The gospel of work is a true gospel, though not the only one, or the
highest, and has been preached in our day by great teachers. Listen,
for instance, to the ring of it in the rugged and incisive words of one
of our strongest poets:
“That low man seeks a little thing to do,
Sees it and does it.
This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
Dies ere he knows it.
That low man goes on adding one to one,
His hundreds soon hit.
This high man aiming at a million,
Misses a unit.”
This sounds like a deliberate attack on the idealist, a direct
preference of low to high aims and standards, of the seen to the
unseen. It is in reality only a wholesome warning against aiming at any
ideal by wrong methods, though the use of the words “low” and “high”
is no doubt likely to mislead. The true idealist has no quarrel with
the lesson of these lines; indeed, he would be glad to see them written
on one of the door-posts of every great school, if only they were
ballasted on the other by George Herbert’s quaint and deeper wisdom:
“Pitch thy behavior low, thy projects high,
So shalt thou humble and magnanimous be.
Sink not in spirit: who aimeth at the sky
Shoots higher much than he that means a tree.”
Both sayings are true, and worth carrying in your minds as part of
their permanent furniture, and you will find that they will live there
very peaceably side by side.