coward. He is only valuable as he is licked into shape. It is pretty
much the same in business. It seems hard to say it, but the average
employe in factory, shop or store, puts the face of the clock to shame
looking at it; he is thinking of his pay envelope and his intent is to
keep the boss located and to do as little work as possible. In many
cases the tyranny of the employer is to blame for the condition, but
more often it is the native outcrop of suspicion that prompts the seller
to give no more than he can help.
And here the sergeant comes in, and with watchful eye and tireless
nerves, holds the recreants to their tasks. If he is too severe, he will
fix in the shirks more firmly the shirk microbe; but if he is of better
fibre, he may supply a little more will to those who lack it, and
gradually create an atmosphere of right intent, so that the only
disgrace will consist in their wearing the face off the regulator and
keeping one ear cocked to catch the coming footsteps of the boss.
There is not the slightest danger that there will ever be an overplus of
sergeants. Let the sergeant keep out of strikes, plots, feuds, hold his
temper and show what's what, and he can name his own salary and keep his
place for ninety-nine years without having a contract.
The Spirit of the Age
Four hundred and twenty-five years before the birth of the Nazarene,
Socrates said, "The gods are on high Olympus, but you and I are here."
And for this--and a few other similar observations--be was compelled to
drink a substitute for coffee--he was an infidel! Within the last thirty
years the churches of Christendom have, in the main, adopted the
Socratic proposition that you and I are here. That is, we have made
progress by getting away from narrow theology and recognizing humanity.
We do not know anything about either Olympus or Elysium, but we do know
something about Athens.
Athens is here.
Athens needs us--the Greeks are at the door. Let the gods run Elysium,
and we'll devote ourselves to Athens.
This is the prevailing spirit in the churches of America to-day. Our
religion is humanitarian, not theological.
A like evolution has come about in medicine. The materia medica of
twenty-five years ago is now obsolete. No good doctor now treats
symptoms--he neither gives you something to relieve your headache nor to
settle your stomach. These are but timely ting-a-lings--Nature's
warnings--look out! And the doctor tells you so, and charges you a fee
sufficient to impress you with the fact that he is no fool, but that
you are.
The lawyer who now gets the largest fees is never seen in a court-room.
Litigation is now largely given over to damage suits--carried on by
clients who want something for nothing, and little lawyers, shark-like
and hungry, who work on contingent fees. Three-fourths of the time of
all superior and supreme courts is taken up by His Effluvia, who brings
suit thru His Bacteria, with His Crabship as chief witness, for damages
not due, either in justice or fact.
How to get rid of this burden, brought upon us by men who have nothing
to lose, is a question too big for the average legislator. It can only
be solved by heroic measures, carried out by lawyers who are out of
politics and have a complete indifference for cheap popularity. Here is
opportunity for men of courage and ability. But the point is this, wise
business men keep out of court. They arbitrate their differences
--compromise--they cannot afford to quit their work for the
sake of getting even. As for making money, they know a better way.
In theology we are waiving distinctions and devoting ourselves to the
divine spirit only as it manifests itself in humanity--we are talking
less and less about another world and taking more notice of the one we
inhabit. Of course we occasionally have heresy trials, and pictures of
the offender and the Fat Bishop adorn the first page, but heresy trials
not accompanied by the scaffold or the faggots are innocuous and
exceedingly tame.
In medicine we have more faith in ourselves and less in prescriptions.
In pedagogy we are teaching more and more by the natural
method--learning by doing--and less and less by means of injunction
and precept.
In penology we seek to educate and reform, not to suppress, repress and
punish.
That is to say, the gods are on high Olympus--let them stay there.
Athens is here.
The Grammarian
The best way to learn to write is to write.
Herbert Spencer never studied grammar until he had learned to write. He
took his grammar at sixty, which is a good age for one to begin this
most interesting study, as by the time you have reached that age you
have largely lost your capacity to sin.
Men who can swim exceedingly well are not those who have taken courses
in the theory of swimming at natatoriums, from professors of the
amphibian art--they were just boys who jumped into the ol' swimmin'
hole, and came home with shirts on wrong-side out and a tell-tale
dampness in their hair.
Correspondence schools for the taming of bronchos are as naught; and
treatises on the gentle art of wooing are of no avail--follow
nature's lead.
Grammar is the appendenda vermiformis of the science of pedagogics: it
is as useless as the letter q in the alphabet, or the proverbial two
tails to a cat, which no cat ever had, and the finest cat in the world,
the Manx cat, has no tail at all.
"The literary style of most university men is commonplace, when not
positively bad," wrote Herbert Spencer in his old age.
"Educated Englishmen all write alike," said Taine. That is to say,
educated men who have been drilled to write by certain fixed and
unchangeable rules of rhetoric and grammar will produce similar
compositions. They have no literary style, for style is individuality
and character--the style is the man, and grammar tends to obliterate
individuality. No study is so irksome to everybody, except the sciolists
who teach it, as grammar. It remains forever a bad taste in the mouth of
the man of ideas, and has weaned bright minds innumerable from a desire
to express themselves through the written word.
Grammar is the etiquette of words, and the man who does not know how to
properly salute his grandmother on the street until he has consulted a
book, is always so troubled about the tenses that his fancies break thru
language and escape.
The grammarian is one whose whole thought is to string words according
to a set formula. The substance itself that he wishes to convey is of
secondary importance. Orators who keep their thoughts upon the proper
way to gesticulate in curves, impress nobody.
If it were a sin against decency, or an attempt to poison the minds of
the people, for a person to be ungrammatical, it might be wise enough
to hire men to protect the well of English from defilement. But a
stationary language is a dead one--moving water only is pure--and the
well that is not fed by springs is sure to be a breeding-place
for disease.
Let men express themselves in their own way, and if they express
themselves poorly, look you, their punishment will be that no one will
read their literary effusions. Oblivion with her smother-blanket lies in
wait for the writer who has nothing to say and says it faultlessly.
In the making of hare soup, I am informed by most excellent culinary
authority, the first requisite is to catch your hare. The literary
scullion who has anything to offer a hungry world, will doubtless find a
way to fricassee it.
The Best Religion
A religion of just being kind would be a pretty good religion, don't you
think so?
But a religion of kindness and useful effort is nearly a perfect
religion.
We used to think it was a man's belief concerning a dogma that would fix
his place in eternity. This was because we believed that God was a
grumpy, grouchy old gentleman, stupid, touchy and dictatorial. A really
good man would not damn you even if you didn't like him, but a bad
man would.
As our ideas of God changed, we ourselves changed for the better. Or, as
we thought better of ourselves we thought better of God. It will be
character that locates our place in another world, if there is one, just
as it is our character that fixes our place here.
We are weaving character every day, and the way to weave the best
character is to be kind and to be useful.
THINK RIGHT, ACT RIGHT; IT IS WHAT WE THINK AND DO THAT MAKE US WHAT WE
ARE.
So here ends LOVE, LIFE AND WORK, being
a book of Essays selected from the writings
of ELBERT HUBBARD, and done into print by
_The Roycrofters_ at their Shop at East Aurora,
which is in Erie County, New York, U.S.A.
Completed in the month of July, MCMVI
[Illustration: The Roycroft Shop]