Liberation
Work is the most continuous and comprehensive form of action; that form
which calls into play and presses into steady service the greatest number
of gifts, skills, and powers. Into true work, therefore, a man pours his
nature without measure or stint; and in that process he comes swiftly or
slowly to a clear realisation of himself. Work sets him face to face with
himself. So long as he is getting ready to work he cannot measure his
power, nor take full account of his resources of skill, intelligence, and
moral endurance; but when he has closed with his task and put his entire
force into the doing of it, he comes to an understanding not only of but
with himself. Under the testing process of actual contact with materials
and obstacles, his strength and his weakness are revealed to him; he
learns what lies within his power and what lies beyond it; he takes
accurate account of his moral force, and measures himself with some degree
of accuracy against a given task or undertaking; he discovers his capacity
for growth, and begins to see, through the mist of the future, how far he
is likely to go along the road he has chosen. He discerns his lack of
skill in various directions, and knows how to secure what he needs; in
countless ways he measures himself and comes to know himself.
For work speedily turns inward power into outward achievement, and so
makes it possible to take accurate account of what has hitherto lain
wholly within the realm of the potential. In a very deep and true sense an
artist faces his own soul when he looks at his finished work. He sees a
bit of himself in every book, painting, statue, or other product of his
energy and skill. What was once concealed in the mystery of his own nature
is set in clear light in the work of his hands; the reality or unreality
of his aspirations is finally settled; the question of the possession of
original power or of mere facility is answered. The worker is no longer an
unknown force; he has been developed, revealed, measured, and tested.
In this process one of his highest gains is the liberation of his inward
power and the attainment of self-knowledge and self-mastery. No man is
free until he knows himself, and whatever helps a man to come to clear
understanding of himself helps him to attain freedom. A man does not
command his resources of physical strength until he has so trained and
developed his body that each part supplements every other part and bears
the strain with equal power of resistance. When every part has been
developed to its highest point of efficiency, and the whole body answers
the command of the will with that completeness of strength which has its
source in harmony of parts through unity of development, the man has come
into full possession of his physical resources. In like manner a man comes
into complete mastery of himself when through self-knowledge he presses
every force and faculty into activity, and through activity secures for
each its ultimate perfection of power and action.
When every force within has been developed to its highest efficiency,
complete liberation has been effected. The perfectly developed and trained
man would have the poise and peace which come from the harmonious
expression of the soul through every form of activity, and the freedom
which is the result of complete command of all one's resources and the
power to use them at will. This ultimate stage of power and freedom has,
perhaps, never been attained by any worker under the conditions of this
present life; but in the exact degree in which the worker approaches this
ideal does he secure his own freedom. The untrained man, whose sole
resource is some kind of unskilled labour, is in bondage to the time and
place in which and at which he finds himself, and to the opportunities and
rewards close at hand; the trained man has the freedom of the whole world
of work. Michael Angelo receives commissions from princes and popes;
Velasquez paints with kings looking over his shoulder; Tesla can choose
the place where he will work; Mr. Gladstone would have found fame and
fortune at the end of almost any road he chose to take. In the case of
each of these great workers inward power was matured and harmonised by
outward work, and through work each achieved freedom.
No man is free until he can dispose of himself; until he is sought after
instead of seeking; until, in the noblest sense of the words, he commands
his own price in the world. There are men in every generation who push
this self-development and self-mastery so far, and who obtain such a large
degree of freedom in consequence, that the keys of all doors are open to
them. We call such men masters, not to suggest subjection to them, but as
an instinctive recognition of the fact that they have secured emancipation
from the limitations from which most men never escape. In a world given
over to apprenticeship these heroic spirits have attained the degree of
mastership. They have not been carried to commanding positions by happy
tides of favourable circumstance; they have not stumbled into greatness;
they have attained what they have secured and they hold it by virtue of
superior intelligence, skill, and power. They possess more freedom than
their fellows because they have worked with finer insight, with steadier
persistence, and with more passionate enthusiasm. They are masters because
they are free; but their freedom was bought with a great price.