Essays On Work And Culture

Essays On Work And Culture

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Mabie #2 in our series by Hamilton Wright Mabie
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Title: Essays On Work And Culture
Author: Hamilton Wright Mabie
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ESSAYS ON WORK AND CULTURE
BY
HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE

To Henry Van Dyke
"Along the slender wires of speech Some message from the heart is
sent; But who can tell the whole that's meant? Our dearest thoughts are
out of reach."

CONTENTS
I. Tool or Man? II. The Man in the Work III. Work as Self-Expression
IV. The Pain of Youth V. The Year of Wandering VI. The Ultimate
Test VII. Liberation VIII. The Larger Education IX. Fellowship X.
Work and Pessimism XI. The Educational Attitude XII. Special
Training XIII. General Training XIV. The Ultimate Aim XV. Securing
Right Conditions XVI. Concentration XVII. Relaxation XVIII.
Recreation XIX. Ease of Mood XX. Sharing the Race-Fortune XXI.
The Imagination in Work XXII. The Play of the Imagination XXIII.
Character XXIV. Freedom from Self-Consciousness XXV.
Consummation

Work and Culture

Chapter I

Tool or Man?
A complete man is so uncommon that when he appears he is looked
upon with suspicion, as if there must be something wrong about him. If
a man is content to deal vigorously with affairs, and leave art, religion,
and science to the enjoyment or refreshment or enlightenment of others,
he is accepted as strong, sounds and wise; but let him add to practical
sagacity a love of poetry and some skill in the practice of it; let him be
not only honest and trustworthy, but genuinely religious; let him be not
only keenly observant and exact in his estimate of trade influences and
movements, but devoted to the study of some science, and there goes
abroad the impression that he is superficial. It is written, apparently, in
the modern, and especially in the American, consciousness, that a man
can do but one thing well; if he attempts more than one thing, he
betrays the weakness of versatility. If this view of life is sound, man is
born to imperfect development and must not struggle with fate. He may
have natural aptitudes of many kinds; he may have a passionate desire
to try three or four different instruments; he may have a force of vitality
which is equal to the demands of several vocations or avocations; but
he must disregard the most powerful impulses of his nature; he must
select one tool, and with that tool he must do all the work appointed to
him.
If he is a man of business, he must turn a deaf ear to the voices of art; if
he writes prose, he must not permit himself the delight of writing verse;
if he uses the pen, he must not use the voice. If he ventures to employ
two languages for his thought, to pour his energy into two channels, the
awful judgment of superficiality falls on him like a decree of fate.
So fixed has become the habit of confusing the use of manifold gifts
with mere dexterity that men of quality and power often question the
promptings which impel them to use different or diverse forms of
expression; as if a man were born to use only one limb and enjoy only
one resource in this many-sided universe!
Specialisation has been carried so far that it has become an organised
tyranny through the curiously perverted view of life which it has
developed in some minds. A man is permitted, in these days, to

cultivate one faculty or master one field of knowledge,