Essays on Work and Culture

Chapter XVII
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.

Chapter XVIII
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.

Chapter XIX
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.