The Larger Education
The old idea that the necessity of working was imposed upon men as a
punishment is responsible, in large measure, for the radical
misunderstanding of the function and uses of work which has so widely
prevailed. In the childhood of the world a garden for innocence to play in
secured the consummation of all deep human longings for happiness; but
there is a higher state than innocence: there is the state to which men
attain through knowledge and trial. Knowledge involves great perils, but
it is better than innocuous ignorance; virtue involves grave dangers, but
it is nobler than innocence. Character cannot be secured if choice between
higher and lower aims is denied; and without character the world would be
meaningless. There can be no unfolding of character without growth, and
growth is inconceivable without the aid of work. The process of self-
expression through action is wrought, therefore, into the very structure
of man's life; it is not a penalty, but a spiritual opportunity of the
highest order. It is the most comprehensive educational process to which
men are subjected, and it has done more, probably, than all other
processes to lift the moral and social level of the race.
Instead of being a prison, the workshop has been a place of training,
discipline, and education. The working races have been the victorious
races; the non-working races have been the subject races. Wandering
peoples who trust to what may be called geographical luck for a living
often develop strong individual qualities and traits, but they never
develop a high degree of social or political organisation, nor do they
produce literature and art. The native force of imagination which some
semi-civilised races seem to possess never becomes creative until it is
developed and directed by training. Education is as essential to greatness
of achievement in any field as the possession of gifts of genius. An
untrained race, like an untrained man, is always at an immense
disadvantage, not only in the competition of the world, but in the working
out of individual destiny. The necessity for work is so far from being a
penalty that it must be counted the highest moral opportunity open to men,
and, therefore, one of the divinest gifts offered to the race. The
apparent freedom of nomadic peoples is seen, upon closer view, to be a
very hard and repulsive bondage; the apparent servitude of working peoples
is seen to be, upon closer view, an open road to freedom.
There is no real freedom save that which is based upon discipline. The
chance to do as one pleases is not liberty, as so many people imagine;
liberty involves knowledge, self-mastery, capacity for exertion, power of
resistance. Emerson uncovered the fundamental conception when he declared
that character is our only definition of freedom and power. Now, character
is always the product of an educational process of some kind; its
production involves tests, trials, temptations, toils. It does not
represent innocence, but that which is higher and more difficult of
attainment, virtue. Innocence is the starting-point in life; virtue is the
goal. Between these two points lies that arduous education which is
effected, for most men, chiefly by and through work. In comparison with
the field, the shop, the factory, the mine, and the sea, the school has
educated a very inconsiderable number; the vast majority of the race have
been trained by toil. On the farm, in the innumerable factories, in
offices and stores, on sea-going craft of all kinds, and in the vast field
of land transportation, the race, as a rule, has had its education in
those elemental qualities which make organised society possible. When the
race goes to its work in the morning, it goes to its school; and the chief
result of its toil is not that which it makes with its hands, but that
which it slowly and unconsciously creates within itself. It is concerned
with the product of its toil; with soil, seed, or grain; with wood, paper,
metal, or stone; with processes and forces; but in the depths of the
worker's nature there is a moral deposit of habit, quality, temper, which
is the invisible moral result of his toil. The real profit of a day's work
in the world can never be estimated in terms of money; it can be estimated
only in terms of character.
The regularity, promptness, obedience, fidelity, and skill demanded in
every kind of work, skilled or unskilled, compels the formation of a
certain degree of character. No worker can keep his place who does not
develop certain moral qualities in connection with his work. Honesty,
truthfulness, sobriety, and skill are essential to the most elementary
success,--the getting of the bare necessities of life; and these
fundamental qualities, upon which organised society rests as on an
immovable foundation, are the silent deposit of the work of the world.
Through what seems to be the bondage of toil the race is emancipated from
the ignorance, the licence, and the dull monotony of savagery; through
what seems to be a purely material dealing with insensate things men put
themselves in the way of the most thorough moral training.
The necessity of working gives society steadiness and stability; when
large populations are freed from this necessity, irresponsible mobs take
the place of orderly citizens, and the crowd of idlers must be fed and
amused to be kept out of mischief. A man can never be idle with safety and
advantage until he has been so trained by work that he makes his freedom
from times and tasks more fruitful than his toil has been. When work has
disciplined a man, he may safely be left to himself; for he will not only
govern himself, but he will also employ himself. There are few worse
elements in society than an idle leisure class,--a body of men and women
who make mere recreation the business of living, and so reverse or subvert
the natural order of life.
On the other hand, there is no more valuable element in society than a
working leisure class,--a body of men and women who, emancipated from the
harder and more mechanical work of the world, give themselves to the
higher activities and enrich the common life by intelligence, beauty,
charm of habit and manners, dignity of carriage, and distinction of
character and taste. So long as men need other food than bread, and have
higher necessities than those of the body, a leisure class will be
essential to the richest and completest social development. What society
does not need is an idle class.