For there is perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in Work, were
he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always
hope in a man that actually and earnestly works: in Idleness alone is
there perpetual despair. Work, never so Mammonish, mean, _is_ in
communication with Nature; the real desire to get Work done will
itself lead one more and more to truth, to Nature's appointments and
regulations, which are truth.
The latest Gospel in this world is, Know thy work and do it. "Know
thyself": long enough has that poor "self" of thine tormented thee;
thou wilt never get to "know" it, I believe! Think it not thy
business, this of knowing thyself; thou art an unknowable individual:
know what thou canst work at; and work at it like a Hercules! That
will be thy better plan.
It has been written, "An endless significance lies in Work"; a man
perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away, fair
seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities; and withal the man
himself first ceases to be jungle and foul unwholesome desert thereby.
Consider how even in the meanest sorts of Labor, the whole soul of a
man is composed into a kind of real harmony the instant he sets
himself to work! Doubt, Desire, Sorrow, Remorse, Indignation, Despair
itself, all these like hell-dogs lie beleaguering the soul of the poor
day-worker, as of every man: but he bends himself with free valor
against his task, and all these are stilled, all these shrink
murmuring far off into their caves. The man is now a man. The blessed
glow of Labor in him, is it not as purifying fire, wherein all poison
is burnt up, and of sour smoke itself there is made bright blessed
flame!
Destiny, on the whole, has no other way of cultivating us. A formless
Chaos, once set it _revolving_, grows round and ever rounder; ranges
itself by mere force of gravity into strata, spherical courses; is no
longer a Chaos, but a round compacted World. What would become of the
Earth did she cease to revolve? In the poor old Earth, so long as she
revolves, all inequalities, irregularities, disperse themselves; all
irregularities are incessantly becoming regular. Hast thou looked on
the Potter's wheel,--one of the venerablest objects; old as the
Prophet Ezekiel and far older? Rude lumps of clay, how they spin
themselves up, by mere quick whirling, into beautiful circular dishes.
And fancy the most assiduous Potter, but without his wheel; reduced to
make dishes, or rather amorphous botches, by mere kneading and baking!
Even such a Potter were Destiny, with a human soul that would rest and
lie at ease, that would not work and spin! Of an idle unrevolving man
the kindest Destiny, like the most assiduous Potter without wheel, can
bake and knead nothing other than a botch; let her spend on him what
expensive coloring, what gilding and enameling she will, he is but a
botch. Not a dish; no, a bulging, kneaded, crooked, shambling,
squint-cornered, amorphous botch,--a mere enameled vessel of dishonor!
Let the idle think of this.
Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other
blessedness. He has a work, a life-purpose; he has found it, and will
follow it! How, as a free-flowing channel, dug and torn by noble force
through the sour mud-swamp of one's existence, like an ever-deepening
river there, it runs and flows;--draining off the sour festering water
gradually from the root of the remotest grass-blade; making, instead
of pestilential swamp, a green fruitful meadow with its clear-flowing
stream. How blessed for the meadow itself, let the stream and _its_
value be great or small! Labor is Life: from the inmost heart of the
Worker rises his God-given Force, the sacred celestial Life-essence
breathed into him by Almighty God; from his inmost heart awakens him
to all nobleness,--to all knowledge, "self-knowledge" and much else,
so soon as Work fitly begins. Knowledge? The knowledge that will hold
good in working, cleave thou to that; for Nature herself accredits
that, says Yea to that. Properly thou hast no other knowledge but what
thou hast got by working: the rest is yet all a hypothesis of
knowledge; a thing to be argued of in schools, a thing floating in the
clouds, in endless logic-vortices, till we try it and fix it. "Doubt,
of whatever kind, can be ended by Action alone."