structure, form, and style his body, his mind, and his soul contribute; its metre adjusting itself to his breathing, its ideas taking direction and significance from his thought, and its elusive suggestiveness and beauty conveying something of his mysterious personality. A true sermon is never what is sometimes called a pulpit effort; it is always the product of the preacher's experience; he does not and cannot make it; it must grow within him. A great oration has the same vital relationship with the orator, the occasion, the theme, and human experience. It is never a bit of detached brilliancy; it is always, like Lincoln's address at Gettysburg, the summing up and expression of a vast and deep movement of the human spirit. In its form it reveals the man who makes it; in its content it is seen to be inevitable. It lies in the consciousness of a race before it rises into the consciousness of the orator and takes flight on the wings of immortal speech.
To think habitually of one's work as a growth and not a thing made out of hand, as a product of all the forces of one's nature and not a bit of skill, as alive in the sense in which all things are alive in which spirit and life express themselves,—to conceive of one's work in this large and vital way is to keep the imagination playing through and inspiring it.
Character
Superiority of any kind involves discipline, self-denial, and self- sacrifice. It is the law of excellence that he who would secure it must pay for it. In this way the intellectual process is bound up with the moral process, and a man must give his character firmness and fibre before he can make his talent effective or his genius fruitful. The way of the most gifted workman is no easier than that of the most mediocre; he learns his lesson more easily, but he must learn the same lesson. The familiar story of the Sleeping Princess protected by a hedge of thorns, told in so many languages, is a parable of all success of a high order. The highest prizes are always guarded from the facile hand; they exact patience, persistence, intelligence, and force. If they were easily secured they would be easily misused; it rarely happens, however, that a man of high artistic gifts degrades his talent. He may set it to unprofitable uses, but he rarely makes merchandise of it. A Rembrandt, Thackeray, or Lowell cannot do inferior work for personal ends without suffering that devouring remorse which accompanies the conscience of the artist, and turns all ignoble popular successes into mockeries and scourges.
Moral education precedes mastership in every art, because the training which mastery involves reacts upon character and gives it steadiness and solidity. Great writers have sometimes lived careless, irresponsible lives, but they have always paid a great price for self-indulgence. The work of an irresponsible man of genius always suggests the loss which society has suffered by reason of his moral instability. Such men have done charming work; they have touched their creations with the magic of natural grace and the beauty of fresh and rich feeling; but they miss that completeness and finality which carry with them the conviction that the man has put forth all that was in him. We value what they have done, but we are always asking whether they could not have done more. Genius is of so rare and vital a nature that it will flash through all manner of obscurations, but there is a vast difference between the light which shines through a clear medium and that which is dimmed and reflected by a murky atmosphere. A man of Chatterton's temperament will give evidence of the possession of genius, but how far removed he is, in influence, position, and power, from a Tennyson or a Wordsworth!
The connection between sane living and sound work is a physiological and psychological necessity. The time, strength, poise, capacity for sustained work, steadiness of will, involved in the successful performance of great tasks or the production of great artistic creations exclude from the race all save those who bring to it health, vigour, and energy. It is unnecessary to inquire with regard to the habits of the man who builds up a great business enterprise or who secures genuine financial reputation and authority; these achievements always involve self-control, courage, persistence, and moral vigour. They are beyond the reach of the self- indulgent man. The man whose weakness of will makes him the victim of appetite or passion may make brilliant efforts, but he is incapable of sustained effort; he may do beautiful things from time to time, he cannot do beautiful things continuously and on a large scale. A Villon may give the world a few songs of notable sweetness or power; he cannot give the world a Divine Comedy or the plays of Corneille.
Every attempt to dissever art from character, however brilliantly sustained, is doomed to failure because the instinct, the intelligence, and the experience of the race are against it. Physiology and psychology are as definite as religion in their declarations on this matter; it is not a question of dogma or even of faith; it is a question of elementary laws and of common sense. All modern investigation goes to show the subtle and vital relations which exist between the different parts of a man's nature, and the certainty of the reaction of one part upon another; so that whatever touches the body ultimately touches the innermost nature of the man, and whatever affects the spirit eventually leaves its record on the physique. Every piece of genuine work which comes from a man's hand bears the impress of and is stamped with the quality of his whole being; it is the complex product of all that the man is and of all that be has done; it is the result of his genius, his industry, and his character.
Goethe saw clearly, as every critic of insight must see, that the artist is conditioned on the man; that whenever a man does anything which has greatness in it he does it with his whole nature. Into his verse the poet puts his body, his mind, and his soul; he is as powerless to detach his work from his past as he is to detach himself from it; and one of the saddest penalties of his misdoings is their survival in his work. The dulness of the poet's ear shows itself in the defective melody of his verse; for both metre and rhythm have a physiological basis; they represent and express the harmony which is in the body when the body is finely attuned to the spirit. Dull senses and a sluggish body are never found in connection with a great command of the melodic quality in language.
Goethe, with his deep insight, held so uncompromisingly to the unity of man and his works, that he would not have tried to escape the criticism of his nature which his works, adequately interpreted, suggest. He would have expected to find his moral limitations reproduced in his art. He indicated the fundamental principle when he said that his works, taken together, constituted one great confession. And this may be affirmed of every man's work; it is inevitably, and by the law of his nature, a disclosure of what he is, and what he is depends largely upon what he has been. Men have nowhere more conspicuously failed to escape themselves than in their works. Literary history, especially, is a practically unused treasure- house of moral illustration and teaching; for in no other record of human activity is the dependence of a man's work on his nature more constantly and strikingly brought out. The subtle relation between temperament, genius, environment, and character is in constant evidence to the student of literature; and he learns at last the primary truth that because a man's work is a revelation of the man, it is, therefore, as much a matter of his character as of his genius. The order of the world is moral in every fibre; men may do what they please within certain limits, and because they do what they please society seems to be in a state of moral chaos; but every word and deed reacts instantly on the man, and this reaction is so inevitable that since time began not one violator of any law of life has ever escaped the penalty. He has paid the price of his word or his deed on the instant in its reaction upon his character. God does not punish men; they punish themselves in their own natures and in the work of their hands. When Mirabeau, in the consciousness of the possession of the most masterful genius of his time, rose to speak in the States General, he became aware that his dissolute past was standing beside him and mocking him. His vast power, honestly put forth for great ends, was neutralised by a record which made belief in him almost impossible. In bitterness of soul he learned that genius and character are bound together by indissoluble ties, and that genius without character is like oil that blazes up and dies down about a shattered lamp. More than once, in words full of the deepest pathos, he recognised the immense value of character in men of far less ability than himself. The words which Mrs. Ward puts into the mouth of Henri Regnault are memorable as embodying searching criticism: "No, we don't lack brains, we French. All the same, I tell you, in the whole of that room there are about half-a-dozen people,— oh, not so many!—not nearly so many!—who will ever make a mark, even for their own generation, who will ever strike anything out of nature that is worth having—wrestle with her to any purpose. Why? Because they have every sort of capacity—every sort of cleverness—and nocharacter!"
If a man is insensibly determining the quality of his work by everything which he is doing; if he is fixing the excellence of its workmanship by the standards he is accepting and the habits he is forming; if he is creating in advance its spiritual content and significance by the quality which his own nature is unconsciously taking on; and if he is determining its quantity and force by the strength, persistence, and steadfastness which he is developing, it is clear that work rests ultimately upon character, and that character conditions work in quality, content, skill, and mass.
Freedom from Self-Consciousness
The sublime paradox of the spiritual life is repeated in all true development of personal gift and power. In order to find his life a man must first lose it; in order to keep his soul a man must first give it. The beginning of all education is self-conscious; at the start every effect must be calculated, every skill, method, or dexterity carefully studied. Training involves a rigid account of oneself based on searching self-knowledge. To become an effective speaker one must know his defects of bearing, gesture, voice; one must bring his whole personality into clear light, and study it as if it were an external thing; one must become intensely self-conscious. The initiation to every art is through this door of rigid scrutiny of self and entire surrender of self to the discipline of minute study and exacting practice. The pianist knows the artistic value of every note, and strikes each note with carefully calculated effect. The artist gives himself up to a patient study of details, and is content with the monotony of laborious imitation; subjecting every element of material and manner to the most thorough analysis.
The first stage in the education of the true worker is self-conscious; the final stage is self-forgetful. No man can enter the final stage without passing through the initial stage; no man can enter the final stage without leaving the initial stage behind him. One must first develop intense self-consciousness, and then one must be able to forget and obliterate himself. One must first accept the most exacting discipline of the school, and then one must forget that schools exist. The apprentice is the servant of detail; the master is the servant of the idea: the first accepts methods as if they were the finalities of art; the second uses them as mere instruments. Tennyson's attention was once called to certain very subtle vowel effects in one of his later poems; he promptly said that he had not thought of them. That was undoubtedly true, for he had become a master; but there was a time, in his days of apprenticeship, when he had studied the musical qualities and resources of words with the most searching intelligence. The transition from apprenticeship to mastery is accomplished when a man passes through self-consciousness into self- forgetfulness, when his knowledge and skill become so much a part of himself that they become instinctive. When the artist has gained, through calculation, study, and, practice, complete command of himself and his materials, he subordinates skill to insight, and makes his art the unconscious expression of his deepest nature. When this stage is reached the artist can pour his whole soul into his work almost instinctively; his skill and methods have become so completely a part of himself that he can use them almost without being conscious of them.
This ability to transform skill into character, to make instinct do the work of intelligence, to pass from intense self-consciousness into self- forgetfulness, is the supreme test to which every artist must subject himself let him sustain this test and his place is secure. To find one's life in the deepest sense, to bring out and express one's personality, a man must lose that life; that is to say, he must have the power of entire self-surrender. When the inspiration comes, as it does come to all creative spirits, a man must be able to surrender himself to it completely. When the hour of vision arrives the prophet has no time or thought to waste on himself; if he is to speak, he must listen with intense and utter stillness of soul.
In the degree in which a man masters his art does he attain unconsciousness of self. Great artists have sometimes been great egotists, but not in their greatest hours or works. And in so far as their egotism has touched their art it has invariably limited its range or diminished its depth and power; for in those moments in which the vision is clearest a man is always lifted above himself. He escapes for the moment the limitations which ordinarily encircle him as the horizon encircles the sea.
That which is true of the master worker, the artist, is true of all lesser workers: the highest efficiency is conditioned on the ability to forget oneself. Self-consciousness is the most serious and painful limitation of many men and women of genuine capacity and power. It rests like a heavy load on shoulders which ought to be free; it is an impediment of speech when speech ought to have entire spontaneity, and freedom. This intense consciousness of self, although always revealing a certain amount of egoism, is often devoid of egotism; it is, in many cases, a sign of diffidence and essential modesty. It is the burden and limitation of those especially who have high aims and standards, but who distrust their own ability to do well the things they are eager to do. To be self-conscious is to waste a great deal of force which ought to go into work; it is to put into introspection the vitality which ought to issue in some form of expression. The speaker is never in full command of his theme or his audience until he has gotten rid of himself; so long as he has to deal with himself he cannot wholly surrender himself to his theme nor to his audience. He is hampered, troubled, and anxious when he ought to be free, calm, and unconcerned. There is but one remedy for self-consciousness, and that is absorption in one's work. There must first be not only thorough preparation for the task in hand but thorough training of the whole nature; for every weak place in a man's education for his work is a point of self-consciousness. No man of conscience can do easily and instinctively that which he knows he cannot do well. The worker must have, therefore, the serenity which comes from confidence in the adequacy of his preparation. A man can even fail with a clear conscience, if he has taken every precaution against the possibility of failure. Adequate training being assumed, a man must cultivate the habit of self-surrender. This is sometimes difficult, but it is rarely, if ever, impossible.
To take a further illustration from the experience of the speaker, who is, perhaps, as often as any other kind of worker, burdened and limited at the start by self-consciousness: it is entirely possible to lose consciousness of self for the time in the theme or the occasion. Assuming that the preparatory work has been thorough, a man can train himself to fasten his thought entirely on his subject and his opportunity. If his theme is a worthy one and he has given adequate thought or research to it, he can learn to forget himself and his audience in complete surrender to it. Companionship with truth invests a man with a dignity which ought to give him poise and serenity; which will give him calmness and effectiveness if he regards himself as its servant and messenger. An ambassador is held in great honour because of the power which he represents; a man who is dealing in any way with truth or beauty has a right to repose in the greatness and charm of that for which he stands. This transference of interest from the outcome of a personal effort to the sharing of a vision or the conveyance of a power has often made the stammerer eloquent and the timid spirit heroically indifferent to self. The true refuge of the artist is absorption in his art; the true refuge of the self-conscious worker is complete surrender to the dignity and interest of his work.
Consummation
If the conception of man's relation to the world set forth in these chapters is sound, work is the chief instrumentality in the education of the human spirit; for it involves both self-realisation and the adjustment of self to the order of life. Through effort a man brings to light all that is in him, and by effort he finds his place in the universal order. Work is his great spiritual opportunity, and the more completely he expresses himself through it the finer the product and the greater the worker. There is an essential unity between all kinds of work, as there is an essential continuity in the life of the race. The rudest implements of the earliest men and the divinest creations of the greatest artists are parts of the unbroken effort of humanity to bring into clear consciousness all that is in it, and all that is involved in its relationship with the universe. The spiritual history of the race is written in the blurred and indistinct record of human energy and creativeness, made by the hands of all races, in all times, in every kind of material. Work has emancipated, educated, developed, and interpreted the human spirit; it has made man acquainted with himself; it has set him in harmony with nature; and it has created that permanent capital of force, self-control, character, moral power, and educational influence which we call civilisation.
Work has been, therefore, not only the supreme spiritual opportunity, but the highest spiritual privilege and one of the deepest sources of joy. It has been an expression not only of human energy but of the creativeness of the human spirit. By their works men have not only built homes for themselves in this vast universe, but they have co-operated with the divine creativeness in the control of force, the modification of conditions, the fertilisation of the earth, the fashioning of new forms.
In his work man has found God, both by the revelation of what is in his own spirit and by the discovery of those forces and laws with which every created thing must be brought into harmony. The divine element in humanity has revealed itself in that instinct for creativeness which is always striving for expression in the work of humanity; that instinct which blindly pushes its way through rudimentary stages of effort to the possession of skill; slowly transforming itself meanwhile into intelligence, and flowering at last in the Parthenon, the Cathedral at Amiens, the Book of Job, Faust, Hamlet, the Divine Comedy, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, Wagner's Parsifal, Rembrandt's portraits. This ascent of the spirit of man out of the mysterious depths of its own consciousness to these sublime heights of achievement is the true history of the race; the history which silently unfolds itself through and behind events, and makes events comprehensible. In the sweat of his brow man has protected and fed himself; but this has been but the beginning of that continuous miracle which has not only turned deserts into gardens and water into wine, but has transformed the uncouth rock into images of immortal beauty, and the worker from the servant of natural conditions and forces into their master. Men still work, as their fathers did before them, for shelter and bread; but the spiritual products of work have long since dwarfed its material returns. A man must still work or starve in any well-ordered society; but the products of work to-day are ease, travel, society, art,— in a word, culture. In that free unfolding of all that is in man and that ripening of knowledge, taste, and character, which are summed up in culture, work finds its true interpretation. A man puts himself into his work in order that he may pass through an apprenticeship of servitude and crudity into the freedom of creative power. He discovers, liberates, harmonises, and enriches himself. Through work he accomplishes his destiny; for one of the great ends of his life is attained only when he makes himself skilful and creative, masters the secrets of his craft and pours his spiritual energy like a great tide into his work. The master worker learns that the secret of happiness is the opportunity and the ability to express nobly whatever is deepest in his personality, and that supreme good fortune comes to him who can lose himself in some generous and adequate task.
The last word, however, is not task but opportunity; for work, like all forms of education, prophesies the larger uses of energy, experience, and power which are to come when training and discipline have accomplished their ends and borne their fruit.