WILLIAM MORRIS says: "_It is right and necessary that all men should
have work to do which shall be worth doing, and be of itself pleasant to
do: and which should be done under such conditions as would make it
neither over-wearisome, nor over-anxious._"
This theorem cannot be upheld in its entirety, though there is a deep
truth beneath it. There are many things, such as the collecting of
garbage, the washing of the dead poor, the cleaning of cesspools, the
butchery of cattle for the market, and the execution of capital
criminals, which can scarcely be called pleasant to do, and must yet be
done. As long as the world is the world, and there is in it sin, decay,
disease, and death, we cannot hope to make the work or the conditions of
work absolutely ideal: we _can_ make ideal the spirit in which work
is done!
A fine story is told that long ago, when the cholera once broke out in
Philadelphia, the hospitals fell into a fearful state. One day, a plain,
quiet little man stepped into the chief hospital, looked about a moment,
and set to work. No task was too dirty or disagreeable for him; no
detail was too disgusting. He did anything he saw to be done,--called in
additional doctors, organized the nurses, and himself waited on patients
night and day. He soon had the hospital in good shape again. When the
crisis passed, and every one began to demand, Who is this man?--they
were told: It is Stephen Girard. The work was not pleasant, but the
spirit was kind, and the heart delighted in its self-appointed toil.
Work in general, however, that has worth has several elements. First, It
must be individual. It must be joyfully done: there must enter into work
the vitality of a happy spirit. It must be spontaneous. This is why
machine-work can never be thoroughly beautiful: it lacks the spontaneity
of life. The hand never makes two things alike. With the mood, the
weather, the occasion, there are little touches added which a machine
cannot give. Life always varies and thinks of new effects.
When we try to realize what work is, when it is merely an amount of toil
prodded out of man or woman by a hard taskmaster, we have only to look
back to the bondage of Israel in Egypt, or to the time of Scylla, when
there were thirteen million slaves in Italy alone: slaves whose set
tasks were of over two hundred and fifty kinds; who worked on the
road-building, on public works, and in rowing in the galleys of the
slave-propelled ships. In Carthage agriculture was for a time largely
carried on by slave-labor. How different is this slave-labor from the
craft-work of mediaeval times, when, under the protection of the guilds,
manual labor became exalted to an artistic rank, and the workers at the
loom, the metal-workers, the wood-carvers, the tapestry-weavers, and the
workers in pottery and glass produced objects whose beauty has never
been either equalled or surpassed. Andrea del Sarto and Benvenuto
Cellini were workers, and their work remains.
Again, good work is born of affection. Love teaches more art than all
the schools. What we love, we instinctively beautify. The artist
beautifies the material on which he works. He loves his task, and from
his love there begins a gradual shaping of the ideal. The product gains
a touch of beauty. The needlework of Egypt and Byzantium, the laces of
Venice and of Spain, are historic. It is said of Queen Isabella, that
she was one of the best needleworkers of her age; that "her _motifs_
were the great events of the time."
A peasant girl of Venice was once given a beautiful coral-branch and
some rare leaves and shells which her lover had gathered for her from
the sea-depths. She was untaught in art, and making fish-nets was her
wonted work. Day by day as she wrought her nets, she looked upon the
lovely sea-treasures, their beauty passed into her heart and mind, and
she began to copy, spray by spray, the coral-foliage, the leaves of the
sea-grasses, and the curves of the sea-shells, until after a time, in
the meshes of her fish-nets, she had imprisoned forms of exquisite
beauty, and one saw there reproduced, in dainty and artistic grouping,
what her very soul had loved and fed upon. Her fish-nets became works
of art.
Work of a high order is always based on high ideals and on great
thoughts. It implies a vast amount of toil. The Capellmeister of the
Vatican choir to-day is that wonderful young genius, Perosi, who is
stirring all Europe by the beauty of his musical work, and by the
spirituality and fervor of his musical imagination. He has set himself
to compose twelve oratorios, which shall body forth the whole life of
the Saviour. He believes that the music-lover and the church-lover may
be identical, and has set his hand to the uniting of all true
music-lovers with the great offices and services and influences of the
Church. Here is Work exalted to its spiritual office: to carry out, not
only ideals of beauty and harmony, but to advance spiritual progress.
This is the final aim of all true work: it must be not only aesthetic,
and honest, but spiritual. The prayer of the true workman is ever to
make himself a workman approved unto God. "May the beauty of the Lord be
upon us, and the work of our hands, establish Thou it!"
The worker should have change of work. Nature never intended that a man
should do one thing all his life. This is in harmony neither with man's
infinite capacity, nor with her inexhaustible variety. Change is
cultural, and a man's work Should, from time to time, engross every
working-power he has.
Working-surroundings should not only be sanitary, they should be
beautiful. What influences one most at college, and makes most for one's
happiness, is not the fact of the work in recitation-rooms, out of
books, laboratories, and under teachers. The glory of college life is,
that wherever one goes, the eyes look out on beauty, and wherever one
works, there are those whom we love who work beside us.
As one passes down the long college corridors, the eyes fall upon palm
and statue, upon frieze and fresco, and the carbon copies of immortal
paintings. Everywhere there are the inspirations of sculpture and
architecture, of music, literature, and art. Beauty is in and about the
place in which one thinks and works. This is the undying charm of
Oxford--the gathering traditions of centuries, the gleaming spires, the
age-worn walls and buttresses, the clinging vine, the tremulous light
and shadow on the ancient halls, the sculpture of porch and clerestory,
and the light that falls through richly tinted windows.
This beauty should not be monopolized by any one class. About the places
where we work, we should have, as far as possible, something of the
beauty of the world. We should have wide, shaded streets and parks, even
in great cities; towers and pinnacles; sky-lines of vigor, grace, and
massive strength. Cannot department stores be artistically fashioned and
built? Cannot market-houses have arches and arabesques? May not even the
Bourse have something about it suggestive of great art? Cannot our
streets have curves and storied cross-ways? Cannot porters and draymen
have somewhat to arouse and satisfy aesthetic instincts? Cannot our
day-laborers be granted vision?
Why should we have the Gothic cathedral, with its exquisite traceries
and carvings, pillars and reredos and screen, for men to pray in, one or
two hours a week, and the hideous, grime-covered, foul-smelling,
overheated factories, in which men and women spend their working-lives?
This is what Christianity must do: it must implant joy and beauty, as
well as honesty and fidelity, in the way, place, and thought of work!
When religion, education, art, and brotherly affection have joined hands
in a charmed circle, we shall have new ideas of working-places, as well
as of praying-places, and of living-places! It is not enough that a
factory should be situated, as the best factories now are, in the open
country, with sunshine and fresh air. The blockhouse parallelograms and
squares should be replaced by something that has intrinsic beauty and
the haunting completeness of memory and association, so that the place
where a man works shall no more be to him a nightmare, but the
atmosphere and inspiration of his dreams!
And those we love shall work beside us! Here is another thought: Shall
all association in work be arbitrary? Is there not a more human way than
the chain-gang way? Could not friends work more together, so that one's
daily work should be, not a time of separation from all we love most,
but a time of intellectual sympathy and helpfulness, of companionship
and true-hearted loyalty? This, and many other good things, it is not
too much to hope for. Truly, as Morris writes, "_The Day is Coming_."
"_Then a man shall work and bethink him, and rejoice in
the deeds of his handy
Nor yet come home in the even too faint and weary to
stand._
"_Men in that time a-coming shall work and have no fear
For the morrow's lack of earning and the hunger-wolf
anear._
"_And what wealth then shall be left us when none shall
gather gold
To buy his friend in the market, and pinch and pine the
sold?_
"_Nay, what save the lovely city, and the little house on the
hill,
And the wastes and the woodland beauty, and the happy
fields we till_;
"_And the homes of ancient stories, the tombs of the mighty
dead;
And the wise men seeking out marvels, and the poet's teeming
head;_
"_And the painter's hand of wonder; and the marvellous
fiddle-bow;
And the banded choirs of music:--all those that do and
know._
"_Far all these shall be ours and all men's, nor shall any
lack a share
Of the toil and the gain of living in the days when the
world grows fair_."